Great David

Great David was a sagamore at Quabaug in the southeastern part of Brookfield, Massachusetts, and the husband of a woman named Sarah.

 

It is claimed that through the influence of John Eliot, David received his Christian name.  Capt. Samuel Mosley suspected David to be complicit in the attack against Lancaster on August 22, 1675.  Tying the sagamore to a tree and pointing a gun at him, he interrogated David until the Indian implicated a number of Hassanemesit Indians.  At the Hassanemsits' trial before the Boston Council, it was discovered that the Indians were innocent and that David had made false accusations.  For this and for being implicated in the shooting of an Irish shepherd boy at Marlborough, he was condemned on October 29th and sentenced to be sold as a slave.  On or about November 22, 1675, the treasurer of the Massachusetts Bay Colony sold Great David and six others (George Rumneymarsh, William, Hawkins, Rouley, John Indian, and Tommoquin) to Lancelot Talbot and Joseph Smith, that Talbot and Smith would transport the condemned Indians "to any place out of this continent."   George William Ellis and John E. Morris, King Philip's War (New York, 1906), 89.  City Document No. 46, Part II, "The Book of Possessions" in City of Boston, Mass., Second Report  of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston (Boston, 1881), 48.  Drake, The Book of the Indians, 81.