This month as we prepare for Thanksgiving, our thoughts turn to turkey, pumpkins and the Pilgrims who feasted in Plymouth. But there is more, November is designated Native American Heritage month - honoring the other people who sat around the table in the fall of 1621. In recounting the Thanksgiving story and many others, the Native Americans' role was often overlooked. Finally, in the later part of the twentieth century, Native Americans were acknowledged for their significant contributions in the establishment and growth of the United States. In 1990 President George H. W. Bush signed the resolution designating November 1990 "National American Indian Heritage Month." Similar proclamations in various states have been issued every year since 1994. The month is filled with programs and events across the country but more awareness needs to be raised.

While our part is small, we at the Congregational Library and Archives join with other institutions including The Library of Congress in reminding our members about the resources we offer to help them learn more about the First Nations' history and importance.

The Archives' numerous materials about Native Americans include editions of John Eliot's 1685 translation of the Bible into the local Algonquin of Massachusetts and various Bibles in Native American languages (Dakota, Ojibwa, Muskogee) from the Pratt Collection. Colonial church records and other New England Hidden Histories manuscripts reveal first-hand accounts of interactions between native and nascent Americans.We also have many reports, discourses and sermons from the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians, and others, in North America. Of note is the Address on the Present Condition and Prospects of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of North America, with particular reference to the Seneca Nation in which M. B. Pierce, a Seneca Nation chief and member of Dartmouth College, speaks on the wrongs done to the Indian tribes and land frauds perpetrated upon them.

Brainerd Missionary Station

We hold a sizable collection from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The Board placed missionaries with American Indian tribes in the Southwest, Midwest and Pacific Northwest United States in the first half of the 19th century. The ABCFM led an extensive fight against Indian removal policies in general and the Indian Removal Act of 1830 in particular.

Here at 14 Beacon you can also find resources referenced recently by authors and scholars. In The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America, Linford Fisher, Brown University, tells the gripping story of American Indians' attempts to wrestle with the ongoing realities of colonialism between the 1670s and 1820. Fisher used the Catharine Brown papers including letters and reminiscences the Cherokee woman who was educated at Brainerd Mission School, Chattanooga, TN and later returned to the Cherokee Nation. (Originally the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, headquartered at 14 Beacon Street, collected the materials in order to write her biography.)