Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Today we
Speaker 1: are going to talk about Jim Thorpe, who was just
Speaker 1: an incredible all around athlete. During his lifetime. He was
Speaker 1: famous around the world, and he topped a lot of
Speaker 1: lists of the best athletes of the twentieth century or
Speaker 1: even the best athlete of all time. At the same time,
Speaker 1: though news stories and early biographies and in some cases
Speaker 1: stuff that still floats around today, managed to simultaneously praise
Speaker 1: his accomplishments and also minimize them through racist stereotypes and
Speaker 1: other falsehoods. Thorpe made an amazing name for himself in
Speaker 1: track and field and football at Carlisle Indian Industrial School,
Speaker 1: and then he became internationally famous of the nineteen twelve
Speaker 1: Olympic Games. We were going to tell his story in
Speaker 1: three parts, which is not the number that normally comes
Speaker 1: in that sentence. I am not I don't think we've
Speaker 1: ever done a three part or before we've done four.
Speaker 1: We've well, yeah, we did that four part mini series
Speaker 1: on China Chairman Mouth and we do too. On occasion
Speaker 1: we do too periodically. This time we got three, so
Speaker 1: to yes, I was today I was going to give
Speaker 1: people the peek behind the curtain, which is that we
Speaker 1: do that because we have two new episodes a week,
Speaker 1: and if you break it to three, it gets into
Speaker 1: some scheduling, you know, just like carefulness, you have to
Speaker 1: do UM. I also really felt like with this one,
Speaker 1: once I got to the point that I had turned
Speaker 1: my notes into actual sentences, I looked at it and
Speaker 1: kind of went, if I try to get this down
Speaker 1: into two, we're going to have to cut out some
Speaker 1: stuff that's really important, and I didn't want to do that.
Speaker 1: So this time we're going to talk about Jim Thorpe's
Speaker 1: life before and during his time at Carlisle, including some
Speaker 1: of the context about Carlisle and other similar boarding schools.
Speaker 1: Then next time we will talk about his incredible performance
Speaker 1: at the nineteen twelve Summer Olympic Games, and then in
Speaker 1: part three, we will talk about his career after his
Speaker 1: time as an amateur athlete had ended, and then two
Speaker 1: big pieces of his story that continued on for decades
Speaker 1: after his death. According to Jim Thorpe's own account, he
Speaker 1: and his fraternal twin brother Charlie, were born on May twelfth,
Speaker 1: south of Belmont in what was at the time Indian Country.
Speaker 1: Today that is near Prague, Oklahoma. But there's also a
Speaker 1: christening record for the twins that list their birthday as
Speaker 1: May twenty eight seven, so the year before Thorpe was
Speaker 1: saying his birthday was. The boys were baptized at the
Speaker 1: Benedictine Sacred Mission Church using Latin versions of their name
Speaker 1: Carolus for Charlie and Jacobus Francisca's for Jim. Their five
Speaker 1: Hiram was sac and Fox and Irish, and their mother,
Speaker 1: Charlotte View was Potawatamie, Kickapoo and French. The boy's ancestors
Speaker 1: included Sack Leader and war Chief black Hawk. After Jim
Speaker 1: and Charlie were born, they were enrolled as members of
Speaker 1: the sac and Fox nation, and Charlotte gave them traditional
Speaker 1: sac and Fox names. Jim's was what though hook and
Speaker 1: that means light after the lightning or bright path. Hiram
Speaker 1: Thorpe was a farmer and a rancher. The family raised horses, hogs,
Speaker 1: and cattle, as well as growing a lot of crops.
Speaker 1: They lived on land that the thorpes had been allotted
Speaker 1: under the General Allotment Act of eighteen eighty seven that's
Speaker 1: also called the DAWs Act. We've talked about the DAWs
Speaker 1: Act on the show before. It was the act that
Speaker 1: broke up land that had been held for Indigenous nations,
Speaker 1: collectively assigning it out to individual tribal members as part
Speaker 1: of the US federal government strategy of allotment and assimilation. Overall,
Speaker 1: this Act was devastating for the vibes and nations that
Speaker 1: were affected. Once the land had been allotted, so called
Speaker 1: excess land was open up for sale to non Indigenous people,
Speaker 1: so each member that was eligible would get this allotment
Speaker 1: and anything left over could be sold. Then, huge numbers
Speaker 1: of people who were allotted land later wound up losing
Speaker 1: that land for a range of reasons. Some people sold
Speaker 1: the land because they wanted to or because they needed
Speaker 1: the money. Others were defrauded out of it, or were
Speaker 1: assigned allotments that just could not be maintained through any
Speaker 1: reasonable means, so they weren't able to meet the standards
Speaker 1: of keeping this land and it was taken from them.
