Removal of image of Indian sought

Residents: Post office painting is demeaning

DURHAM, N.H. — For decades, a colorful mural of New Hampshire’s earliest settlers hauling logs, frolicking through the snow and walking through town has greeted visitors at a post office in the state.

But one image on the 16-panel artwork of a Native American posing menacingly with a settler’s house in the distance — and the words “Cruel Adversity” below it — has sparked controversy in Durham, a mostly white and affluent town that is home to the University of New Hampshire. There are no other images of Native Americans on the mural.

The town said the Native American panel is based on a 1694 massacre in which about 250 Wabanaki warriors attacked a settlement in what is now Durham and killed or imprisoned 100 settlers. But some residents have complained it’s offensive, and the New Hampshire Commission on Native American Affairs has written to the U.S. Postal Service asking that it be removed or covered up.

“We are concerned that the mural entitled ‘Cruel Adversity’ inaccurately portrays the local indigenous people, and the history, of the town of Durham,” said Kathleen Blake, the commission’s vice chair. “If one learned more about the history from this time period, one would understand that the portrayal of the Native people as ‘cruel adversity’ perpetuates an idea of history only from the European prospective.”

The debate over the panel goes back decades and echoes fights across the country to replace sports mascots that some Native Americans consider offensive and remove names of historical figures from public buildings whose policies were seen as discriminatory against them.

The Durham debate has intensified during the past year and taken on added urgency in recent weeks in light of unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia. A white nationalist rally over a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville last month turned violent and left a counterprotester dead.

Kitty Marple, chairwoman of the Durham Town Council and Durham Human Rights Commission, said people over the years wrote letters or came into town hall to complain that the Native American panel was “really inappropriate.”

Michael Casey The Associated Press A mural that includes an image, center, of a Native American and inscribed with the words “Cruel Adversity” hangs in the Durham, N.H., post office. Critics have called the image demeaning to Native Americans and demanded it be...