For some, the fact that the word hamster is an anagram of Amherst made up their minds. var currentLocation = window.location; "Lord Jeff" refers to Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the commander of British forces . The documents provided here are made available to set the record straight. Native American mascots have been under pressure for years. Or, rather, the student in a floppy-antlered moose costume, whose presence at last weekends game was a controversial rebuke to Amherst Colleges longtime unofficial mascot, Lord Jeff or Lord Jeffery Amherst, the 18th-century military commander whom this photogenic college town is named for. Amherst's venom was strictly reserved for Indians. What is beyond dispute is that the symbolic figure of Lord Jeff has become a source of division among us today, Murphy wrote. Amherst football player Isaiah Holloway Jr., a junior, had no qualms about talking. Its monumental. Late last week, as the trustees were convening, the debate over the mascot was a hot topic on the picturesque campus. Amherst's correspondence during this time includes many letters on routine matters, such as officers who are sick or want to be relieved of duty; accounts of provisions on hand, costs for supplies, number of people garrisoned; negotiations with provincial governors (the army is upset with the Pennsylvania assembly, for example, for refusing to draft men for service); and so on. "The fact that a single wartime outbreak could prompt two independent plans of contagion suggests that the Fort Pitt incident may not have been an anomaly," she wrote. Were supposed to be the elite institution thats ahead of the curve, Ms. Tatum said later, and right now were behind it., Mr. Woolverton seemed unconvinced as he walked away. As the student body at Amherst diversifies, we need a mascot that all students can feel comfortable with, Ben Walker, a senior here, said from inside the costume as he used his hoof to support its heavy head. I think overall its a good idea, he said as he grabbed his morning cup at Share Coffee, around the corner from Stamell String Instruments, his music store. In the summer of 1763, Amherst wrote in a letter to a colonel, "Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? They were apparently his "worthy" enemy. The sharpest contrast with letters about Indians is provided by letters regarding the other enemy, the French. The full list of semifinalists can be viewed on Amhersts website. But GIVE US OUR ONLY JEFFREY Sam Hudzik has overseen local news coverage on New England Public Media since 2013. Debates about Lord Jeffs suitability as a mascot tend to focus on this incident. A new Frost Library online resource offers access to a vast array of material on Lord Jeffery Amherst, including original letters in the College archives, . The mammoth will be the schools official mascot, a distinction that Lord Jeff never held, and one that will allow it to be featured on sports garb and promotional materials. Amherst is best known as the architect of Britains successful campaign to conquer the territory of New France during the Seven Years War. The post explore[s] how Lord Jeffery Amherst, one time Governor-General of British North America, became Lord Jeff, the mascot of a small liberal arts college in bucolic Western Mass, a researchtopicthat has become increasingly relevantas debate continues about theappropriateness of the Lord Jeff mascot. In brief interviews, several students expressed support for ditching Lord Jeff. AMHERST, Mass. "Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. They were the ones who needed to figure it out., Don Courtemanche, executive director of the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce, agreed that the issue of the mascot has always been a student issue., It really boils down to the simple argument that mascots are meant to unite, not tear apart, he said. Lord Jeffrey Mammoth was a regal Ice Age King The graduate continued, Hamsters are small, but mighty. Today, a new Amherst College mascot wandered right onto the quad. Go to a discussion of smallpox and Indians archived from the H-WEST discussion list, H-NET Online (Humanities and Social Sciences Net) Logs Search, Go to selections from Journal of William Trent, 1763, Donald A. Henderson, et al., "Smallpox as a Biological Weapon: Medical and Public Health Management,", Bergman, Abraham B., et al. In a letter dated 26 July 1763, Bouquet acknowledges Amherst's approval and writes, "all your Directions will be observed.". 1552-1580: A.2. And the colleges president, Biddy Martin, said in a statement that the board of trustees would take up the question of Lord Jeff no later than January. 8-34: Author of this site is Peter d'Errico 2001, 2020Copyright permission is granted for educational use, provided that credit is given to the site author and the URL is included. The images are of key excerpts from the letters. Courtesy of Robert Howard Are you going to take him off Mount Rushmore?. Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com. Amherst College, the perennially top-ranked liberal arts college in Massachusetts, announced this week that its longtime unofficial mascot, Lord Jeffery Amherst. We dont as students have the ability to change our school name or our town name to eradicate the injustice that was inflicted by Lord Jeff, said Gabriela Smith-Rosario, a sophomore. Moon, Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. Amherst College will always be the name of the school.". hide caption. The mascot is kind of stuck in those times, and hasnt evolved with the student body, said Virginia Hassell, a senior who is organizing the effort to make a change. Among the students demands was the removal of Lord Jeff as the schools mascot. The college, whose Beneski Museum of Natural History has kept a skeleton of a Columbian mammoth since 1925, had decided more than a year ago to do away with its unofficial mascot, Lord Jeff. These stories are reported, for example, in Carl Waldman's Atlas of the North American Indian [NY: Facts on File, 1985]. The poets or fighting poets received 42 votes, with students and alumni saying it honors both Emily Dickinson, who famously lived in Amherst, and Robert Frost, who taught at Amherst College, along with other local poets. There is some dispute about the spelling of Amherst's first name. Follow him on Twitter @globepete. In March 2013,Mike Kelly, director of the Amherst College Archives and Special Collectionspublished a piece about Lord Jeff on the Archives blogThe Consecrated Eminence. - The Washington Post", FROM MURDEROUS PLATES TO CENTER FOR NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES: NATIVE AMERICANS AND AMHERST COLLEGE, Colonel Henry Bouquet to General Amherst, dated 13 July 1763, 26 July 1763, Bouquet acknowledges Amherst's approval, Amherst to Sir William Johnson, Superintendent of the Northern Indian Department, 9 July, Amherst to George Croghan, Deputy Agent for Indian Affairs, 7 August. Daily Hampshire Gazette Contests & Promotions, Daily Hampshire Gazette Evening Top Reads, Daily Hampshire Gazette Weekly Top Stories, Daily Hampshire Gazette Dining & Entertainment, the removal of the controversial Lord Jeff, the colleges mascot committee received more than 2,000 suggestions, a student demonstration for increased equity in the school, historical evidence that Lord Jeffery Amherst had advocated the use of germ warfare to wipe out Native American tribes, Support the "A Political History of the Indian Health Service.". Across the field, at a table covered in candy and holding a basket of tiny moose statues, more students were trying to make the case for the moose or anything other than Lord Jeff to one alum at a time. Indians were angered by Amherst's refusal to continue the French practice of providing supplies in exchange for Indian friendship and assistance, and by a generally imperious British attitude toward Indians and Indian land. It was on a coffeeshop, a dry cleaner, a bookstore and the tiny, historic liberal arts college that dominates one side of town. All Rights Reserved. Web, archive.org. "I'm totally in . The selection board said people who suggested mammoths noted they are ''impressive,'' ''stupendous and monumental,'' and ''near mythic.''. ", In a later letter, Amherst writes: "You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race.". 22 (June 9, 1999). The selection replaces Lord Jeff -- which the school's board banished from campus 14 months ago. "If it is hurting people, I think it should be removed.". "Hundreds of students calling themselves the Amherst Uprising staged a sit-in at the library, presenting the administration with a list of demands one of which was formally cutting ties with Lord Jeff, who was criticized as an inappropriate symbol and offensive to many members of the student body.". For he was a pachyderm loyal and beau The mascot is a caricature of Lord Jeffery Amherst, an English general who proposed giving blankets from smallpox patients to Native Americans. He won victories against the French to acquire Canada for England and helped make England the world's chief colonizer at the conclusion of the Seven Years War among the colonial powers (1756-1763). Courtesy of. The General's own letters sustain the stories. He manages a team of about a dozen full- and part-time reporters and hosts. This entry was posted on April 5, 2017 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Language and animals, Mammoths, Signs and symbols. The trustees said they considered the views of alumni, students, and faculty, most of whom expressed unfavorable views of the Lord Jeff symbol. That was something of an improvement over last year, the first time a moose appeared at homecoming, when a couple of spectators punched the costume while Mr. Walker was wearing it. University of Massachusetts/Amherst, Department of Legal Studies, n.d. Oh Jeffrey, brave Jeffrey The Massachusetts school Monday announced that its athletic teams will be known as the Mammoths after a yearlong selection process and vote that involved thousands of alumni, students and faculty. Lord Jeffrey Amherst was a British general who advocated for biological warfare against Native Americans. Text files of the excerpts are also provided. It's a reference to a skeleton of a Columbian Mammoth on display in the Amherst College museum of natural history. He won victories against the French to acquire Canada for England and helped make England the world's chief colonizer at the conclusion of the Seven Years War among the colonial powers (1756-1763). Im proud of the students for thinking of this, Pofcher said. In