Speaker 1: This whole process was also geared towards getting indigenous people
Speaker 1: to assimilate with white culture, including granting people US citizenship
Speaker 1: once they'd successfully maintained their allotment for twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Although the Sac and Fox Nation lost a huge amount
Speaker 1: of land as the so called excess during allotment, the
Speaker 1: sorp family le specifically seems to have fared better with
Speaker 1: this than a lot of other people, including getting an
Speaker 1: additional allotment in eighte This may have been because they
Speaker 1: already had some connections to the culture that indigenous people
Speaker 1: were expected to assimilate with. Along with about fifteen percent
Speaker 1: of the Second Fox Nation, the Thorpes were regarded by
Speaker 1: the federal government as progressive. They had adopted, to at
Speaker 1: least some extent, a more white way of life. They
Speaker 1: were Christian, they spoke English, they lived in a log house,
Speaker 1: and they wore settler style clothing. At the same time,
Speaker 1: they were still an active part of their indigenous community,
Speaker 1: taking part in festivals and observances, and following indigenous traditions
Speaker 1: and methods for various parts of their day to day lives,
Speaker 1: like grinding corn into flower. Their home was fairly isolated,
Speaker 1: and they didn't have a lot of contact with white
Speaker 1: people until Jim and Charlie were about six years old.
Speaker 1: Gemina's twin brother grew up hunting, fishing, riding and training
Speaker 1: horse says, and playing outdoors a lot. Their father also
Speaker 1: loved sports and physical activity, especially swimming, wrestling, and riding,
Speaker 1: and he really taught his sons about physical fitness and
Speaker 1: fair play. Jim was bigger and more athletic, and Charlie
Speaker 1: was smaller and more bookish. But in Jim's words, quote,
Speaker 1: we were never in the house when we could be
Speaker 1: out of it. One of their favorite pastimes was to
Speaker 1: play an almost extreme version of Follow the Leader. The
Speaker 1: Leader would do things like climb all the way to
Speaker 1: the top of a tree and then jump out, or
Speaker 1: like jump into a really fast moving river and swim
Speaker 1: to the other side. It's like follow the Leader and
Speaker 1: Dare had a baby. Yeah, yeah, it is. It is
Speaker 1: way more physically involved than any Follow the Leader I
Speaker 1: played as a child, and their parents wanted them to
Speaker 1: be educated, so when the boys were six, Jim and
Speaker 1: Charlie were sent to the Second Fox Boarding School that
Speaker 1: was a residential school that had been established by Quaker
Speaker 1: missionaries on the edge of Second Fox Territory in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy two. The school's purpose was to convert and assimilate
Speaker 1: children from the Second Fox Nation, or, in the words
Speaker 1: of the eighteen nineteen Act that provided federal funding to
Speaker 1: these types of schools, to quote civilize them. We'll be
Speaker 1: talking more about these schools more over the course of
Speaker 1: this episode, and there is also a lot about their
Speaker 1: history and development in our two part podcast on the
Speaker 1: Fort Shaw Indian School Girls basketball team. Those episodes came
Speaker 1: out in t seventeen. Jim and Charlie started at the
Speaker 1: Mission school in eighteen ninety three when they were about six.
Speaker 1: In the mornings, they and their classmates were taught basic English,
Speaker 1: reading and writing, arithmetic, and history, along with religion and
Speaker 1: white etiquette and social customs. And then in the afternoon
Speaker 1: they had vocational training, with a lot of that vocational
Speaker 1: training geared toward keeping the school itself running. So the
Speaker 1: girls cleaned and did laundry and made new uniforms. The
Speaker 1: boys did manual labor and worked on the school's farm.
Speaker 1: Students also wore military style uniforms and did military style drilling.
