as an alumnus of dartmouth who has long been embarrassed about
the school's cavalier attitude toward native americans, i think i can
understand the actions of the native american council in putting the
hovey murals on display. these pictures were always the object of
undergraduate lubricity in the days when they were one of the few
instances of public displays of images of the female breast (hard to
imagine today, but true enough in the 1940's and 50's). this was in
the days when dartmouth teams called themselves "indians" and
were cartooned with hook noses and tomahawks. dartmouth
celebrated its heritage as a supposed school for native americans in
various patronizing verses and songs, most notably one about its
founder (written, i believe, by the same richard hovey for whom the
grille in which the infamous murals were hung):
for eleazar wheelock was a very pious man
he went into the wilderness to teach the in-di-an
with a gradus ad parnassum
a bible and a drum
and five hundred gallons of new england rum
eleazar and the big chief harangued and gesticulated
they founded dartmouth college and the big chief matriculated
eleazar was the faculty
and the whole curriculum
was five hundred gallons of new england rum
it is the first song they teach dartmouth freshmen, or was in 1947.
probably not today. by dint of unswerving pressure, indigenous
people, students, and liberal alumni have since forced the school to
back away from the more egregious of its fantasies about the red
man, and eleazar may no longer be in official favor. (there is
however a strong and vocal alumni minority that still gets all riled
up over the fact that the teams can't call themselves indians any
more.) the hovey murals were covered up some years ago and the
sports teams adopted another sobriquet, the "big green."
i had heard that there was a move to restore the murals to public
view. lloyd lee's explanation -- that the native american council
adopted this route more or less in desperation because of its inability
to persuade the college to spend the money to remove the murals
entirely -- is further evidence that the process of cultural genocide
continues today.
nowhere, by the way, is this process more completely detailed than
in another set of murals at dartmouth, those in the basement of
baker library. there jose clemente orozco painted the destruction of
an indigenous people in a series of panels that will still be
acknowledged as masterpieces when the cartoons on the hovey grille
have been long forgotten.
cliff barney
dartmouth '51