Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team

“Jim’s first hero was Black Hawk, the famous Sac leader who had led his people in a desperate fight to hold on to their ancestral land in the 1830s.”

Few references to Thorpe’s feelings about his ancestry appear in the book. This moment resonates later in the book, though, when Thorpe shoulders the responsibility of leading his football team in each of their “desperate fights” to win against white football teams.

“Jim grew up hearing stories of Black Hawk, of his legendary feats of running and swimming and wrestling, of his pride and defiance, even in the face of defeat. Jim grew up hearing that his own father, Hiram, resembled Black Hawk not only in looks but in the athletic skill and pure strength.”

These sentences are extremely important to understanding Thorpe’s psyche. Throughout the book, others see him as an anomaly in every way. These sentences help the reader understand that Thorpe saw himself, his strength, his conviction, and his sportsmanlike demeanor as part of his lineage from his father and the legendary Black Hawk.

“Did football really have to be like that? Warner wondered. Wasn’t there room for a slightly more creative approach?”

This is a seminal moment in Warner’s character arc and his transition away from the “barn yard” style of play that existed before Warner would begin inventing plays based on mental strategy.

“Pratt’s answer to the ‘Indian problem’ was to treat Native Americans as if they were immigrants to the United States. His answer was to help young Indians—if necessary, to force them—to assimilate into white American culture.”

This is an instance of indirect characterization in which Pratt’s conviction that he could train Indigenous people to become as close to white Americans as possible. The moment demonstrates part of the extreme complexity that is Richard Henry Pratt. On one hand, it appears he truly believed he was helping his students, on the other hand, it seems as if he did not fully comprehend that forced assimilation does not result in the harmonious living he claimed was his dream for his students.

“All the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

This moment characterizes Pratt as a bully and tyrant working only to benefit white culture instead of cultivating acceptance and tolerance among and between races. Sheinkin is rarely sympathetic to the possibility that Pratt did, genuinely, want to help Indigenous people.

“Pratt’s plan was to strip these kids of their Indian identities, and he started right away.”

This is an example of the mentality in classic colonization theory. Stripping the colonized of their Indigenous culture is the first step to “replacing” identities to match that of the colonizer. The strategy, as Sheinkin writes later, often resulted in physical and emotional pain for the Carlisle students.

“First, you will never, under any circumstances, slug […] Can’t you see that if you slug, people who are looking on will say, ‘There, that’s the Indian of it. Just see them. They are savages and you can’t get it out of them.’ Our white fellows may do a lot of slugging and it causes little or no remark, but you have to make a record for your race.”

This instance of direct characterization hints at the possibility that Pratt was working to help his football players succeed because he is demonstrating a cultural awareness that he, paradoxically, does not seem to practice himself. This moment appeared to stay with the Carlisle players though, even after Pratt’s leaving the school. This could be read as a lesson in Sportsmanship as a Life Philosophy because the same would hold true for the players off of the field.

“Pratt was starting to like football. He especially liked the attention football was bringing to his school. To Pratt, the players were traveling ambassadors for Carlisle, living proof the school was working—so long as they continued to behave like ‘gentlemen,’ that is.”

The most important part of this passage is that “he [Pratt] especially liked the attention” because here is when the book begins to demonstrate the various ways white men in power exploit the Indigenous American students. “Travelling ambassadors” is not intended here to mean “recruiters.” Rather, “ambassadors” is meant as an indirect characterization of Pratt’s hope that others would see his “gentlemanly” students and give him praise and credit.

“Now I’m going to send you so far away from home you’ll never find your way back.”

Hiram Thorpe says this to his son after Thorpe has, again, run away from one of the schools to which his parents sent him. While it may read as if Hiram is being mean to his son, the moment is actually an instance of Hiram showing great care for what he thinks is his son’s best chance at getting off of the reservation and living a prosperous life.

“Too much praise cannot be given this Indian team for its showing this year, for the quality of its football after but three years of the game at Carlisle, and above all for its sportsmanly conduct and clean play […] I regard the conduct of these Indians to have had a more wholesome influence on the game than any occurrence of recent years.”

This quotation is a part of what Caspar Whitney, a well-known writer for Harper’s Weekly, wrote after observing Carlisle play in the 1896 season. When it is said that Carlisle changed the game of football, this is one of the moments historians reference. Football was on the verge of a national debate concerning its brutality, and Carlisle’s players were demonstrating a new kind of sportsmanlike attitude that the game would soon adopt.

“Bigger crowds would mean more money for Carlisle, which took a share of the ticket sales. Pratt was constantly struggling to raise donations and pry cash from Congress for his school; a fresh source of income would be most welcome.”

Next to many of the quotations by Pratt above, this moment serves to reinforce Pratt’s exploitation of his school’s football team. This criticism is still leveled against many large sports-oriented institutions of higher education.

“Son, you are an Indian. I want you to show other races what an Indian can do.”