Speaker 1: All of this was pretty standard in these kinds of schools,
Speaker 1: and it was all meant to just erase any trace
Speaker 1: of their indigenous heritage or culture. Since Jim and Charlie
Speaker 1: already spoke English, they had a little bit of an
Speaker 1: easier time at the Mission school than many of their peers,
Speaker 1: most of whom spoke only indigenous languages, which were forbidden
Speaker 1: from being used at the school. But between the two
Speaker 1: of them, Charlie was definitely the better student, and he
Speaker 1: helped Jim through the more difficult parts of their studies.
Speaker 1: But then in Charlie contracted pneumonia. Hiram and Charlotte came
Speaker 1: out to the school to try to nurse him back
Speaker 1: to health, but he died at the age of about
Speaker 1: eight or nine. Charlie and Jim had really been just inseparable,
Speaker 1: and Jim, of course was heartbroken and bereft. Compounding all
Speaker 1: of this, Hiram and Charlotte had also been struggling in
Speaker 1: their marriage. They went through a series of separations and
Speaker 1: reconciliations that was all pretty tumultuous for their children. They
Speaker 1: had eleven children total, five of whom survived to adulthood.
Speaker 1: After his brother's death, Jim started spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time in the woods alone. He repeatedly ran away from school,
Speaker 1: making his way back home on foot. That was a
Speaker 1: trip that took about twenty miles that's roughly thirty two kilometers.
Speaker 1: This was not, by the way, unique to Jim at all.
Speaker 1: Conditions at these schools were often really poor and students
Speaker 1: just missed their families, so it was fairly common for
Speaker 1: students to escape and then flee back home or somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Hiram kept taking Jim back to school, only for Jim
Speaker 1: to leave again. At one point, Jim even left the
Speaker 1: school immediately after his father had dropped him off, taking
Speaker 1: a short cut that put him outside the door of
Speaker 1: the family home for his father even got back. So
Speaker 1: Hiram decided to send Jim to a school that was
Speaker 1: farther away, and that was Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas.
Speaker 1: That was about three hundred miles or four two kilometers
Speaker 1: from where they were living. Two biographies of Jim Thorpe
Speaker 1: interpret this somewhat differently. In Jim Thorpe, World's Greatest Athlete
Speaker 1: by Robert W. Wheeler, part of the goal was definitely
Speaker 1: to make it harder for Jim to return home, but
Speaker 1: it was also an act of compassion on Hiram's part,
Speaker 1: as he recognized that Jim was having a hard time
Speaker 1: staying at a place that he associated so strongly with
Speaker 1: his late brother. On the other hand, the book Native
Speaker 1: American Son, The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe
Speaker 1: by Kate Beauford describes jim siblings as being terrified of
Speaker 1: their father and Hiram, framing this whole decision as almost
Speaker 1: a threat, saying quote, I'm going to send you so
Speaker 1: far away you'll never find your way back. Yeah. Having
Speaker 1: read both of these books, it's presented as a much
Speaker 1: crueler decision to me in in Kate Beauford's book than
Speaker 1: in Robert W. Wheelers. Regardless, though, in Jim and his
Speaker 1: older brother George were both in rolled at Haskell Institute,
Speaker 1: and we will get to Jim's time there and then
Speaker 1: later on at Carlisle after a sponsor break. Jim Thorpe
Speaker 1: was about ten years old when he was enrolled at
Speaker 1: Haskell Institute, and his brother George was sixteen. At the time,
Speaker 1: more than a thousand students were enrolled at the school,
Speaker 1: and they represented between eighty five and ninety different indigenous
Speaker 1: tribes and nations. Like the Sac and Fox Mission School,
Speaker 1: Haskell Institute was established to assimilate indigenous children into white culture,
Speaker 1: separating them from their families and their cultures and customs
Speaker 1: and languages, with classroom instruction in the morning, vocational instruction
Speaker 1: that kept the school running in the afternoon, and military
Speaker 1: style uniforms and drilling. George left this school not long
Speaker 1: after they arrived. One of Jim's favorite pastimes at the
Speaker 1: school was watching football practice. He was such a constant
Speaker 1: presence on the sidelines that team captain Shahn the Archiquette,
Speaker 1: took notice of him and decided to encourage him. Chauncey
Speaker 1: went to the school's harness shop and stitched together a
Speaker 1: football out of pieces of leather and then stuffed it
Speaker 1: with rags, and Jim started using this homemade football to
Speaker 1: organize games among the students who were his own age.
