Students Create a Wigwam in Yard

In honor of the 360th anniversary of the Harvard Charter of 1650, the Native Americans at Harvard College celebrated the completion of an Indian hut at a ceremony in Harvard Yard yesterday.

Student members and other local Native Americans started building the wetu, or Indian hut, on Monday. They worked daily from 7:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. until the wetu’s completion on Wednesday afternoon.

The Charter, which was signed in 1650, dedicates Harvard College “to the education of English & Indian youth of this Country in knowledge.”

The Native Americans at Harvard College chose to build the wetu outside Matthews Hall because recent archeological digs have pinpointed it as the site of the Harvard Indian College.

The wetu, which is also known as a wigwam, is the historical home of the Wampanoag Indians who are native to Massachusetts. According to a sign in front of the structure, a wetu is "similar to and sometimes referred to in some northeastern communities as a wigwam."

Tiffany L. Smalley ’11, the president of Native Americans at Harvard College, said that the group hopes to educate students and faculty about the history of Harvard’s interactions with Native American culture.

“We hope to perpetuate the cultural exchange,” she said.

William L. Fash, the director of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, expressed similar sentiments.

“I hope this will allow students to reflect on the fact that this is the type of architecture that used to be here, and that there were people here thousands of years before there was ever a Harvard,” he said.

At the ceremony, which drew around 100 attendees, professors and student members of the Native Americans at Harvard College spoke about the project and the history of Native Americans at Harvard.

“Thank you for allowing us to continue an honored tradition within these ivy walls,” said Kelsey T. Leonard ’10 in an invocation speech.

Assistant Professor of History and Literature Lisa T. Brooks said in an interview that when the first Wampanoags learned to be scholars of literature and religion, the notion of exchange helped guide their education.

“I think that there could be nothing more important here than being engaged in that kind of exchange with each other—an exchange of understanding of the different places that we come from,” she said.