The Indian History of an American Institution

A history of the complex relationship between a school and a people Dartmouth College began life as an Indian school, a pretense that has since been abandoned. Still, the institution has a unique, if complicated, relationship with Native Americans and their history. Beginning with Samson Occom’s role as the first “development officer” of the college, Colin G. Calloway tells the entire, complex story of Dartmouth’s historical and ongoing relationship with Native Americans. Calloway recounts the struggles and achievements of Indian attendees and the history of Dartmouth alumni’s involvements with American Indian affairs. He also covers more recent developments, such as the mascot controversies, the emergence of an active Native American student organization, and the partial fulfillment of a promise deferred. This is a fascinating picture of an elite American institution and its troubled relationship— at times compassionate, at times conflicted—with Indians and Native American culture

La révolution américaine en territoire indien

Cet article met en perspective l’expérience des indigènes américains pendant la Révolution américaine, et leur lutte pour établir leur propre modèle d’indépendance, bien différent de celui des colons anglophones. L’auteur fixe particulièrement son regard sur les Iroquois de New York, les Shawnees et les Delawares de la vallée de l’Ohio, ainsi que sur les Cherokees du Sud. Il insiste sur le regard que les colons ont porté sur la participation des Indiens à la Révolution américaine, montrant comment, l’indépendance proclamée, celle-ci a justifié leur exclusion de la nouvelle nation.This essay examines the experiences of Native Americans during the American Revolution as they fought for their own versions of independence, which was inevitably quite different from that of the English speaking colonists. It focuses, in particular, on the Iroquois of New York, the Shawnees and Delawares in the Ohio Valley, and the Cherokees in the South. It emphasizes the meaning that Americans attached to the Indians’ participation in the Revolution. In fact, once the United States had secured its independence, it began to exclude them from the new nation

Review of Catlin and His Contemporaries; The Politics of Patronage

Brian Dippie provides a corrective to the image of George Catlin as a hopeless romantic. Stung by criticism in eastern artistic circles, Catlin headed west on a new path to fame and fortune (p. 11). After a few years visiting the Indians, he spent more than thirty years hustling to find a patron and to market his work. That he failed to do so was not for want of effort. According to Dippie, Catlin would try anything to make a dollar from his art (p. 21) and Indians were worth more to him dead than alive once he had captured their likenesses: Catlin\u27s heart might bleed, but his eye was coolly fixed on the main chance (p. 117)

Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Plains Indians\u3c/i\u3e By Paul H. Carlson

The enormous increase in ethnohistorical studies over the past generation or two has made room for a new overview of Plains Indian history. Paul Carlson\u27s The Plains Indians provides an overview but falls short of filling the niche. The book is dated in some of its approaches, stereotypical in some of its descriptions, and uneven in its incorporation of recent literature. Its title should include dates since the book concentrates on the period 1750-1890. Chapter one, The People and the Plains, locates the various tribes in their nineteenthcentury positions, and chapter two, First Arrivals, surveys ancient America via the standard stepping stones-Bering Straits, Anasazi, Clovis, Mississippian culture. But there is little time depth to pre-contact Plains history or attention to Plains Indians\u27 accounts of their origins. A brief epilogue discusses the twentieth century. Most of the book comprises general descriptions of Plains Indian life in the horse and buffalo days, illustrated by examples from particular tribes, and with reminders that Plains Indians differed from each other within a broader context of shared cultures. Plains Indian people are described in one-dimensional terms and past tenses. Blackfeet men were relatively free and easy, concerned with the material pleasures of life, compared with far more austere and serious Cheyenne men. A Plains Indian male usually became a joyous warrior in battle, a devoted parent, and a reliable hunter. Proud, mystical, and spontaneous, the Plains Indians were tall people (Comanches and Tonkawas excepted) ; Lakotas had long faces and prominent noses ; Pawnees had heavy, massive faces ; different tribes had differently shaped heads. Southern Arapahos were friendly people of an easy temperament. In places, the book reads like something from another era. The author, a professor of history at Texas Tech University, cites plenty of dissertations from Texas Tech but few from anywhere else; he incorporates much ethnohistory, but omits, for example, recent works on Cheyenne history by John Moore and Elliott West. Reading exactly the same lengthy footnote twice (pp. 11-12) is rather annoying. The book improves in chapters eight, nine, and ten, which provide clear and concise accounts of shifting patterns of trade and diplomacy, the contest for the Plains, and the reservation era, with broad explanations appropriately laced with good examples. But for an overview of Plains Indian culture, general readers still may do better to go back to Robert Lowie\u27s Indians of the Plains (1954) and other standard works