American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The 1772 execution of the Mohegan sailor Moses Paul served as the occasion for Samson Occom's popular Sermon, reprinted in numerous editions. Recent work by Ava Chamberlain seeks to recover Paul's version of events from contemporary court records. This article argues that Paul's "firsthand" account of the case and autobiographical narrative submitted in his appeal illustrate the importance of approaching confessional texts such as Paul's as fundamentally coauthored documents. I argue that both Occom's Sermon and Paul's Petition, which was cowritten with his attorney William Samuel Johnson, construct mediated, communal definitions of "Indianness" and provide an unintentional space for individual narrative autonomy.