Speaker 1: After a while, Jim started to do pretty well at Haskell.
Speaker 1: There are reports that you'll read that he was not
Speaker 1: a great student, and his report cards say otherwise. In
Speaker 1: nineteen o one, though he heard that his father had
Speaker 1: been shot while hunting and was gravely injured. Jim decided
Speaker 1: to go home and he hopped a train. When he
Speaker 1: was found on board and removed. He also found out
Speaker 1: the train had actually been going the opposite direction of
Speaker 1: where he needed to be. It took Jim about two
Speaker 1: weeks to walk home, and by that point hyram Thorpe
Speaker 1: was out of danger, and while he wasn't exactly pleased
Speaker 1: to see his son Amenda, Jim was able to help
Speaker 1: around on the ranch while his father was convalescing. One
Speaker 1: of Jim's friends also reported that he had really been
Speaker 1: expelled from school for drinking as all this happened, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't just that he was going home to see
Speaker 1: his sick father. The school records are unclear. They don't
Speaker 1: confirm or refute this. Yeah, they just pretty much say
Speaker 1: he was not there anymore. Although Jim's father recovered from
Speaker 1: this injury, while Jim was still at home, his mother
Speaker 1: died from blood poisoning. This might have been a complication
Speaker 1: of childbirth. It was not too long after she had
Speaker 1: given birth to her eleventh child. Her land allotment was
Speaker 1: divided up among her heirs, with Jim getting about twenty acres.
Speaker 1: So with all of this going on, Jim stayed at
Speaker 1: home rather than being returned to Haskell. He attended nearby
Speaker 1: Garden Grove Public School, and he worked on the family ranch,
Speaker 1: but one day he and his brother decided to skip
Speaker 1: their chores and go fishing, and when they got back,
Speaker 1: their father whipped them, something that Jim Leader said he
Speaker 1: deserved but didn't feel like taking, so he ran away
Speaker 1: from home, this time going to Texas, where he worked
Speaker 1: on a ranch until he had earned enough money to
Speaker 1: buy himself a team of horses, and he described this
Speaker 1: as wanting to prove himself to his father before he
Speaker 1: went home again. Garden Grove didn't really have much of
Speaker 1: an athletics program, although it was starting track and field
Speaker 1: and baseball teams, and Jim found once he was back
Speaker 1: that he just really really missed football, and at this
Speaker 1: point among the indigenous population of the US, the school
Speaker 1: most known for its football program was Carlisle Indian Industrial
Speaker 1: School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Like the Second Fox Mission School
Speaker 1: and Haskell Institute, Carlisle Indian Industrial School was part of
Speaker 1: this whole system of schools that were set up to
Speaker 1: assimilate indigenous children. It opened in eighteen seventy nine and
Speaker 1: was actually the first of these schools to be run
Speaker 1: by the US government rather than by missionaries or other organizations.
Speaker 1: Carlyle's founder and the architect of the federal approach toward
Speaker 1: these boarding schools was Lieutenant Kern Richard Henry Pratt. He
Speaker 1: had formulated his approach to Indigenous education while working with
Speaker 1: Indigenous prisoners of war after the Red River War in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy five. He set up a program that involved
Speaker 1: English language and vocational instruction, followed by outplacement into jobs
Speaker 1: for the incarcerated POW's. They made what he viewed as
Speaker 1: rapid progress learning English and adapting to a more white
Speaker 1: way of life. In Pratt's mind, the only way that
Speaker 1: Indigenous people were going to survive the United States ongoing
Speaker 1: western expansion was to abandon their cultures and their languages
Speaker 1: and all of their tribal ties, and instead to fully
Speaker 1: assimilate into white society. His slogan in this was killed
Speaker 1: the Indian and save the Man. Pratt tried to convince
Speaker 1: the federal government to fund a program for students and
Speaker 1: teenagers similar to what he had done with these POWs.
Speaker 1: He started by teaching a small group of Indigenous students
Speaker 1: at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute IT in Virginia. He
Speaker 1: later got funding to convert an abandoned cavalry barracks in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania into a school. Like the other schools we've already
Speaker 1: talked about, Carlyle combined academic and vocational instruction with military
Speaker 1: style drilling and discipline. On arrival at the school, students
Speaker 1: who didn't already have English names were given new ones.
