Sally Maminash, d. 1853

The inscription on Sally Maminash's gravestone reads "last of the Indians here". This epitaph tells much more about 19th century New England than about Sally because she was not the only Indian in Northampton and was certainly not the last. Sally was an accepted and skilled member of the local community, working as an itinerant spinner and weaver, when she joined First Church with 76 other people, including the Bakemans, in 1816. She was not even identified as "Indian" in First Church records until Solomon Clark compiled his Historical Catalogue in 1891. Sophia Clapp, who sponsored her, offered Sally a home in her old age, describing her as a friend, not a servant, but later writers seem to have embellished earlier accounts to make Sally appear to be more simple, more destitute, and more alone than she was in real life. Sally's mother, Elizabeth, came from the community of Mohegan in southeastern Connecticut. Her father, Joseph Maminash, is identified in colonial records as Podunk, Nonotuck, and/or Pocumtuck Indian, and recorded as a resident of Norwich, CT, East Windsor, CT, Southampton, MA and Northampton, MA. Sally's uncle was Samson Occum, Mohegan preacher, fundraiser for Moor's Charity School (later Dartmouth College), and founder of the Brotherton Community of Christian Indians in New York (now in Wisconsin). Occum's mother, Sarah Samson, was distantly related to the Sampson Indians in Hadley. Sally's aunt, Lucy Occum Tantaquidgeon, a powerful church exhorter, was one of the founders of the Mohegan Church in Uncasville, Connecticut. Sally chose to stay in Northampton, her father's homeland.

The True History of Sally Maminash, by Marge Bruchac

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