December, Harvard announced it would stop using the term. The project was designed to preserve British historical documents from possible war damage. Under his command, British forces captured the cities of Louisbourg, Quebec City and Montreal, as well as several major fortresses. By Nick Anderson January 26, 2016 at 5:54 p.m. EST (Adam Grim/Courtesy of Amherst College) Gift. Selected excerpts from the book are presented on a separate page. AMHERST -- Two years after dropping Lord Jeffery Amherst as its unofficial mascot, Amherst College is changing the name of the Lord Jeffery Inn. Are you going to take him off Mount Rushmore?" The moose mascot at Amherst College's homecoming game. 281 No. It seems like providence.. Following Tuesday's decision, the board of trustees said "Amherst College finds itself in a position where a mascot which, when you think about it, has only one real job, which is to unify is driving people apart because of what it symbolizes to many in our community." Til the ice consumes Pangea no more. Hamsters! Are they going to change the name of the school, the town? asked Robert Lucido, a 2015 graduate who is now a baseball player in the Toronto Blue Jays organization. Frank Prentice Rand, in his book, The Village of Amherst: A Landmark of Light [Amherst, MA: Amherst Historical Society, 1958], says that at the time of the naming, Amherst was "the most glamorous military hero in the New World. That name had historical connotations that drew increasing concern around campus. All in all, the letters provided here remove all doubt about the validity of the stories about Lord Jeff and germ warfare. There are almost three hundred reels of microfilm on Amherst alone. We mapped it out for you. Some students, however, support keeping the current unofficial mascot in place. But he said he is in favor of changing the mascot. Nonetheless, the images obtained by scanning the copies are sufficiently clear for online viewing. B. Helen Jaskoski, "'A Terrible Sickness Among Them': Smallpox Stories of the Frontier," in Helen Jaskoski, ed., Early Native American Writing: New Critical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 136-157: An excerpt from Blackbird's History, with Jaskoski's introduction and commentary, are presented on a separate page. It has its own identity, and for many people here, its just home.. There is no longer a Lord Jeff mascot who shows up to games. The vanquished finalists were the Fighting Poets, Purple and White, Valley Hawks, and Wolves. Now for the parades survival he would fight with all his might Lord Jeffery Amherst, who commanded British forces in North America during the French and Indian War, supported giving smallpox-contaminated blankets to Indians, historians say. Now the Mascot . The college, whose Beneski Museum of Natural History Hes a MAMMOTH and the best //var LBtag_id = document.getElementById('buylinkLBAmherstHamsters-hg-011016,ph1'); has kept a skeleton of a Columbian mammoth since 1925, had decided more than a year ago to do away with its unofficial mascot, Lord Jeff. The nominations came from 1,590 people, and 588 of the ideas were unique. "To those who argue that stepping back from Lord Jeff as an unofficial mascot takes us down some sort of slippery slope that calls into question the name of the town or the college,'' they said, "the board would respond that you can find slippery slopes anywhere you look. It is curious that the specific plans to spread smallpox were relegated to postscripts. The Amherst homecoming game had all the trappings of a classic day at this prestigious liberal arts college: a home team victory, cheering alumni and the scent of charred burgers in the air as sienna leaves flitted toward the ground. "That the attempt was made was very clear," she said in an interview. None of these other letters show a deranged mind or an obsession with cruelty. Last fall, the Yale campus was rocked with marches, teach-ins and tense campus confrontations as students described racial inequities at Yale and made a number of demands of the administration, including a call for a change in the name of Calhoun College, a residence hall at Yale named for one of slaverys most ardent defenders, John C. Calhoun. Mammoths was one of five mascot finalists put to a vote, with 9,295 students, alumni, faculty and staff participating, according to the college. Its not the greatest choice but unlike Ephs it doesnt suck Amherst College was later named after the town. While a mascot is very different from a residential college name, Gau said, I think it can provide some more momentum toward the renaming of Calhoun. See more. That said, they can bare their sharp little teeth and inspire fear in the hands of the most powerful. . [Pen Pictures of Early Western Pennsylvania, John W. Harpster, ed. if (photocredit.indexOf(sellablestring) > -1 || photocredit.indexOf(sellablestring2) > -1 || photocredit.indexOf(sellablestring3) > -1 || photocredit.indexOf(sellablestring4) > -1) { You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Ultimately its the colleges mascot, not ours. Initially, she said, she saw it as a dumb argument, one that wasnt worth stressing over. The town of Amherst, Massachusetts, was named for Lord Jeff even before he became a Lord. The history of the naming of the town of Amherst, New York, shows a