In 1772, Samson Occom composed what LaVonne Ruoff calls the “first Indian best-seller”: an execution sermon before the hanging of his fellow Christian Mohegan, Moses Paul (62).¹ The most famous student of Eleazar Wheelock—a New England preacher turned Indian educator—Occom himself had become a missionary, teaching and preaching to Native Americans, and raising significant sums of money on a British tour on behalf of missionary efforts among Native Americans.² An articulate and persuasive speaker, Occom was successful in ministry and marketing, inspiring jealousy in white colleagues (who worried that his popularity undermined theirs) and generosity for “Wheelock’s Indians”...