Lies Hunt In Packs

 The word GREED is printed in bold black letters down the golden spine and all over the golden cover of this stunning little square book. Inside, the pages are filled with lithographs made by Claire Van Vliet and printed by Eystein Hance-Olsen at SKHS in Oslo on Zerkall Butten paper. Published by the Janus Press in Vermont in 2013, this handsome volume is one of many that belong to Rauner Library's Presses collection. The collection itself is truly amazing, spanning nearly the entire history of printing in the West, from the Aldine Press in the late 1400s to artists' books printed this very year.


Van Vliet's book is an artistically powerful tour de force that decries the sort of greed and corruption that caused the Great Recession. The book contains four lithograph portraits, each representing a group of people intertwined with power, wealth, and exploitation: Propagandists, Lobbyists, Bankers, and Joe Public. On the facing page, various adages and details outline the vices that have perpetuated the suffering of the 99%. Some of the quotations that seem especially relevant to our current political situation are found on the page for Propagandists: "A lie said often enough becomes truth" and "Lies hunt in packs" are particularly apropos.

To look at Greed, come to Special Collections and ask to see Presses J268vagr.

Portable Fuchs

In 1542, Leonhard Fuchs published his great herbal. We have a copy of that first edition. It is a beast of a folio, richly illustrated and dense with text made for serious study. But it couldn't easily be carried into the field for easy reference, so seven years later, an octavo edition was printed in Lyon for portability.

We were just able to acquire a copy with hand-colored images throughout: De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (Lyon, 1549). One of the reasons we love this little edition is that it provides a wonderful contrast with the original edition in the classroom. Students can immediately see how form and function interact in a printed book.

As an aside, Fuchs is always fun to use because his herbal was placed on the index of forbidden books by the Catholic church--not because it contains any heresy, but because Fuchs had joined the Protestant Reformation.

To see the first edition, ask for Rare QK41.F7 1542. For the colored edition, request Rare QK41 .F7 1549.

Room for a Few Girls: Co-Education in the Dartmouth Outing Club

In 1971, the issue of coeducation that was sweeping the college at large came to the Dartmouth Outing Club. Each campus organization was to inform the College of how coeducation would affect their operations and, as the largest and oldest outing club in the country, the DOC's operations were many. In my research on inclusion and diversity in the Dartmouth Outing Club, I've gathered that while organizational structure has been relatively incorporative, the traditional outdoorsmen culture of the DOC pervaded the club and hindered its ability to integrate women.

Even when the club did make strides in the years immediately preceding co-education, as in the all-female transfer student outdoor orientation trips that occurred summer of 1971, the cultural reality of the DOC undermined efforts. For the transfer student trips, there were only male leaders. The women were also reported to have been given lots of special attention at the lodge by the male crew. In his report as Lodge Manager for summer 1971, Jeff Stimson recommends future lodge managers "invite some girls up for the crew to enjoy the night before [the] trip begins" in order to keep spirits high. Undue attention to women, the lack of female leaders, and the clear sexual connotations that women had for the highest authority in the lodge shows that even when women were given the opportunity to get outside, it was not in the same manner as their male classmates. The DOC was at that time one of the more conservative organizations on campus, and its members were reluctant to change.

Change did come as women matriculated to the college as Dartmouth students in the fall of 1972.

Swiftly, the DOC began integrating. When elections were held for the 1974-75 academic year, Elise Erler '76 was selected as DOC vice president and became the first woman to serve on directorate. She is pictured on top of the rest of the all-male directorate in a human pyramid, clearly in the fold of the social dynamics of DOC leadership. However, despite the progress that women in leadership positions undoubtedly shows, a look at the meeting minutes for the hiking sub-club Cabin and Trail divulges a chauvinistic culture. John Blair Wood '73 included in the minutes from September 22, 1971 a rhyming poem referring to female genitalia. The poem, addressed to a 'Janet', is shown reproduced here on Dartmouth stationary and reads "I might be a ship/in your clit/moored. and under full steam/I'd fill you with cream." The poem was incorporated into the official club minutes, indicating it was read out loud during a CnT meeting. Offensive and brazen, the poem demonstrates a club willing to tolerate––and even laud––sexism. Wood, the author, would move on from being CnT secretary to Chair to eventually president of the DOC. Even when the club made large steps forward, the culture had a while to go in terms of respecting and appreciating women.

In the time after co-education, the DOC sought ways to include women into the fold of activities. Efforts manifested in first year trips, as Directors sought to explicitly recruit women leaders. In 1982, "An Introduction to the Dartmouth Outing Club" featured many women, even female members of the woodsman’s team, thereby undermining original claims in co-education reports that women would serve a merely decorative function in the outdoors. Later on in the 90s, the group "Women in the Wilderness" was formed to increase access to the outdoors in a female dominated space.

While we still have much work to do to ensure women are on equal footing with men outside (and inside for that matter), I am grateful to the women and administrators who came before me and made great efforts so that I might feel comfortable getting outside with the DOC. Their emotional endurance has made it possible for me to go hiking each weekend and feel like a full member of the social and cultural folds of the DOC.

In his thoughts on how co-education would affect the DOC, Joseph Schwartzman '70 wrote: "The Dartmouth out of doors is a big enough place, and I am sure we can easily find room for a few girls." While the DOC did find room for the girls, it is more often true that Dartmouth women made spaces for themselves in the outing club.