similar idolizing of the general: Despite his fame, Jeffery Amherst's name became tarnished by stories of smallpox-infected blankets used as germ warfare against American Indians. The controversy at Amherst comes amid growing opposition to mascots that many Native Americans find offensive, such as the NFL's Washington Redskins. var sellablestring2 = "STAFF PHOTO"; [J. C. Long, Lord Jeffery Amherst: A Soldier of the King (NY: Macmillan, 1933), p. 187]. Amherst College changed their mascot from the Lord Jeffs (short for Lord Jeffrey Amherst) to the Mammoths. The decision to choose a replacement mascot, if at all, will fall to a joint group of current students and alumni, according to Murphy. A purple-clad poet wielding a giant pen would speak to Amhersts focus on academic excellence. After all, the pen is mightier than the sword., The next tier of choices includes the hawks, which one Amherst College community member described as a swift, noble majestic creature, the mammoth/mastodon, which someone pointed out is in the Beneski Museum, and the purple or purple and white, which another person described as simple, elegant and non-controversial.. My motivation in undertaking this project was to make good on a promise I made to Floyd Red Crow Westerman (Dakota), who asked me to "find the proof" about the smallpox plans to counter the many commentators who denied anything like that had ever happened. Amherst's unofficial mascot, "Lord Jeff," as seen at a game at Williams College's Weston Field in Williamstown, Mass., in 2011. You can listen here to the Amherst College Glee Club singing the story of Lord Jeff. It was they against whom he was looking for "an occasion, to extirpate them root and branch." "Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians?" The vanquished finalists were the Fighting Poets, Purple and White, Valley Hawks, and Wolves. That November, the plot thickened: A black moose statue, about the size of a deer, appeared in the main library, just after Thanksgiving. I dont think the mascot represents what we students or student-athletes represent.. Dave Eisenstadter can be reached at deisen@gazettenet.com. The college, whose Beneski Museum of Natural History has kept a skeleton of a Columbian mammoth since 1925, had decided more than a year ago to do away with its unofficial mascot, Lord Jeff. Meanwhile, Yale is considering changing the name of the residential college named for John C. Calhoun, who made moral arguments in favor of slavery before the Civil War. The more serious smallpox virus, Variola major, is transmitted both by inhalation and by contamination; it is communicable by inhalation for 9-14 days and by contamination for several years in a dried state. Adrien Gau, a junior who was active in the movement on campus last semester, said it was really awesome to hear about the Amherst decision to abolish Lord Jeff. To me, thats what important, not the name of a colleges mascot.. The Columbian mammoth in #1 shares theMammals of the Ice Age space in the Main Hall with an American mastodon (Mammut americanum) and an Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus), the skeleton with the impressive antlers. Mammoths wasn't her first choice, but she likes it. Lord Jeffery Amherst, the colonial-era military commander who gave this town its name, will no longer represent the prestigious liberal arts college here. The fact that our mascot isolates people and makes anyone feel unwelcome is just unacceptable.. Official letters addressed to him from England and the British Army List have it as 'Sir Jeffery Amherst' (never mind that Bouquet solved the problem by addressing him as 'Jeffry'). A moose wandered onto campus a year or so ago, just as the mascot issue was heating up, wrote a 1984 alumnus. /Twas a name known to fame in days of yore. The Board and President Biddy Martin asked the Alumni Executive Committee to convene a larger Mascot Committee to include students, faculty and staff as per the Board's statement. At Harvard University, the law school's seal has come under scrutiny because it includes the coat of arms of a slaveholding family. In December, Harvard announced it would stop using the term "house master" for faculty members who oversee undergraduate residences, an issue that has come up at other schools. The moose has been the leading candidate to replace Lord Jeff as the schools mascot. The process started in January 2016 when school trustees decided the school's unofficial nickname, Lord Jeffs, was inappropriate in part because the 18th century British Gen. Jeffery Amherst . It is said the local inhabitants who formed the town preferred another name, Norwottuck, after the Indians whose land it had been; the colonial governor substituted his choice for theirs. And its been on campus all along. Numerous places and streets are named for him, in both Canada and the United States. Andy Rosen can be reached at andrew.rosen@globe.com. If the mascot must be changed because it is offensive to the Native American community for us to be called the Lord Jeffs, then the name of the college must be changed as well if we are to have any semblance of ideological consistency. Critics of the Lord Jeffery Amherst mascot have proposed a moose as a possible replacement. Since the ways in which the Amherst College communityhas interpreted and