Benjamin Tompson

Benjamin Tompson (1642 – April 13, 1714) was an American Puritan poet, author, educator and physician from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who is widely considered by historians as the "first native-born poet in America". He is also noted for his poems and writings involving King Philip's War and related conflicts between the colonies and Massachusett Indian Nations in 17th-century southern Massachusetts. In the aftermath of Indian attacks and the burning of entire towns and churches, Tompson saw this as an occasion to memorialize the tragic loses incurred in the conflicts through poetry and other writings in the hopes that it would also inspire other writers who were generally silent to take up the cause. His poem, Harvardine Quils, is the definitive example, directed at Harvard's scholars and other writers.