The Indian's Long History

By John McWilliams and Cortney Scott | Wednesday, October 23, 1996

According to the College Charter granted to Eleazar Wheelock in 1769, Dartmouth College was established 'for the education & instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land in reading, writing & all parts of Learning; and also of English Youth and any others.' Dartmouth's official seal still portrays this historical mission, depicting a group of Indians approaching Dartmouth Hall with a bible in hand. From the outset, the College was inextricably connected to the Indian.

While the original missionary purpose of the College soon changed, the early Indian history of Dartmouth continued to be honored through cheers and songs. In 1879, a student committee elected the Indian cheer, 'Wah-Hoo-Wah' as Dartmouth's yell Ò a cheer that Dr. Benedict Hardman '31, a Yankton Sioux Indian, indicated means 'snow-ah-snow' in Indian dialects.

The 'Wah-Hoo-Wah' cheer is found in early songs such as 'Come Fellows Let Us Raise A Song' Ò the College's first official alma mater Ò and 'Eleazer Wheelock' by Richard Hovey, Class of 1885.

The Indian history of Dartmouth was also honored through Indian-head graduation canes, a tradition that can be traced back to 1898?—the year of the earliest Indian-head cane still surviving in the archives at Baker Library. The Indian profile began to personify the College at this time as well, and Indians appear on both the 1898 and 1905 Aegis.

The image of the Indian profile soon started to canonize and resemble the College leading up to 1974 — when any reference to the Indian symbol was banished from campus. The Indian figures on the weathervane above Baker Library, and the group depicted on the College's seal, wear elaborate, multi-feathered headdresses. This headdress was simplified early in the century to a two-feather top-knot. This portrait more accurately represented the look of the now-extinct Mohegan tribe that was indigenous to this area of New Hampshire. The change was the result of research by Walter Beach Humphrey '11, who found that the elaborate headdress was worn only by tribes of the Western plains, such as the Sioux.

In the early 1920's, a Boston sportswriter began to refer to Dartmouth teams as 'The Indians' and the name was soon reflected in team jerseys and other athletic equipment. As Dartmouth teams took up the Indian emblem, they knew to use the corrected Indian portrait as their symbol.

The Indian flourished as Dartmouth's symbol in the years to follow, and even to the Dartmouth community of the late 1960's any change would have been fully unanticipated.

Indeed when President John Kemeny asserted Dartmouth's renewed commitment to the education of American Indians in his 1969 inaugural address and through a new Native American recruitment program, he did not anticipate the negative reaction that incoming students would have to the Indian symbol. Kemeny later stated that he thought the Native American students might take a measure of pride in their college symbol.

In the next few years, students participating in the Native American program rose up against the Indian symbol, and in response the Alumni Council formed an Indian Symbol Study Committee. On June 15, 1972, the committee published its famous report. Though the report found it 'inappropriate to recommend the official abolition of an Indian symbol that was never officially adopted at Dartmouth,' it felt that the College 'should not officially attempt to either accelerate or retard this natural trend... by official fiat.'

The committee also recommended 'examples of voluntary curtailment or elimination of the use of the Indian symbol.' 'Voluntary' efforts by the Dartmouth community listed in the report included the discontinuation of the term 'Indians' in The Dartmouth, as well as the removal of the Indian head from its masthead. The college radio station was to eliminate use of the term in its broadcasts, while Hanover merchants were to phase out the use of the symbol on clothing and souvenirs. Among the many other recommended changes, the Dartmouth singing group 'the Injunaires' was to reduce their name simply to 'the Aires.'

In 1981, students organized a Student Assembly vote to create a new Dartmouth symbol. The Dartmouth Timberwolves, Vikings, and Woodmen were the three options — the Indian did not appear on the ballot. While this movement generated some national press, it did not go far enough to create any lasting change. Alumni were not contacted about the mascot vote, and student organizers soon gave up their cause, and the idea fell by the wayside.

In 1984, under the guidance of Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D'Souza, The Dartmouth Review commissioned the Gallup Organization to survey 1000 Dartmouth students selected at random from the undergraduate population. The May 23-25 poll listed the Indian and eight other symbols or mascots as choices and received an 'unusually high' response of 731 questionnaires. Both the Indian and the Timber Wolf received positive ratings from an identical 53% of respondents. Less favor was given to the Warrior, Green Knight, Viking, Raider, Buck, and Moose; all of which received substantial negative ratings. This proved that since abolition in 1974, the Indian as Dartmouth's symbol was still highly regarded by a large, though often silent, segment of the campus.

Although the 1972 Alumni Council Indian Symbol Study Committee unofficially recommended the removal of the Indian symbol from College life, that recommendation soon became de facto banishment. Indian portraits on sports jerseys are now prohibited, as are cheers such as 'Wah-Hoo-Wah.' However, the Mohegan Indian profile can still be seen around campus, appearing on unlicensed Dartmouth fraternity jackets, bumper stickers, and illegal football banners. Reminders of Dartmouth's Indian past were never wiped clean from campus. The college seal, the Hovey murals hidden away in the basement of Thayer, and the Tower Room Indian statue — cast in 1911 — all attest to a time when Dartmouth looked more fondly upon its Indian history.

The Indian's Long History

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