depicted the Lord Jeff character reveal larger cultural attitudes about Native people, a contextualized analysis of the mascotallows us to broaden thedebateto include a more nuanced understanding of ourrelationship to colonialism. On his antipathy toward Indians and support for using disease in the fight against them, the historical record is clear. Even the biography by Long has the title of 'Lord Jeffery Amherst,' not 'Jeffrey.'"" Proponents of keeping the mascot "saw his removal as an affront to campus traditions," the Times reports. Hamster and Amherst are anagrams, wrote one alumnus who graduated in 1961. The board initially received hundreds of sometimes whimsical and silly suggestions. The college, whose Beneski Museum of Natural History has kept a skeleton of a Columbian mammoth since 1925, had decided more than a year ago to do away with its unofficial mascot, Lord Jeff.That . It is equally fair to decide that 18th-century standards should not govern a 21st-century choice of symbol.". Ann F. Ramenofsky, Vectors of Death: The Archaeology of European Contact (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), also discusses the question of communicability: Abraham B. Bergman, et al., "A Political History of the Indian Health Service," comments on the birth of the Indian Health Service: E. Wagner Stearn & Allen E. Stearn, The Effect of Smallpox on the Destiny of the Amerindian (Boston: Bruce Humphries (1945)), point out the social-political effects of smallpox: Harold Napoleon, Yuuyaraq: the Way of the Human Being, with commentary, edited by Eric Madsen (Fairbanks, Alaska: University of Alaska, College of Rural Alaska, Center for Cross-Cultural Studies (1991)), states that epidemics caused a form of post-traumatic stress disorder and social collapse: A.1. When a college was founded in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1821, it simply took the name of the town. Our teams represent Amherst, not this man.. In 1761, Amherst used this position of authority toend the tradition of giving gifts to Native allies, againstthe recommendation of Sir William Johnson,British Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times Indeed, some. Amherst College announced Monday that it had selected the mammoth as its new mascot, turning to a signature member of the institutions natural history collection as its new symbol and concluding a lengthy and at times controversial debate over how best to represent the selective liberal arts school. Wondering where your local CT fireworks display is? Prior to Pontiacs Rebellion and at the height of Amhersts notoriety,several geographic locations (far from where he actually lived, served, and fought) were named in his honorAmherst County, Virginia; Amherst, New Hampshire; and of course, Amherst, Massachusetts. Im glad to have this, said Sue Ghosh, a senior environmental studies major and a member of Amhersts womens tennis team. Hamster received 63 votes, the second highest after moose, which received 78 votes. AMHERST, Mass. By. The search for a new mascot followed protests on campus last school year. The college's mascot committee . The microfilm is difficult to read, and paper copies even harder. The Amherst trustees made it clear that the college's name is not in jeopardy. In addition to acknowledging his contributions to the development of biological warfare, conversations about the legacy of Lord Jeffery Amherst should consider his broader role insubjugating Native people and upholding the colonial system. The push to replace Lord Jeff with a new mascot like the moose, a dragon or even a purple squirrel appears to be gaining momentum, as institutions around the country question their ties to historic figures who owned slaves or led Confederate battalions. Im 100 percent sure its weighing on the minds of [the] Yale administration in any case., Katie Warshaw, a senior European studies major at Amherst, said the Lord Jeff decision is in line with the colleges growing diversity and respect for all cultures., Its not only good in getting rid of the name of a person who did terrible things, but it helps represent the true colors of Amherst, she said on the steps of the campuss Robert Frost Library. . Smallpox virus: Lord Jeffery Amherst wanted to spread it with infected blankets Ms Hassell, who has been in talks with college authorities, says she is confident that the mascot will be changed . -- Amherst College trustees have voted to stop using Lord Jeff as the school's unofficial mascot because of its negative historical connotations. Here's more: "It is fair to recognize that historical context may influence, or make us cautious about, judgments concerning Jeffery Amherst the man. Go to index of microfilm images and text files of excerpts. As Lion G. Miles points out, "Amherst always signed as 'Jeff:' so there has been a long-standing controversy as to the correct spelling of his first name. var currentheadline = document.getElementById("headline").innerText; Cullen Murphy, chairman of Amhersts board of trustees, said in a statement that the college has decided to nix Lord Jeff in its official communications, its messaging and its symbolism. That also includes renaming the Lord Jeffery Inn, an iconic hotel on the campus. //LBtag_id.innerHTML = '';
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