Dartmouth was founded as an Indian college, but in 200 years only a dozen Indians graduated. But the Native American Program, started in the early seventies, now counts about 200 Native American alumni, according to the Admissions Office. This semester alone, 43 American Indians. Hawaiians, and Alaskan natives are enrolled in the program.

But it is the profile of an Indian, complete with feather, gold earring and big nose, which has served as an unofficial mascot for two decades, that is the center of attention. In 1974, Native Americans at Dartmouth asked for the abolition of the Indian mascot, and the administration agreed to a change. But ever since, with the football season and the beginnings of the right wing student-run Dartmouth Review fall term turns into the Indian wars. Fraternities, the Review and the football team--to the great displeasure of the athletic director--have attacked "liberals" who support the 1974 decision for destroying school morale.

This summer, the controversial Review sent 250 letters to Indian chiefs across the nation asking if they approved of Dartmouth's symbol, without including a picture. They received 150 answers, of which JI were negative, 132 were positive, and 15 declined to answer, says the Review's Executive Director Peter L. Arnold.

Colleen K. Larimore, president of Native Americans at Dartmouth termed the campaign "horrible." She says human beings should not be used as symbols and that you cannot stereotype a whole people in a picture. The likeness is that of a Mohawk Indian, who are not native to New Hampshire, she adds.

Dartmouth Indians have also criticized the continued use of the school's Indian imitation war chant that goes "Wahoo-Wah."

For Indians at Harvard, there is little of the turmoil that exists in New Hampshire. But each of the 18 students here brings interesting and important experiences that are surprisingly representative of Indians nationwide.

Yvette D. Roubideaux '85 is the daughter of the first Indian to become a lawyer in the state of South Dakota, and graduated at the top of her class as the only minority in her school. In Roubideaux's town of Rapids City, South Dakota, all the Indians lived on the "bad" side of town. She lived and went to school on the "good" side. "People at home don't tell Polish jokes, they tell Indian jokes," she says. She heard them all the time, because nobody could believe that she could be both Indian and intelligent. "Oh, but I don't mean you," they all said. But she was relieved when she came to the East and people did not know any Native Americans.

Galen F. Gawboy '85 says that he built his life around sports because he got tired of being beat up for being a half-breed. The bigger he grew, the more he was left alone, he adds. His father is a Chippewa and his mother is of Finnish and German origin. The whites considered him a second-class citizen and the Indian children fought with him because it was better than fighting among themselves, he says. "There is so much resentment on a reservation I understand why they did it," he adds. "I resent whites myself.

Tsosie, part Navajo, part Mojave, comes from Colorado River Reservation, Arizona. He is one of the two non-urban residents of his group here. He left his hometown to attend a private school in Chicago, while he supported himself. A Columbia recruiter convinced him to apply to Eastern colleges. He had never heard of Harvard before. In his small town of Parker, "counselors discourage you from applying to college," he says, "and Anglos tell you you're stupid." He adds that the Klu Klux Klan counts 200 members in his town. Now, whites at home hate him even more, because no one in town has ever been to Harvard, he says. And stereotypes stick: he is called "Mr. Harvard Accent."

The attitude of whites is more subtle than just open prejudice, say Tsosie and Fines. Sometimes, they say, a person will smile broadly and exclaim: "I have some Indian blood! Some very far ancestor of mine married an Indian princess." They call it the "Pocahontas' syndrome."

Another group of liberals is what Indian students jokingly call the "wannabee" tribe (translate: the Want-to-be Indians), who flock to reservations carrying the good word of education and health care. Of course they are appreciated, and Tsosie says his education started with them; but their outsider, holier-than-thou attitude is hard to stomach, Tsosie says.

For Harvard's Indian students, college means escape from the backwaters of the reservation. Tsosie, Fines Roubideaux, and Gawboy stress that their studies mean freedom from oppression and stereotypes. Tsosie says that of the 120 Indians who graduated from eight grade in his town, only eight made it through High School, and two got into college. He is the only one who will graduate.

Both Fines and Tsosie agree that coming to college is to "go capitalist." They say they have no qualms about using the whiteman's way. "We are not assimilative, we are adapting," says Tsosie Gawboy goes even further: "It's easier to destroy something from within than from without "You're out for yourself first," adds Fines.

But many agree that educated American Indians want to help their own, and will go back to the reservation at some point in their lives. Roubideaux, a pre-med is especially conscious of the health problems on reservations and in the poor section of her hometown.

The reservation conveys a loaded meaning for Native Americans Gawboy says that shortly after his birth his family moved off Boise Fort Reservation. Minn, "Anything that kept me off the reservation was good," he says. Roubideaux says that the horrible conditions on reservations are shocking and sad. The poor economy, the alcoholism, the heavy polities between Indians and whites, the unfair legal sentences, the police treatment, she says, make it unbelievable for some one who has not seen it. "There is such a sense of loss of culture," she adds. "It's difficult to keep tradition when it means being so poor."

Indians at college are not totally accepted in either world, and are stuck in a limbo, says Tsosie. To break away from stereotypes is a tough job, they say, and, for that reason, can count only on their own strengths.

But perhaps history could help them out. Harvard received a grant from a charitable organization in 1654 to build an Indian College. When it was torn down--in 1693, the bricks served to build the cellars of Stoughton hall, at the express condition that if any Indian showed up, he would be provided "lodging rent-free" in the hall.

The agreement still was being observed in 1939, when the Boston Herald reported on the rent-free deal