Professor Michael Anthony Dorris, the founder and director of the College's Native American Studies program, was found dead on Friday afternoon at the Brick Tower Hotel in Concord in an apparent suicide. He was 51.
Concord police said there are no indications foul play was involved. The exact cause of death was not immediately known.
Acting Provost and Dean of Faculty Jim Wright said the circumstances of the death of the popular professor and author made for "a tragic situation."
Dorris, a professor of Native American Studies and anthropology, was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the NAS 25th anniversary conference last Thursday until the speech was canceled a few days before.
NAS Professor Colin Calloway said Dorris had been hospitalized from physical exhaustion due to his intense schedule of travel and appearances. The College Office of Public Affairs earlier this month reported Dorris canceled his speech because he was under doctors' orders to rest because of the exhaustion.
Dorris stayed in a Vermont hospital for part of last week.
In a statement released yesterday, College President James Freedman wrote Dorris was "beloved by a generation of Dartmouth students, whose lives were touched with his humanity and idealism."
"He was one of the foremost native writers of our time and first-rate writer [by] any standards," Calloway said.
Wright said Dorris was a man of "many accomplishments" as a teacher, mentor and writer.
A broad group of students "very much looked up to him. They were grateful to him for support and encouragement," Wright said.
Joni White '95 wrote in an electronic-mail message that Dorris was a model for many Dartmouth students.
"He is [what] I have [always] envisioned myself ... to be. He was truly a teacher," she said.
"I feel a strong relation to his aspirations and accomplishments along with a recognition of the loneliness he must have felt despite all his achievement," she said.
Native Americans at Dartmouth member Ty Tengan '97 wrote in an electronic-mail message, "We have all benefited greatly from his sacrifices and his visions."
In 1972, at the age of 25, Dorris joined the College faculty as chair of the Native American Studies program and as an instructor in anthropology.
Wright said Dorris was the "energy and creative genius" behind the start of the NAS program at Dartmouth, one of the first of its kind in the country.
Freedman called the NAS program an "enduring contribution to Dartmouth and to American higher education."
Dorris was promoted to associate professor in 1979 and served as chair of the NAS program until 1984.
He initiated a number of grants to the College, including grants from the Educational Foundation of America and the Union Pacific Foundation and received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1978 and a Woodrow Wilson Faculty Development Fellowship in 1980.
NAS Professor Elaine Jahner said Dorris was "caring, courageous ... [and] utterly committed to building something here."
Dorris, who received his Masters from Yale University in anthropology and history of the theater, also taught in Canada and Australia and was closely associated with groups of Native American background.
In 1985 he was awarded the Indian Achievement Award by the Illinois Indian Council Fire.
Though an anthropologist by trade, Dorris really came into prominence as a writer. He became an adjunct College professor in the mid-1980s in order to further pursue his literary career.
Calloway said Dorris had become a "national literary figure."
Dorris' first novel, "Yellow Raft In Blue Water," was an immediate popular and critical success -- and since its release has sold over 500,000 copies and been translated into 11 languages.
His New York Times bestseller, "The Broken Cord," published two years later, was named the best non-fiction book of 1989 by the National Book Critics Circle. He has also published three award-winning young-adult books.
A New York Times book review said Dorris' writings "touch on the humorous mishaps of parenthood ... explore the history and culture of American Indians and seek to redress the misconceptions and stereotypes that continue to plague them."
His last novel, "Cloud Chamber," co-written with his wife Louise Erdrich, was released by Scribner this winter.
Erdrich, a prominent author known for her works "Love Medicine" and "Tales of Burning Love," met Dorris while he was a professor at the College.
A San Francisco Chronicle book review published last February described Dorris and Erdrich as "the best-looking couple writing fiction in America."
Gregory Nicholson '97, who is writing his senior thesis on Erdrich, said she and Dorris had recently divorced.
Dorris has a place in the history books as the first single man in the United States ever to legally adopt a child.
In 1971, a year before he joined the Dartmouth faculty, Dorris adopted a child of North American heritage and later added two more abandoned reservation children to his family.
But the story ended in tragedy -- one child died after being hit by a car, and the two others are now homeless.
Before his death, Dorris was on leave from the College and working as Visiting Professor of Creative Writing and Winton Chair Scholar for the spring quarter at the University of Minnesota.
