Indigenous Books and America 250 with Phillip Round

In this year’s Wiggins lecture, Phillip Round connects the contributions of Indian authors, books, and readers to the broader conversation around liberty and freedom that the founding of the United States inspired in Americans from all walks of life. 

Writing to John Bailey at the end of the Revolutionary War, Samson Occom—the first Native American to publish a book—insisted that “Indians are neither Whigs nor Tories,” emphasizing Native political autonomy in a conflict framed largely in colonial terms. Yet Occom’s perspective on the Revolution was not one of detachment alone. In private correspondence with the enslaved African American poet Phillis Wheatley, he expressed excitement about what an independent United States might mean for both Black and Indigenous peoples. Responding to Occom’s arguments in favor of enslaved peoples’ right to freedom, Wheatley articulated a broader philosophical principle underlying such hopes: “in every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance.” 

This epistolary exchange between Occom and Wheatley reveals how marginalized figures interpreted the Revolution not simply as a colonial struggle, but as a moment that might extend the promise of liberty beyond white settlers. This sense of possibility, however, was not limited to private correspondence. A few years later, Mahican diplomat Hendrick Aupaumut, while negotiating with Shawnee bands in the Ohio River valley, described how American leaders framed their newfound independence as a model for others. According to Aupaumut, they claimed that “since they have their liberty, they begin with new things, and now they endeavor to lift us up the Indians from the ground, that we may stand up and walk ourselves.”  

Taken together, these accounts illustrate a shared—if uneven—expectation that the ideals of the Revolution might extend to Black and Native communities. At the same time, they hint at the tension between that promise and the political realities that would ultimately limit it. 

This event is co-sponsored by the Bibliographical Society of America.