Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team

Carlisle’s 26-6 win over Penn shocks the media, which becomes fiercer in its racists writings against the team. The Philadelphia press, for instance, attributes their win to “racial savagery” (123). The Carlisle men continue to use such headlines as fuel for their wins despite headlines such as “PRINCETON […] SOLVED INDIAN PROBLEM” (124) after Princeton beat Carlisle 16-0. The news of the season, though, is Carlisle beating Harvard 23-15 for the first time ever.

Fans, coaches, and players love football under the new rules. Injury numbers are down, and the games are more focused on strategy, which makes the game more interesting for everyone involved. Thorpe loves being a Carlisle football player. He loves the camaraderie of the team, and he loves starting, which he does after many of the team members graduate in the spring of 1908. He quickly becomes “a fan favorite” (131) for his long, exciting runs.

Warner’s salary is now $4,000 per year, and his campus influence is huge. At the end of the 1908-1909 school year, Thorpe doesn’t want to return home. He has heard many of his friends talk about playing summer baseball in the minor leagues and, after seeing Superintendent Friedman about it, he goes to North Carolina to train. Jim would later call his time with the North Carolina Rocky Mount Railroaders “the greatest mistake in [his] life” (135).

Thorpe and Warner both find themselves at a crossroads in their lives. Thorpe enjoys the freedom he experiences while playing baseball in the Eastern Carolina Baseball League. It is noted that “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” (137). Thorpe stands up for himself in a rare act of public violence when he punches white man in the street who makes a racist comment toward him and his friends. When the baseball season ends, Thorpe doesn’t want to give up his personal freedom and decides not to return to Carlisle.

Warner struggles without Thorpe and has fewer new recruits on the Carlisle team. Thorpe goes to see Carlisle play in Cincinnati, and Warner accompanies him back to Oklahoma. It’s not clear if he knows that Thorpe has been playing minor league baseball.

While Warner faces the worst records he’s experienced since the early Carlisle days, Thorpe roams from town to town, listless and without direction until he runs into Albert Exendine in the summer of 1911 in Anadarko, Oklahoma. Exendine tries to help Thorpe understand how badly Carlisle needs him and, perhaps, how badly Thorpe needs Carlisle.

In 1911, when future quarterback Gus Welch joins the school, Carlisle has a “mixed reputation.” The “mixed reputation” comes from Carlisle publicly praising graduates who successfully assimilate into white culture as proof of the school’s methods, though most students either return to impoverished reservations or find assimilation into white American culture impossible. It’s possible that Welch’s love of the football team overrides his concerns about attending Carlisle; or perhaps he isn’t aware of the risks.

Welch becomes the Carlisle quarterback and Thorpe returns to campus. The two room together and lead the team to a 5-0 record with Pennsylvania and Harvard left to play.

Thorpe has become quite famous and displays nothing but good sportsmanship on and off the field. Old friends and classmates remember how Thorpe never changed his warm demeanor despite the attention he received from becoming well-known. That year, Thorpe meets Iva Miller, whom he will later marry. As the 1911 team prepares to play Harvard with an injured Thorpe, the chapter explains that Carlisle’s rivals weren’t rivals just because of their prestigious schooling. They held racial animosity toward Carlisle for succeeding despite not assimilating into white American culture. Warner’s players didn’t want to forget their heritage despite the negative stereotyping they received in the media. Their games against U Penn and Harvard were not about a rivalry between the schools, but about “the Indian against the white man” (154). The chapter bookends the racial discussion with Thorpe’s meeting Iva and his decision to play the Harvard game despite his ankle injury.

Carlisle takes on Harvard in a back-and-forth battle in front of the largest crowd either of the schools has ever seen. Harvard is ahead 9-6 at the end of the first half, but Carlisle leads 15-9 at the end of the third quarter. Harvard has saved their starters for the fourth quarter, but Carlisle holds Harvard long enough for Thorpe to kick a 48-yard field goal before leaving the game. The crowd applauds Thorpe’s effort and play as he leaves the field, his ankle finally giving out. Carlisle goes on to win the game 18-15.

Carlisle loses their last game to Syracuse with a score of 12-11. Thorpe is named first-team All-American halfback. Princeton is chosen as the National Champions, though the narrator notes that, “Media bias in favor of elite schools is the only way to explain the rankings” (165). The narrator also notes that Warner’s explanation of the Syracuse loss—that the players were exhausted from their grueling schedule—did not implicate him for giving them too difficult a schedule.

Thorpe dreams of the future and wants to quit track, but Warner entices him back with the possibility of making the 1912 Olympic team. Warner tries out, wins the events he enters, and makes the team. Before he leaves for the games in Sweden, Thorpe requests travel funds from his Sac and Fox agent but is refused because “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” (169). Warner procures travel funds for Thorpe, and they board the S.S. Finland, which is bound for the Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden.