So “Indians” is a relatively recent nickname of the 1918-1925 period, and “Green,” at least as adjective, may be as early as the 1860s, when the color was selected. When did “the Big Green” emerge as a complete nickname?

The words “big Green” began appearing in the New York Times by 1911, but only as adjectives describing nouns such as “team,” “line,” “eleven,” “players,” “machine,” “skaters,” “five,” etc. The phrase applied not just to football but all sports, apparently. The most frequent use was “the big Green team” (1911), but “the big Green line” (1911) also was popular. Writers also used “Hanoverians” and many other terms. A September 9, 1916 article from the Fort Wayne News wrote stated that it was “necessary to uphold the fame of the ‘Big Green’ team”; the Atlanta Constitution wrote in a November 20, 1921 headline that “Dartmouth’s Big Green Machine Arrives Early.” This use of “big Green” as an adjective continued into the 1940s.

When was “Big Green” used as a noun phrase on its own? In the shorthand phrasing of newspaper headlines, it appeared by 1916. A November 11, 1916 article in the Times uses the headline “Big Green Practices Here,” for example. The first line of the article, however, used the earlier form when it stated that “The big Green team from Dartmouth arrived here yesterday . . .”

The first use of “Big Green” as we know it today might be in the Times of October 28, 1923, where the article stated that “the Big Green began its march for its first touchdown.” The following football seasons of the early 1920s saw many such uses: “the Big Green, passed [. . .] its way through a stubborn Chicago team here today” (Decatur Review (November 14, 1925)), etc.

In discussions about the history of Dartmouth’s former “Indian” nickname, mascot, and symbol, the subject of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School never seems to come up. Yet Dartmouth was one of Carlisle’s main football opponents in the early twentieth century, and Dartmouth had little reason to become known as “the Indians” as long as the Carlisle Indians were playing.

Carlisle (Wikipedia) was the dominant team in the east for several years up to the school’s closure in 1918, with “Pop” Warner coaching winning teams that included Jim Thorpe (1911-1912) and others. The phrase “Carlisle Indians” was a shortened reference to the school’s name and a literal description of its teams as well as a nickname that sportswriters used the way they used “Princeton Tigers.”

Dartmouth had a more distant connection to Native America, and students and administrators sometimes tried to make something of it. During events such as the 1901 Webster Centennial celebration or the 1906 Dartmouth Hall dedication, Charles Eastman would portray Samson Occom in a historical pageant or a few students would dress as “Indians” in a torchlight parade. Dartmouth football teams simply were not known as “the Indians,” however — instead they were known as “the Green,” referring to the green color that students had adopted as their sporting color around 1865. Some writers also used non-standard references to Dartmouth’s location in New Hampshire. Some examples from the New York Times:

• “Princeton met the Green at the Polo Grounds” (“Princeton Plays Dartmouth Team,” October 29, 1910, p. 12; notes that “[t]he Tigers will put forth a stronger team than opposed the [Carlisle] Indians last Week”).
• “Indians to Play Dartmouth Here” (February 3, 1913, p. 9; describes “the Green Mountain team”).
• “Indians Best Against Dartmouth” (December 6, 1913, p. 12).
• “Indians Smother Dartmouth, 35-10; Hanoverians No Match for the Wonderful Carlisle Team in Game at the Polo Grounds” (November 16, 1913, p. S1; notes “Green Line Crumples; Indians’ ‘Scoop-Shovel’ and Criss-Cross Attack Deadly”; describes “the New Hampshire mountaineers” and “the Green line”; states that “[t]he Indians showed a concerted smash against the mid-section of the Hanover line.[]”).
• “Hanover to Claim Football Title; Coach Cavanaugh Says Dartmouth Will Deserve It if Team Beats Indians” (November 14, 1913, p. 12).

Writers continued to refer to the Carlisle Indians into the 1920s. Someone has probably documented the first reference to “the Dartmouth Indians” in this period, once the team could no longer be confused with that of Carlisle. The introduction of “the Dartmouth Indians” might have occurred in bizarre fashion in an article of 1925:

Two of the rapidly dwindling list of undefeated football teams, the White Indians of Dartmouth and the Red Terrors of Cornell, are quietly encamped here on the eve of one of the big struggles of the season. The Green is a slight favorite.

Allison Danzig, “Dartmouth Picked to Defeat Cornell; Eastern Championship May Depend on Clash of Unbeaten Teams at Hanover Today. All Ithacans in Shape; Only Smith Out of Green Line-Up — 15,000 to See Game on Field Expected to Be Good,” New York Times (November 7, 1925, p. S10) (emphasis added).

[Update 10.14.2007: year of Dartmouth Hall dedication corrected from 1904 to 1906 and Webster Centennial example added.]