Just a few years after its founding in 1636, Harvard University established the Indian College in the 1640s to educate Native Americans as well as English colonists. It did not attract a sufficient number of students for continued operation and funding from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England. The college closed by 1693 and the building was torn down. Its bricks were re-used for another building. In 1997, the college installed a historic plaque in Harvard Yard to commemorate the Indian College. In 2009 remnants of the original Indian College were discovered during an archaeological dig in Harvard Yard, and parts of the original printing press were discovered.
History
In the 1640s, Harvard faced a financial crisis, which it attempted to resolve by obtaining funds to educate and convert local Native Americans. As a result, Harvard's charter of 1650 called for "the Education of the English and Indian Youth of the Country." Harvard obtained funds from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England which agreed to build a two-story brick building, the first of its kind, in Harvard Yard. This building, the Indian College, was completed in 1656. The building was large enough to accommodate about twenty students. However, at the time of completion no Native American students attended the college, and the building was used for colonial English students instead. The building was also used to house the first printing press in the English colonies. The printing press was housed in the building until 1692, when the steward of the Cambridge press, Samuel Green, died. Under the missionary John Eliot's direction, in 1663 the college printed a translation of the Bible into Massachusett language, which was the first Bible in any language printed in British North America. James Printer, an Algonquian-speaking Nipmuc who converted to Christianity, did much of the translation and typesetting, and other Native Americans, such as Cockenoe, Job Nesuton, and John Sassamon, contributed to various parts of the translation. The press issued 15 books in the Algonquian language and 85 in English. The building housed a total of four to five Native American students, but only one student, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, graduated from Harvard. At least four Native American students attended the college:
Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck and Joel Hiacoomes were classmates. Members of the Wampanoag tribe from Martha's Vineyard, they attended a preparatory school in Roxbury and were admitted to Harvard for a scheduled graduation of 1665. A few months prior to graduation, Hiacoomes returned to Martha's Vineyard to visit relatives. On the return trip, he was shipwrecked on Nantucket and not seen again. Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck successfully graduated, but died a few months later in Watertown, probably from tuberculosis. His Latin address to the Society, beginning "Honoratissimi benefactores", has been preserved.
John Wampus entered in 1666, but left the next year to become a mariner.
A student named Eleazar entered in 1675, but contracted and died of smallpox shortly after.
Besides Sassamon, "here may have been another Indian who attended Harvard prior to the establishment of the Indian College, as records mention a Harvard-educated "Privy Councellor" with King Philip, who was supposedly killed during a skirmish with the colonists in July 1675."
Because of the illnesses which many Native American students encountered when entering the college, the building was little used for its intended purpose. When Harvard Hall was completed in 1677, the English colonial students moved out of Indian College. By 1680, the press was not used at all. Harvard officially closed the press in 1692. In 1693 the college, intending to reuse the bricks to construct a new building, asked the SPGNE for permission to tear down the Indian College building. Their condition for approval was that Native American students "should enjoy their Studies rent free in said building." In 1693 the old building had been torn down. In 1997, in a ceremony attended by 300 people, a historic plaque was placed in Harvard Yard to commemorate the Indian College. Another member of the Nipmuc tribe, Benjamin Larnell, attended Harvard in the early 1700s, when the Indian College building no longer existed. John Leverett, president of Harvard between 1708 and 1724, described Larnell in his personal diary as "an Acute Grammarian, an Extraordinary Latin Poet, and a good Greek one". Judge Samuel Sewall wrote to a correspondent in London enclosing copies of Larnell's poems in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew as evidence of the progress made in educating the Native Americans, but those poems have not survived. Larnell died of a fever in 1714, aged about 20. Larnell's Latin versification of Aesop's fable of the fox and the weasel, probably written when Larnell was a student at Boston Latin School, was re-discovered in 2012.
