The Last Stone

When Samson Occom died in 1792 he was buried in Brothertown, the Christian Indian community he had helped create in New York's Oneida territory. He had envisioned Brothertown as an enduring safe haven for Indians. It was not to be. The Brothertown tribe was forced to move west in 1812. Their former home was subsumed by the towns of Kirkland and Marshall.

Today the wooded cemetery where Occom lies is nearly all that remains of the original Brothertown site. A historical plaque at the side of Bogusville Road off state route 12B points to his grave a quartermile from the road, in the midst of private farmland. Years ago nearby Utica, New York, resident Carl Waterbury' 11 and his classmates urged Dartmouth to erect a proper graveside memorial to Occom. They did not succeed. Occom waited all his life for the kind of recognition his accomplishments would have earned a non-Indian. In an unmarked grave, he waits still.

BERND PEYER, a lecturer at the Zentrum fur Nordamerika-Forshung in Frankfurt, Germany, taught Native American Studies at Dartmouth in 1995.