The Reverend Samuel Treat

Few colonists of the 17th century were as esteemed among the Native people as was the Reverend Samuel Treat of Eastham. As a 24-year old Harvard graduate he was assigned to preach in Eastham for just a few months, but he would minister there until his last breath 45 years later. The son of an influential and politically powerful Connecticut family, his principal flock were the colonists, but his mission was to convert the Nauset people to Christianity.

He learned to speak their language with fluency, and came to know them socially. He visited their villages and attended cultural celebrations. Eastham was settled on land purchased from the Nauset, with many remaining in surrounding villages in the area.

A census of praying Indians conducted in 1684 numbered the Nauset congregation at 264. By the summer of 1693, Reverend Treat issued a report to colonial Puritan leader and Harvard President Increase Mather. He boasted of more than 500 Indians in four villages within the Eastham township, “unto whom these many years past, I have from time to time imparted the Gospel of our Lord Jesus in their own Language… I continue in the same Service, earnestly imploring, and not without hopes, expecting and waiting for a more plentiful down-pouring of the Spirit from on high among them.”

He also distinguished between those Nauset people of Eastham from those who fought against the colonies during King Philip’s War. They were, said the Reverend, “very Serviceable by their Labor to the English Vicinity, and have all along since our Wars with their Nation, been very Friendly to the English.” A neighborliness attributed in large part to Reverend Treat’s sincere friendliness and genuine affection for the Nauset people. Treat was so beloved by the Nausets that upon his death in 1717, they dug a tunnel at his home through a snow drift and carried his body to the meetinghouse. On his headstone, Reverend Treat is remembered as a “Pious and Faithful Pastor of his church who after a very zealous discharge of his ministry for ye space of 45 years and laborious travel for ye Souls of ye Indian nations fell asleep in Christ . . .” He was 69.