And I am so glad that they did.

To see Jeff Stimson's Summer 1971 Lodge Report, ask for the Dartmouth Outing Club records (DO-1), Box 6182, Folder 18. To see the photo with Elise Erler '76, ask for the Outing Club Officers photo file. To read the Schwartzman letter, ask for the Dartmouth Outing Club records (DO-1), Box 6170, Folder 8.

Posted for Mia Nelson ’22, recipient of a Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship for the 2019 Fall term. The Historical Accountability Student Research Program provides funding for Dartmouth students to conduct research with primary sources on a topic related to issues of inclusivity and diversity in the college's past. For more information, visit the program's website.

Confederate Chemicograph Backs

On the eve of the American Civil War's commencement, the newly formed Confederacy rushed to generate their own currency. The first bills were circulated in April 1861, just days before Fort Sumter was bombarded in South Carolina's Charleston Bay. In many ways Confederate dollars were ahead of their time. Instead of being backed by hard assets like gold or silver, the currency were essentially bills of credit, and promised to repay their owner the actual dollar value once the war had concluded and the Confederacy was victorious in its repulsion of the Union troops. After Gettysburg, confidence waned and inflation skyrocketed.

Another challenge besides inflation for the Confederate Treasury was a dearth of highly skilled engravers and printers in the South, as well as limited access to bank plates. As a result, many of the
bills had images that had been lifted from the original plates or notes that were available to the printers. In all, there were seven series of banknotes issued by the Confederacy between 1861 and 1864, the last one authorized by an act passed in February of 1864. For this last round of printing, the Confederates commissioned plates from an English engraver, S. Straker and Sons; the plates were called "Chemicograph backs" in reference to Straker's patented electrotyping process.

Most of these plates never made it to the South, mostly likely lost at sea because of Union blockades. However, a small number survived. One set of surviving plates made their way into the hands of Philip Hartley Chase 1907, who donated them to the Smithsonian. Before doing so, he had a limited number of sets of prints struck from those plates. Chase then arranged to sell those prints in collectible packets, with the proceeds going to Dartmouth College. He eventually gave the Library a small set of the printed backs, along with other printed materials explaining their provenance.

To look through the various denomination for yourself, come to Special Collections and ask to see the "Chemicograph Backs and Confederate Treasury Notes" collection (MS-493).

The Poetry of Mary Tallmountain

This Monday is Indigenous Peoples' Day here in the United States, a day that celebrates and honors Native American peoples, their histories, and their cultures. The holiday originally began in South Dakota thirty years ago this October and has been formally adopted by numerous towns and cities across the nation since then. This year, we're celebrating by promoting our issues of a South Dakota publication, The Blue Cloud Quarterly, that almost exclusively features poetry by Native American authors. The Blue Cloud Quarterly was published by the Benedictine Missionaries at Blue Cloud Abbey in Marvin, South Dakota, for over thirty years and primarily consists of poetry chapbooks by Native American authors. In fact, it was the first publication of its kind to do so, and at least one scholar has posited that the Quarterly had a significant influence on the resurgence of Native American literary production during the latter half of the 20th century.

Here at Rauner, we have a run of issues from 1977 through the final issue in 1988. These chapbooks are an exciting opportunity to hear the indigenous people of North America speak about their experiences in their own words. One such poet was Mary Tallmountain, whose poetry fills the final issue of the Quarterly. She was born in Nulato, Alaska, in 1918, to the Athabascan tribe. At the age of six, Tallmountain was separated from her family and her people and taken to Oregon by an adoptive white family, where she was abused and molested by the head of the household and forbidden from speaking her own language. As an adult, she began writing with a passion and published numerous works that dealt with the themes of Native and Christian spirituality and the interconnectedness of nature.

Tallmountain died in 1994, but not before founding the Tenderloin Women Writers Workshop in 1987 that supported local women in their attempts to express themselves through the written word. To read some of Mary's words, and learn more about her experiences and those of many other Native American poets, come to Rauner and ask to see Rare PS509 .I5 B59.

Butchering a Tree

We just picked up a nice guide for timber merchants from 1823. It contains everything you need to know to go into the timber business--the qualities of different types of wood; how much lumber of different types you can expect to get out of a tree of a certain diameter; a history of the use of wood in building; and a section on the "principle pieces of timber used to build a seventy-four gun ship of the line."

But what struck us most about the book was the hand-colored lithographs illustrating the cuts you can get from a tree. They look like those butchering guides you see for hogs and cattle, but in this case the tenderloin is the "keel piece."

To see the Timber Merchant's Guide, ask for Rare SD557.G9 1823.

Still in the News

Originally published in the New York Packet in March of 1788, Alexander Hamilton's Federalist 65 and 66 were compiled along with the rest of the "Federalist Papers" in April and May of that year and published in two volumes by J. and A. McLean as The Federalist: A Collection of Essays in Favour of the New Constitution. The McLeans only printed 500 copies, but even that proved to be far too many for the market. Today, it is one of the most sought after first editions in American political history because it so clearly lays out the original intent of the framers of the Constitution.

The world is paying particularly close attention to Federalist 65 and 66 right now because that is where Hamilton defined the power of the Senate in matters of impeachment. You can come in and see his original words in their first compiled form by asking for McGregor 56.