Speaker 1: They were also given haircuts and new clothes, with before
Speaker 1: and after pictures taken to highlight this idea that they
Speaker 1: were being civilized. Unlike the Second Fox Reservation School, which
Speaker 1: was on the edge of Second Fox territory, Carlyle was
Speaker 1: hundreds or thousands of miles away from where most of
Speaker 1: its students lived. The point was to create as much
Speaker 1: separation as possible between students and their cultures and families.
Speaker 1: Both physical and emotional conditions at Carlyle and other similar
Speaker 1: schools were often just appalling. Illness outbreaks were common, and
Speaker 1: students often didn't have enough to eat. Class Room instruction
Speaker 1: was threaded through with the idea that indigenous cultures were
Speaker 1: backward and even evil. Punishments for rule breaking, including rules
Speaker 1: that forbade children from speaking their native languages are following
Speaker 1: their own cultural or religious observances, could really be abusive
Speaker 1: Today Carlyle and similar schools in both the US and
Speaker 1: Canada are rightly seen as horrific and intentional attempt at
Speaker 1: cultural genocide that tore a hole through the cultural ties
Speaker 1: and lineages of thousands of Indigenous people. Just at Carlyle,
Speaker 1: nearly two hundred students died of disease, malnutrition, and neglect. Typically,
Speaker 1: these children's bodies were not returned to their families. They
Speaker 1: were given Christian funeral rights and buried there at Carlisle.
Speaker 1: In more recent years, there have been efforts, sometimes taking years,
Speaker 1: to have those bodies repatriated to their tribes. Now we've
Speaker 1: talked about a few of them on some of our
Speaker 1: Unearthed episodes. Many of the children who went to Carlisle
Speaker 1: and other boarding schools, including Haskell and including the Sac
Speaker 1: and Fox School, they weren't going of their own free will.
Speaker 1: Often their parents were coerced or threatened into sending their
Speaker 1: children there, or federal policies toward Indigenous people had created
Speaker 1: really desperate economic conditions for them that just left families
Speaker 1: with no other choice. Federal officials also took custody of
Speaker 1: the children of indigenous leaders who were seen as difficult
Speaker 1: or threatening. Keeping those children at boarding schools, essentially as hostages.
Speaker 1: At the same time, though, in the late nineteenth and
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, Carlyle also had a certain level of prestige,
Speaker 1: especially when it came to its athletics program, including among
Speaker 1: Indigenous people. There were parents who sent their children to
Speaker 1: Carlyle or other boarding schools willingly because for a range
Speaker 1: of reasons, they thought it was the best option, and
Speaker 1: in some cases there were students who chose to attend
Speaker 1: Carlyle or another board school for themselves. Jim Thorpe fell
Speaker 1: largely into that last category. He already knew about Carlyle
Speaker 1: and its reputation as an athletic powerhouse, and Carlyle had
Speaker 1: actually also already heard about Jim. Lieutenant Colonel Pratt had
Speaker 1: asked the Federal Indian Agent for Second Fox Nation to
Speaker 1: be on the lookout for athletic talent as far back
Speaker 1: as eighteen. Jim made the decision to go to Carlisle
Speaker 1: in nineteen o four, and when he told his father
Speaker 1: about it, Hiram reportedly said, son, you were an Indian.
Speaker 1: I want you to show other races what an Indian
Speaker 1: can do. On April twenty second, nineteen o four, not
Speaker 1: long after Jim arrived at Carlysle Indian Industrial School, Hiram
Speaker 1: Thorpe died of blood poisoning, possibly as the result of
Speaker 1: a snake bite during a hunting trip. Jim was not
Speaker 1: able to return home for his father's funeral. At this point,
Speaker 1: by the age of about sixteen, Jim had lost his
Speaker 1: twin brother, other siblings, and both of his parents. The
Speaker 1: staff at Carlysle became concerned for him, not so much
Speaker 1: for the sake of his mental health, but because he
Speaker 1: wasn't really participating understandably, and as the school administration saw it,
Speaker 1: if a student wasn't participating, they also were not assimilating.
