The Mystery of the Wah Hoo Wah
THE effectiveness of the Wah HooWah is, I trust, no mystery; John King Lord, 1868, puts it well when he speaks of the Wah Hoo Wah as combining "a rare degree of sentiment and sound.... The true excellence of an effective cry, a rhythmic cadence." Professor Lord adds: "When properly given with slow and sonorous utterance it will in the mouths of a hundred men overpower any other known cry given by twice as many." Only the Rebel Yell seems to have a comparable reputation.
Nor is the usual account of the invention of the Wah Hoo Wah at all mysterious. This is best given by Henry Melville '79 in a letter to Harold G. Rugg '06, ascribing the idea to Daniel A. Rollins '79: "Early in the fall term of '78, Rollins ... called a mass meeting in the old chapel, which was attended by practically the entire student body, and there made a tremendously effective speech on the subject of the desirability of a distinctive yell. A committee of five was then and there appointed. ... Rollins reported to another mass meeting ... a few days later and Wah-hoo-wah was adopted with great enthusiasm." This account is corroborated in substance by letters from Russell A. Wentworth '79, Thomas W. Proctor '79, and others in the Archives of Baker Library.
Louis E. Blair '79, however, believed that John C. Proctor, 1864, was primarily responsible for the Wah Hoo Wah: "Did you ever hear that Professor Proctor, our Greek Professor, collaborated with Dan Rollins in developing the College yell and that it was primarily Prof. Proctor's idea to inject the Indian flavor into it?" Whether the actual originator was student or teacher, the origin of the Wah Hoo Wah seems thus far to be without mystery. The present writer inclines to the belief that the Wah Hoo Wah, like many enduring Dartouth achievements, elicited both faculty and student efforts, combined in such a confusing manner that no analysis can ever tell which is which.
The mystery of the Wah Hoo Wah begins when we try to find out where the words came from. The question is well put by G.R. Carpenter '10, quoted by Jack Childs '10 in Class Notes: "Where did the war-whoop writer get his inspiration? How come he hit on wah-hoo-wah rather than rah-rah? In a recent snoop through a Connecticut Valley newspaper file of 1839 I stumbled over a display-ad heAded WAAHOO, an Indian medicine for the cure of consumption, coughs, colds, etc.... You don't suppose, do you, that in our yelling years we were really advertising a patent medicine?" This medical theory of the genesis of Wah Hoo Wah calls to mind O. Henry's story "Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet" in which Jeff says, "I struck Fisher Hill, Arkansas, in a buckskin suit, moccasins, long hair and a thirty-carat diamond ring. ... I was Dr. Waugh-hoo the celebrated Indian medicine man...."
Byron Forbush '88 writes in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE: "Wah-hoo-wah is clearly the Indian wahoo, the Indian arrow tree, or the spindle tree, as it is sometimes called...." It may be added, in connection with this botanical theory, that Webster's dictionary says under wahoo: "A celastraceous shrub ... called burning bush; also the cork elm, the cascara buckthorn, the basswood...." The same source defines wahoo as a "dark blue scomdroid Fish of Florida and the West Indies (Aconthocybium solandri)."
A geographical derivation of the WahHoo Wah is preferred by Russell A. Wentworth '79 in his letter quoted by Henry Melville '79: "I too attended the Yell Committee.... I wanted something more inspiring than an echo from the Indians in Nebraska and the Wahoo country west of Omaha. It was from this section that I returned to Hanover in the fall of '77. Who knows but what I gave Dan his first thought?" The town of Wahoo still exists in Nebraska, by the way.
And, of course, to Richard Hovey '85 in his Eleazar Wheelock - "The big chief who met him was the sachem of the wahhoo-wahs."
Thus it has been conjectured that the Wah Hoo Wah might be derived from the name of a patent medicine, any one of several trees or shubs, a tropical fish, a small town in Nebraska, or an otherwise unrecorded tribe of Indians resident about 1769 near Hanover, New Hampshire. But there is another theory which the present writer prefers.
