The Indian History of an American Institution: Native Americans and Dartmouth (review)

Tribal peoples share a set of complex relationships with institutions of higher learning in the United States. Although they are this nation's first peoples, they are arguably the most educationally underserved. Although they are the chosen object of a number of college mascots, they are arguably the most underrepresented on any number of campuses. And although the tribal college movement continues to help various peoples integrate definitive elements of their cultures with the benefits of higher education, such schools are arguably underfunded and even ignored by many policymakers.

Coming to terms with this complex set of relationships, while imperative, is difficult at best. Perhaps one way to begin is by examining the history of an institution founded to meet the educational needs of tribal peoples—Dartmouth College. Colin G. Calloway is to be commended for undertaking such an effort in The Indian History of an American Institution: Native Americans at Dartmouth, a work that embodies the complexity demanded by such a story while maintaining a unifying narrative. At the heart of his book is his belief that "this 'college in the woods' was ostensibly founded for the education of Indian students. It has not always lived up to that pledge and when it has tried to do so, its efforts have sometimes been hampered by incidents, attitudes, and traditions that make Dartmouth a hard place to be Native American" (xiv).

Although Dartmouth proves to be a hard place for tribal peoples, Calloway is also "deeply grateful to Dartmouth and feel[s] a loyalty to the institution" (xiv). He currently serves as the John Kimball Jr. 1943 Professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth, is a leading historian of tribal peoples, and is the author of White People, Indians, and Highlanders: Tribal Peoples and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), The Shawnees and the War for America (New York: Viking/Penguin, 2007), The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), and One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003).

In Calloway's most recent book, he fuses this deep knowledge of the history of tribal peoples with his abiding affection for Dartmouth, the place he now calls home. This history of tribal peoples at Dartmouth is chronological, reaching back to the institution's founding in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock and moving forward to the present. Part of the way Calloway organizes such a history is by matching chapters with larger events going on in the United States, in the lives of tribal peoples, or in both.

For example, Chapter 3 details the impact that the American Revolution had on the college and the students it sought to serve. Chapter 5 details the role Dartmouth played in the lives of tribal peoples during the era of Indian Removal while Chapter 6 covers the era in which students came from the Indian Territory.

Most of the other chapters are defined by rather lengthy accounts of the lives of tribal peoples who were once students at Dartmouth College. In relation to the lives of students who attended Dartmouth in the early half of the twentieth century, Calloway claims that "the almost forgotten stories of these men reveal much about the experiences of Indians at Dartmouth and in America during these years" (p. 136). Names such as Ralph Walkingstick and Frell MacDonald Owl are now granted their rightful place in the history of this place. Some of these lives prove painful to encounter while others prove hopeful. Regardless, Callaway convincingly argues that they all play a role in the complex story of Dartmouth College.

A thread running through the first half of Calloway's narrative is the way various officials at Dartmouth interpreted funds pledged...