Speaker 1: So Jim was put into Carlyle's outplacement program, which was
Speaker 1: more typically used for older students. During summers or other breaks,
Speaker 1: students would be sent to live with white families out
Speaker 1: in the community, where they would work as domestic or
Speaker 1: agricultural help. In June of nineteen o four, Jim was
Speaker 1: sent to live with a family in Somerton, Pennsylvania, where
Speaker 1: he would cook and clean in exchange for room and
Speaker 1: board plus five dollars a month. Considering that Jim had
Speaker 1: a lot of experience in farming and Ranching. This placement
Speaker 1: didn't entirely make sense, and the family expected him to
Speaker 1: eat in the kitchen rather than with them in the
Speaker 1: dining room, which made it clear that they did not
Speaker 1: see him as their equal. He was moved to a
Speaker 1: different family in Pennsylvania, where he worked as their gardener,
Speaker 1: and then he was moved to a home in New
Speaker 1: Jersey where he worked as a foreman for Native American
Speaker 1: workers on a local farm. He returned to Carlisle in
Speaker 1: nine seven, and that is when he got involved in
Speaker 1: the school's athletic program. We will get back to his
Speaker 1: time at Carlisle athletics after a quick spotsor break. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk a little bit about the history of sports,
Speaker 1: especially football, at Carlisle Indian Industrial School. The school established
Speaker 1: a collegiate football program in eight and then not long
Speaker 1: after that, Lieutenant Colonel Pratt briefly banned the sport after
Speaker 1: a player broke his leg during a game. When students
Speaker 1: banded together to try to get football reinstated, Pratt finally
Speaker 1: agreed under two conditions. The first condition was that they
Speaker 1: had to play fair. There would be no fighting, no
Speaker 1: slug other players, even if the white teams were doing
Speaker 1: it because their behavior, the Carlisle team's behavior was going
Speaker 1: to be seen as a reflection on all indigenous people.
Speaker 1: The second condition was quote that in the course of two,
Speaker 1: three or four years, you will develop your strength and
Speaker 1: ability to such a degree that you will whip the
Speaker 1: biggest football team in the country. To that end, Carlyle
Speaker 1: hired Glenn Warner as coach in eight Warner had been
Speaker 1: nicknamed Pop while serving as team captain at Cornell because
Speaker 1: at the age of five, he was the team's oldest member.
Speaker 1: He had coached college teams before starting at Carlisle, and
Speaker 1: with the exception of a brief break between nineteen o
Speaker 1: four and nineteen o six, he worked as a football
Speaker 1: coach at Carlisle until nineteen fourteen. There are all kinds
Speaker 1: of ball games that play really important roles in indigenous
Speaker 1: cultures all over North America, But when Pop Warner arrived
Speaker 1: at Carlysle, most of his players really did not know
Speaker 1: much about grit iron football. Specifically, a lot of them
Speaker 1: had also been living through years of deprivation. Warner's told
Speaker 1: Pratt that most of his prospective players should really be
Speaker 1: trying out for beds in a hospital rather than spots
Speaker 1: on a football team. Warner was genuinely afraid that there
Speaker 1: was no way that he could shape them into a
Speaker 1: team that would justify his twelve hundred dollar a year salary.
Speaker 1: American football itself was a fairly new sport at this point,
Speaker 1: having grown out of rugby and soccer. The Intercollegiate Football
Speaker 1: Association was established in eighteen seventy seven and was the
Speaker 1: first intercollegiate athletic conference until eighteen ninety three. It established
Speaker 1: and refined the rules of play among its member schools.
Speaker 1: Other organizations and associations followed, gradually refining a sport into
Speaker 1: one that was at least hopefully interesting to watch, but
Speaker 1: not so violent that it killed in an inordinate number
Speaker 1: of players dads. There were times in early American football
Speaker 1: history when player deaths were a big problem. Under Pop
Speaker 1: Warner's direction, Carlisle played a huge part in that overall
Speaker 1: process of refining the rules of football. In general. Carlisle's
Speaker 1: players were smaller and lighter than the players on their
Speaker 1: opposing teams, which included the powerhouses of the day like
Speaker 1: Harvard and Yale. The team itself also tended to have
Speaker 1: fewer players, so each player spent more time on the
Speaker 1: field and had less time to rest during a typical game.
Speaker 1: Those reduced numbers of players also meant that each player
Speaker 1: needed to be able to play multiple positions. Since Carlisle
Speaker 1: had no football stadium, nearly all of their games were
Speaker 1: away games, and since the team was largely funded through
Speaker 1: ticket sales, it maintained a really grueling schedule to get
Speaker 1: to all those games. So Warner coached the team to
Speaker 1: be quick, coordinated, and creative, writing new plays to take
Speaker 1: advantage of the other team's weaknesses. Some of these were
Speaker 1: straightforward football plays meant to be coordinated and agile, but
Speaker 1: others were trick plays. It were not strictly speaking against
Speaker 1: the rules, at least not until whichever governing body was
Speaker 1: in charge at the moment meant to adjust the rules
Speaker 1: for the following season. So here are some of the
Speaker 1: trick plays that Pop Warner used at Carlisle. He had
Speaker 1: straps sewn to the halfbacks and fullbacks uniforms so that
Speaker 1: their teammates could literally throw whoever got the ball when
Speaker 1: the play started. He added what he called a breast
Speaker 1: protector to the team's uniforms, which he said was to
Speaker 1: protect their breastbone if a player was blocked or tackled,
Speaker 1: or just fell. This breast protector was padded an oval,
Speaker 1: and it sure did look like a football if you
Speaker 1: put your arm over it. And there was also the
Speaker 1: hidden ball trick. In a game against Harvard in three
Speaker 1: the team gathered into a huddle, only they were facing
Speaker 1: outward instead of in, and then one of the players
Speaker 1: shoved the ball up the back of another's jersey before
Speaker 1: the huddle dispersed and ran in different directions, so the
Speaker 1: Harvard players did not know who had the ball. Warner
Speaker 1: was not the only coach and Carlyle not the only
Speaker 1: team incorporating this kind of trickery. For example, the car
Speaker 1: Lysle players were generally not at their best during bad
Speaker 1: weather or in poor field conditions. Warner's interpretation of this
Speaker 1: was that the other teams were often highly driven by
Speaker 1: a sense of school pride, so they played their best
Speaker 1: in any weather to avoid letting their school down. But
Speaker 1: the car Lysle players were more about the love of
Speaker 1: the game, and the game was just not as much
Speaker 1: fun in the mud, in freezing weather or in the
Speaker 1: middle of a downpour. As early as fans from Canton
Speaker 1: Athletic Club started fire hosing the field to muddy it
Speaker 1: up before Carlysle games. As another example, Harvard started using
Speaker 1: footballs that were the same color as their jerseys so
Speaker 1: it would be harder to see who had the ball.
Speaker 1: Over time, the rulemaking bodies, it would be like, no,
Speaker 1: you can't, you can't be shoving the balls that plays
Speaker 1: jerseys to hide them. So the played an overall part
Speaker 1: and how the rules of football evolved over the years.
Speaker 1: Within a few years of its establishment, Carlisle Indian Industrial
Speaker 1: Schools football team was recognized as a force to be
Speaker 1: reckoned with among the opposing teams and within the Indigenous community. Consequently,
Speaker 1: Carlisle was able to recruit the most athletically skilled players
Speaker 1: from indigenous nations all over the United States. They were
Speaker 1: doing the same thing that other football teams were, picking
Speaker 1: the best and brightest athletes wherever they were. A November two,
Speaker 1: nineteen o eight, right up in the Philadelphia Public Ledger
Speaker 1: sums up the team Carlisle grew into quote, the Indian team,
Speaker 1: if not the best in America, has a most distinguishing factor.
