Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team

Charlotte and Hiram Thorpe marry in 1882 and live on Sac and Fox land in the “Indian Territory” (present day Oklahoma). In 1887, the United States government opens the land to new white settlers, and the land is quickly taken from Indigenous control. Charlotte Thorpe gives birth to twins, James (Jim) and Charles (Charlie), in 1888. In addition to their English names, the boys receive Indigenous names: Jim’s is Wathohuck, which means “Bright Path.”

Jim spends his childhood outside playing and working, and each night, the family watches the local men compete in athletic competitions. Hiram dominates every event, including wrestling, which is each evening’s main event. Everyone says Hiram resembles the famous Chief Black Hawk, who was Jim’s first hero because of “his legendary feats of running and swimming and wrestling, of his pride and defiance, even in the face of defeat” (12). Between his father and Black Hawk, Jim has two models for how he wants to live his life.

Glenn Scobey “Pop” Warner is a chubby, unathletic boy who is bullied by the other boys at school in Springville, New York. His first nickname is not “Pop,” it is “Butter,” which the boys call him to tease him about his weight. One day, he jumps on the closest bully and beats him up. In his teens, he outgrows his awkwardness and begins playing baseball with the neighborhood boys.

Warner enjoys sports more than work, and by the end of high school, he gambles all of his money away at the horse track. Warner writes his father to ask for money to go to law school, which is what his father wants him to do. Warner doesn’t tell his father he’s out of money. Instead, he makes it seem as if he’s decided to listen to his father so his father will continue to support him. Warner is accepted to Cornell University.

He arrives on the college campus in Ithaca, New York, and, as he’s strolling the grounds, he sees the football team practicing and goes to watch. Carl Johanson, the team’s captain, runs over to greet the six foot, two inch tall Warner to ask what he weighs. When Warner says, “two hundred and fifteen pounds,” Johanson says, “Fine. Get a suit on right away. We need a left guard” (16). Warner has never played football, but Johanson tells him not to worry because it’s easy to learn. This is the beginning of Warner’s love of the game of football.

When Warner begins playing football for Cornell, the sport is only 23 years old and much different than today’s game. Forward passes are illegal. Teams can score by running the ball into the end zone or kicking it through the goal posts. A first down is five yards (instead of today’s 10 yards), and the teams get three downs as opposed to today’s four downs. The game is violent: “After I had gotten used to having my face pushed in and my head tramped on, I began to take an interest in the game,” Warner says of his early playing days (20).

Warner begins to study not just the game, but the way his coach uses strategy. The early strategy is mostly players on the same team hitting each other when they’re not looking and blaming it on the opposition to incite anger and, thus, “better” play. Warner doesn’t believe this is the best strategy and begins writing new plays that try to deceive the defense instead of just pounding the ball at them. His first successful play, Play #39, is tried out in a game between Cornell University and Williams College. The game ends in a tie, but Warner is hooked on football strategy.

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School football program begins in the fall of 1890. They play their first game against Dickinson College. One of the players is injured (the second time in a week) with a broken leg during the game and carried back to campus in a wooden cart. Richard Henry Pratt, the Carlisle Indian School founder and superintendent is furious because the game is dangerous and distracting. He does not want his students being injured in the game when they are supposed to be learning how to assimilate into white American society. The school is Pratt’s life’s work after serving as a captain in the US Army during the Civil War and then helping in the US government’s wars against Indigenous people.

The creation of reservations resulted in the “Indian Problem,” whereby Indigenous communities couldn’t use the land outside of their reservations, or participate in the greater American economy. Pratt’s answer was the creation of schools like the Carlisle Indian Industrial School to erase all traits of Indigenous culture in its students: “All the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man” (29). Pratt believes football is a distraction from his main goal of “help[ing] young Indians—if necessary, to force them—to assimilate into white American culture” (28).

Indigenous boys and girls leave their homes board trains and ride to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where they enter Pratt’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Upon arrival, their traditional clothing and moccasins are removed and traded for uniforms; long dresses for the girls and wool suits for the boys. Boys with long hair receive haircuts, and the teachers assign each child an English name. Everything at Carlisle Indian Industrial School is scary and foreign to the children who become Pratt’s students. To ensure their discipline, the campus is wrapped in a seven-foot-tall fence, and a prison is established for those who break the rules.

Pratt spends most days standing on a bandstand in the heart of campus making sure his students follow all the rules and stick to their strict daily routines. There is much less “helping” the children assimilate into white American culture and much more forcing them to do so. Students farm and cook. They learn skills like carpentry, tailoring, canning, sewing, and childcare. There is no room for football at Pratt’s school. But when he announces that “Carlisle teams will no longer be allowed to play football against other schools” (40), the students protest.

It is 1893. Two years after Pratt’s bans football at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a group of about 40 students go to Pratt’s office to petition him to let them play football against other schools again. Pratt finally agrees to let his students play other schools, but he has two conditions. The first is that they will not punch other players on the field because he believes white spectators see them as “savages” for doing so. The second is that over the next several years, they must become good enough to beat the biggest teams in the country. Pratt knows that “a football team representing Carlisle would be facing not only […] violence, but also the prejudice of white fans and sportswriters” (42). The boys agree to these conditions, and Vance McCormick, an ex-Yale quarterback, becomes the first Carlisle Indian School football coach. The Carlisle team doesn’t win a game against another college that year.

Hiram and Charlotte, who can read, write, and speak English, believe their boys need an English education, so they drive Jim and Charlie to the Sac and Fox Agency School. Charlie fits in well, but Jim, who cannot pay attention, hates the rigid confines of the school (it is regimented like Carlisle) and he runs away. A furious Hiram drives him back to the school.

Meanwhile, in Iowa, Pop Warner takes a job coaching the Iowa Agricultural College football team. It is 1895, and Warner’s team is going to play its first game against the Butte Athletic Club from Butte, Montana. Before the game, Warner, just like in his younger days, bets his entire year’s salary ($150) that his team will win. The referee is from Butte, and he cheats to help the Butte team win. Warner’s team loses the game, and Warner loses his year’s salary in the bet.

At the same time, a Carlisle Indian Industrial School student named Bemus Pierce helps his teammates plow the ground to build their own football field. Pierce is elected team captain and leads his team to a season record of four wins and four losses, but none of the wins is against one of the large schools Pratt had challenged his players to beat. The newspapers describe Carlisle’s wins as “massacres” and “scalpings,” common racist stereotypes the time. The team reads these articles and uses them as fuel to work harder. As the team moves in to the 1896 season, they choose dark red and gold as their team colors. They also decide they will play all four of the “big four” teams (Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and University of Pennsylvania) in the coming season, which no team has ever done before.

The 1896 Carlisle Indian Industrial School football team takes on each of the “Big Four” schools. They lose each game, but the team is surprisingly competitive, and they even manage to score against Princeton and Yale. These games draw many fans, and in the course of the season, newspapers begin to report that fans don’t like the prejudiced refereeing taking place in favor of the white teams. Pratt likes that the team is bringing attention to his school. He sees the players as “traveling ambassadors for Carlisle, living proof the school was working” (55) and that putting his players in front of elite white fans and sportswriters will help him gain their favor.