Draft:Harvard Indian College
| Submission declined on 9 December 2023 by WikiOriginal-9 (talk). Thank you for your submission, but the subject of this article already exists in Wikipedia. You can find it and improve it at Harvard Indian College instead.
Where to get help
How to improve a draft
You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Editor resources
|  |
The Indian College was supported financially by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, a Christian missionary charity based in London and whose president was the scientist Robert Boyle. The Indian College attracted only a handful of Native American students and was closed in 1693, after which the building was demolished and its bricks used for another construction in Harvard Yard. The college promised to waive tuition as well as provide housing for American Indians students[1]. Some Native American students, however, attended Harvard afterwards.
In the 1640s, in the midst of a crisis connected to the English Civil War, the leaders of Harvard College began seeking financial support to educate and convert the local Native Americans. The new Harvard charter of 1650 declared its mission to be "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 (SPGNE), which agreed to pay for a new two-story brick building, the first of its kind erected on 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 to accommodate colonial English students instead. This was a disappointment as Native American students were promised free tuition.
The Indian College 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 (designed for 20 students):
- 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" (transl. Most honored benefactors), has been preserved.
- John Wompas 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 (1653), "[t]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."
- Also, some have speculated that Daniel Takawambait, one of the first ordained Indian ministers, and others attended the Indian College.
Closure[edit]
Because of the diseases that many Native Americans contracted upon coming into close contact with the English community, the building was little used for its intended purpose. When Harvard Hall was completed in 1677, the English colonial students moved out of the Indian College and the building fell into disuse. In 1693 the Harvard authorities, intending to reuse the bricks to construct a new building, asked the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England for permission to tear down the Indian College building. The Society's condition for approval was that Native American students "should enjoy their Studies rent free in said [new] building." By 1698 the old building was torn down, but the bricks were re-used in constructing the original Stoughton Hall which existed until 1781, when Stoughton Hall was also torn down due to masonry issues, but half of its bricks were again retained for reuse by the college. Today, the location is marked by a plaque on Mathews Hall in Harvard Yard.[2]
 | This is the sandbox page where you will draft your initial Wikipedia contribution.
If you're starting a new article, you can develop it here until it's ready to go live. If you're working on improvements to an existing article, copy only one section at a time of the article to this sandbox to work on, and be sure to use an edit summary linking to the article you copied from. Do not copy over the entire article. You can find additional instructions here. Remember to save your work regularly using the "Publish page" button. (It just means 'save'; it will still be in the sandbox.) You can add bold formatting to your additions to differentiate them from existing content. |
Article Draft[edit]
Lead[edit]
Article body[edit]
References[edit]
Digging Veritas - The Indian College. peabody.harvard.edu. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. https://peabody.harvard.edu/galleries/digging-veritas-indian-college#:~:text=The%20ca.,students%20attended%20the%20Indian%20College.[3] Category:Wikipedia Student Program
- ^ "Digging Veritas - The Indian College". peabody.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-03.
- ^ a b "Final Project: The Indian College".
- ^ "Digging Veritas - The Indian College". peabody.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-03.