Here's the Original Indian Library

(Announcing an Exhibition of the Books Used by the Indian Students of Dartmouth College, 1764-1780)

If you are coming to the Cornell Game and have in yourheart some little tenderness for the Indian institutions ofDartmouth College, just drop into Baker Library and seethe exhibition of Indian books there. Of the original 394books, 211 have been restored to their -places after muchwork on the part of the library people in salvaging thesebooks from old corners and eaves, from basements andcellars, and from places on the regular stacks. At last hasbeen discovered the original Gradus Ad Parnassum. Manyother interesting books of Colonial days will be found there. BOOKS used by the pupils of Moor's Indian Charity School and the first students of Dartmouth College will be on exhibition in the Tower Room of the Baker Library the week-end of the Dartmouth-Cornell game. They will be the most representative and interesting of the books in the original College Library which is now housed in the Woodward Room on the mezzanine floor. This room, which is designed to suggest the library as it appeared when located in the home of Bezaleel Woodward from 1772 to 1777, was furnished by one of the members of the faculty.

With old incomplete manuscripts as the only guides, the books were gathered from the shelves in Wilson Hall, from the cellar of New Hampshire, and from private collections in various parts of New England. One volume was even found beneath the floor of the Howe Library where rats had made serious inroads upon its religious content!

Two manuscript lists, copies of which will be included in the exhibition, were used in the attempt to identify the old books. One was of Wheelock's personal library which he gave to the College shortly after its founding and the other, that of the Dartmouth College Library, proper. The latter is dated January, 1775. Of the 394 titles listed (168 in the Wheelock library and 226 in the Dartmouth library), 211 are represented by at least one copy in the Woodward Room. One hundred and fifty-five of these have been identified as originals; fifteen have been taken from later gifts and collections, and fifty-five are classed as "doubtful," because authors or original owners have not yet been definitely identified. In addition to the listed volumes, there are many unlisted but identified books which have been placed on the shelves of the Woodward Room. Volumes are being added to the Library as they are discovered in the stacks, and new information may change the classification of some of the "doubtful" group.

GIVEN BY SCOTCH AND ENGLISH FRIENDS

Practically all of the books were given to Moor's Charity School in Lebanon, Connecticut (the forerunner of the college) and to the college itself by friends of the institutions in England and Scotland. Names of many of the donors appear in the fly-leaves. Original letters from these donors telling about their gifts will be on display in the Tower Room.

Texts used by the Indians, such as A Child's ChristianEducation and Lilly's Grammar, will also appear in the exhibition. One book of this type, The British Instructor (a copy of which contains the signature of Peggy, Wheelock's little daughter) is especially interesting because it has an "illustrated alphabet": "A is for Axe" over a crude sketch of an axe; etc. Indian signatures, many of them obviously executed with great labor, adorn the fly leaves of some of these little volumes, "Peter Oneida," "Joseph Mohawk," and "Joseph Meachakaump" practised penmanship on the now yellowed and thread-bare pages.

A well-worn Gradus ad Parnassum with "Jeremy Belknap" printed across its page-ends is among the most highly prized of the volumes to be included in the exhibit. It is treasured, not only because immortalized in Hovey's song, but because Jeremy Belknap was one of the early friends and admirers of Dartmouth.

The carefree John Ledyard's hold signature appears in a Latin dictionary and that of Eleazar Wheelock, himself, on the fly-leaf of more than one treatise on the Christian religion. Daniel Kirtland, father of the famous missionary, and founder of Hamilton College, has left his signature in a fat brown quarto, Heereboort's Melemata Philosophica. This is a volume which his son Samuel may well have used at Princeton or carried into the Mohawk country.

Books of a gloomy and even threatening cast are fairly numerous in the old library. Several of these, such as Shower's Serious Reflections on Time and Eternity and Allein's Alarm to Unconverted Sinners, will be on display.

Although perhaps 90% of the volumes are religious in nature, there are a few more secular in appeal. Among these are Neal's History of New England, Baker's Employment for the Microscope . . . Together with Instructions for printing off any Medal or Coin, and Moll's Atlas Minor, from which, alas, many of the quaint old maps have been removed.

The official circulation record of 1774-1775, kept by Bezaleel Woodward in a little note-book, will be exhibited. At the head of each page, is the name of a student under which are noted the titles of the books he drew from the Library and the charges paid for their use. This simple system offers a strange contrast to the loan system in use in the Baker Library today!

HERE'S THE ORIGINAL GRADTJS AD PARNASSUM These books are preserved in the reproduction of the first Dartmouth Library which is built into the Baker Library. The next cut shows the reproduction of the old library

HERE'S THE BIBLE AND THE DRUM Mrs. Torbert is reading the Bible and in front of her is the Drum (presented by Mr. Lewis Parkhurst)

EXHIBIT IN TOWER ROOM Old Indian Books will be on display here the week of the Cornell game

Library Assistant