Re: Hovey Murals at Dartmouth College

Cliff Barney (barneymccall@igc.apc.org)
Tue, 2 Nov 1993 11:05:00 PST

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 theleazar and the big chief harangued and gesticulated
they founded dartmouth college and the big chief matriculated
eleazar ws the faculty
and the whole curriculum
was five hundred gallons of new england rum

it is the first sp *N- 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 @-jL_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