Horace K. Foster '79 writes: "A few weeks ago ... I read in a book entitled Inthe White Mountains a history of the war between the French and English colonists. This war involved the Pennacooks and such noted warriors as Paugus and 'Wahowah.' 'Wahowah' was described as an india rubber devil, capable of mischief of every description, one who could not be killed, a tiger, one of the most bloody of his age."
This impression of the Indian chief led me to follow his trail. I came upon him in Cotton Mather's Decennium Luctuosum, an appendix to the seventh book of his Magnolia Christi Americana, where he is spelled Wohawa and described as "that memorable tygre ... that hellish fellow, once the servant of a Christion master in Boston ... that hideous loupgarou." Evidently the worthy divine was impressed by the personality of Wah Hoo Wah. an enthusiasm which is the only one I share with him.
From Cotton Mather on the trail becomes mysteriously obscure, but one learns that Wah Hoo Wah's English name was Hope Hood, sometimes spelled Hoophood, and that Hope Hood's Point was named for him. On March 18, 1690 he led a band of Indians from Trois Rivièrses in a disastrous attack on Salmon Falls. He was also present at the Dover massacre. He was chief "of the lands from Exeter to Salmon Falls." He with his father Robin Hood signed a deed of land at "Souamanagonak." He led the attack on "Newichawannick." These and other similar details are all that one learns about Wah Hoo Wah until the accounts of his death.
At this point the mystery of Wah Hoo Wah, I believe, becomes clearer. John Scales in his History of Strafford County "The tradition is that he was killed in 1690 and buried on the point of land wihich bears and will forever bear his name. No headstone marks the spot where he was buried, but it is affirmed that the groans of the old warrior are still to be heard from time to time.... It is supposed that he died of his wounds received in the fight at Fox Point and his friends brought him across the river and buried him."
I recently visited Fox Point in the town of Newington and found that the spot which seems the most likely site for the Fox Point battle is owned by Bill Mott '16. As for Hope Hood's Point, where WahHoo Wah is said to be buried, I note in Mary P. Thompson's Landmarks of Anient Dover that it is on the "western shore f Back River above the three creeks." She says further: "It is a spot as wild and solitary as it was 200 years ago, covered with thickets where the wild grape runs from tree to tree and where, it is affirmed, the groans of the Indian warrior are still to be heard among the moaning branches." I recently found a spot like this off the Back River road in Durham, but heard no groans.
Whether Mr. Rollins or Professor Proctor read these picturesque stories or not, I have no knowledge. But it is clear that there were countless books in which they might have read about Wah Hoo Wah. Perhaps the best guess as to the probable source of their idea would be Belknap's History of New Hampshire, which seems to have had considerable vogue in their era. At all events, Wah Hoo Wah was well enough known then to make him the most attractive suggestion I can offer about the origin of the Dartmouth cheer.
This is as far as I have gone at present with the mystery of the Wah Hoo Wah. I nave been helped in my search by the ladies in the Archives Department of Baker library, in the Dover Public Library, and the New Hampshire Historical Society, all of whom have been patient and kind to me. But the motivation for my search comes from my seven-year-old grandson, John, who is about as bloodthirsty a guy to hunt Indians with as anyone I have met for some years.
(This article is re-printed from theNovember 1965 issue of the Alumni Magazine. The author, Professor Emeritus of Latin and Greek, died on July 14, 1973.)
The likely progenitors of Wah Hoo Wah: Daniel A. Rollins '79 (above) and Professor John C. Proctor '64 (below). Didthey know about "that memorable tygre... that hellish fellow ... that hideous Loupgarou" of two centuries earlier?
The likely progenitors of Wah Hoo Wah: Daniel A. Rollins '79 (above) and Professor John C. Proctor '64 (below). Didthey know about "that memorable tygre... that hellish fellow ... that hideous Loupgarou" of two centuries earlier?