These words may have echoed in Thorpe’ ears for his whole life. While it seems, at first, that Hiram might only have been talking about physical achievements, the way Thorpe would conduct himself for the rest of his life points to the idea that he interpreted his father’s words to mean that an Indigenous person could comport himself in ways far beyond white America’s stereotypes.

“PRINCETON DID IT, chimed the Syracuse Herald, SOLVED INDIAN PROBLEM.”

This quotation demonstrates the large-scale racism practiced by the media in perpetuating stereotypes of the Indigenous football players. The headline is intended to be a pun on the “Indian Problem” as it is first introduced in the book when the US Army is stealing Indigenous American land and pushing nations all over the country to the newly designated “Indian Territory.”

“A note was added to Jim’s school record: ‘granted summer leave to play baseball in the South.’”

Many times in the book, Sheinkin painstakingly notes where Warner and others would have surely known that Thorpe had played semiprofessional baseball during that one summer. This is a moment of clear evidence that the superintendent surely knew though he would later deny the allegation. This helps the reader see the clear and unabashed exploitation practiced by Warner and Superintendent Friedman when they turned their backs on Thorpe to save their own reputations.

“At a time when Jim Crow laws ruled life in the South, Jim and his Carlisle friends occupied an uneasy ground between black and white […] they never knew how they would be treated.”

Sheinkin points to clear instances of institutional racism throughout the book, but this moment stands out as an educational instance for readers in the 21st century. While African Americans would surely know how they would be treated, as did white Americans, the fact that Indigenous people couldn’t be sure exemplifies the difficulty in understanding their level of acceptance in the larger cultural arena.

“These experiences were hardly typical. Most former students simply wanted to go home, which meant returning to impoverished reservations […] Those seeking new lives in cities found that Pratt’s dream of assimilation was a fantasy.”

This quotation points to the extreme disappointment Carlisle graduates would have experienced regardless of what they wanted for their lives after attending the school. Either way, their identities would be confused.

“The Carlisle school was supposed to sever these young men from their heritage, to ‘Kill the Indian in them,’ as Pratt had famously said. But fans and sportswriters never let the players forget they were Indians—and there’s no evidence they wanted to forget.”

This moment resonates with another story in the book in which Sheinkin relates that many of the Carlisle students would feign coughing fits while others spoke in the Indigenous languages so they could feel like themselves. Here, too, is evidence that the students’ spirit can’t be broken by methods of colonization. The Carlisle school only reinforced for its football players who and what they were, and more importantly, who and what they wanted to be: themselves.

“When playing against college teams, it was not so much Carlisle against Pennsylvania or Harvard, as the case might be, but it was the Indian against the white man.”

This quotation by Coach Warner underscores the theme of Exploitation of Indigenous People. Warner and everyone else knew that every time Carlisle stepped onto the field, they were battling in the name of their heritage and as representatives of their heritage that would not be severed from their ancestral roots.

“‘The Indians, worn out by their series of grueling encounters, played far below their form,’ [Warner] said. Never a word of blame for the man who’d scheduled the grueling encounters—himself, that is.”

This is one of the many instances where Warner either could not, or would not, see himself as any part of the Carlisle losses, though he was always imagining himself as part of their victories. These types of editorial comments are ways Sheinkin works to create the complex and difficult characterization of Pop Warner.

“He was in an awkward position, though, because the government did not consider Native Americans to be citizens of the United States. He was twenty-three years old, and the best athlete in the country—but, legally, he was a ward of the state. As such, he wasn’t even allowed to control his own money.”

Sheinkin uses this moment to reinforce the level of hypocrisy practiced by most Americans, including those in the government, as a way to demonstrate the myriad ways Thorpe and his people were exploited. Thorpe was representing America on the international stage, yet he was, at home, not even considered an American.

“It was a game bursting with meaning for Thorpe and his teammates. The win over Harvard had been an athletic triumph. With Army, it was personal.”

Recalling Pop Warner’s words that this game was about “the Indian versus the white man,” this moment clarifies exactly what motivated the Carlisle players. Sheinkin points to the possibility that the Army game might have been what kept Thorpe playing for Carlisle that last year, because, as his father had told him, he wanted to “show what an Indian could do.”

“For years the government had avoided pitting these two schools against each other.”

The statement underscores the racial tensions between the Indigenous people and the white US government that worked for so long to oppress them. The moment also underscores the fact that Americans often see sports and sports teams as extensions of the population at large.

“Remember it was the fathers and grandfathers of these Army players who fought your fathers and grandfathers ion the Indian wars. Remember it was their fathers and grandfathers who killed your fathers and grandfathers. Remember all of this on every play!”

While Warner couldn’t exactly relate to his idea that it was his players versus the white man, he could understand how their feelings could turn into motivation on the football field, which is why he says this before Carlisle plays Army. The moment also serves as an instance of the racist attitude pervading the American society. Warner is not telling his players anything new, here. In fact, he’s saying what everyone in the country knows to be true, but willingly will not change.