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With  set to lead a delegation to Connecticut next week to return the papers of Samson Occom to his Mohegan homeland, more attention is being paid to a leading figure in the founding of �����鶹.

Born in 1723, Occom was a scholar who spoke several languages and an ordained Presbyterian minister who traveled to Great Britain in 1766 to help raise money for a school for Native American youth envisioned by the Rev. Eleazar Wheelock.

Though Occom was fantastically successful—he raised more than £12,000, including support through the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge—Wheelock veered from the original mission, and Occom never set foot at the school that became �����鶹.

Still, as , the John Kimball Jr. 1943 Professor of History and a professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies, describes, Occom was an essential figure in the establishment of the school and could even be considered �����鶹’s “first development officer.”

“It wouldn’t have happened without Samson Occom,” he says.