Speaker 1: It is always fit. At one stage of the season, Yale,
Speaker 1: West Point, Harvard, or Princeton might defeat the Indians. It
Speaker 1: is nearly always necessary for each of these teams to
Speaker 1: be at their best when they meet the Indians, but
Speaker 1: the Indians can always, in any season, beat almost any
Speaker 1: team at any time of the season, the Indians displayed
Speaker 1: the most remarkable form and football prowess. To get back
Speaker 1: to Jim Thorpe and his part in all of this,
Speaker 1: not long after he got back to Carlisle after his outplacements,
Speaker 1: he was walking to an intermural football game with some
Speaker 1: of his intermural teammates. He wasn't on a varsity team yet,
Speaker 1: and he saw members of the varsity track and field
Speaker 1: team practicing the high jump. He watched as they kept
Speaker 1: raising the bar an inch at a time, and the
Speaker 1: players tried to jump over. Although most of them were
Speaker 1: able to clear the bar when it was set to
Speaker 1: five ft eight inches, none of them could clear it
Speaker 1: at five nine. Thorpe asked if he could try, which
Speaker 1: the varsity team found laughable. In his words quote, I
Speaker 1: had a pair of overalls on, a hickory shirt and
Speaker 1: a pair of gymnasium shoes that belonged to someone I
Speaker 1: looked like anything but a high jumper. The track athletes
Speaker 1: snickered a bit as the bar was set up for me.
Speaker 1: I cleared the barrow my first try, and, laughing at
Speaker 1: the astonished group of athletes, went on down to the
Speaker 1: lower field for the game. The next day, he was
Speaker 1: called into Pop Warner's office. When Warner asked if he
Speaker 1: knew what he had done, Thorpe said, nothing bad, I hope.
Speaker 1: Warner told him that he had just broken the school
Speaker 1: record in the high jump, and Thorpe replied that he
Speaker 1: thought he could probably do better if he was actually
Speaker 1: wearing a tracksuit. This feat earned Thorpe a spot on
Speaker 1: the varsity track team, with Warner telling him that he
Speaker 1: might want to coach one day, and if he did,
Speaker 1: he would need to know about track and field to
Speaker 1: do a good job at it. We have really focused
Speaker 1: on football so far, but by this point Carlyle's athletic
Speaker 1: reputation involved multiple sports, including track and field, and that
Speaker 1: reputation had also drawn some criticism, including allegations that Carlyle
Speaker 1: was fielding players who were not actually students. And while
Speaker 1: it was true that some of Carlyle's players were older
Speaker 1: than the typical college player and that some of them
Speaker 1: barely attended classes, the school maintained that all of its
Speaker 1: players were legal. It did, however, implement a four year
Speaker 1: limit to how long players could remain on a varsity team.
Speaker 1: In an effort to deflect criticism, Albert exen Dine, who
Speaker 1: was about to age out of the varsity track team,
Speaker 1: was assigned to Thorpe kind of as a mentor. At
Speaker 1: the time, exen Dine held most of the school's medals
Speaker 1: in track and field, and at a meet at the
Speaker 1: end of his first season, Thorpe broke all of those records.
Speaker 1: When the varsity football season started in the fall, Thorpe
Speaker 1: insisted that he be allowed to play, but Warner objected
Speaker 1: that he didn't want to put his track star at risk.
Speaker 1: As a compromise, Warner tried to put Thorpe on the
Speaker 1: football team as a kicker, and Thorpe would not accept
Speaker 1: that as being good enough. Finally, exasperated with Thorpe's insistence,
Speaker 1: Warner basically made him the target for tackling practice, But
Speaker 1: as his teammates tried to tell backle him, he just
Speaker 1: kept dodging them and flipping them over and then out
Speaker 1: running everyone who was left standing. The descriptions of this
Speaker 1: for multiple people are really like. Pop Warner was like, fine,
Speaker 1: you want to be on the football team, They're gonna
Speaker 1: be the target for this practice. And they did not
Speaker 1: work out the way Pop Warner was expecting. So Pop
Speaker 1: Warner finally relented and allowed Thorpe onto the varsity football team,
Speaker 1: although he was inexperienced enough as a football player that
Speaker 1: he spent most of that first season on the bench.
Speaker 1: He was a backup player to Albert Payne. I think
Speaker 1: in one of the biographies I read, it said that
Speaker 1: his first varsity football practice was the first time he
Speaker 1: had worked with an actual football, rather than the one
Speaker 1: that had been stitched together from leather scraps and stuffed
Speaker 1: with rags. Carlile finished that season, though, with ten wins
Speaker 1: and one loss, and Thorpe started a scrapbook of press
Speaker 1: clippings about his games. Thorpe returned to both track and
Speaker 1: fee field and football at Carlisle in and he started
Speaker 1: to get a lot more time on the field in
Speaker 1: football games. One reason was that a lot of Carlyle
Speaker 1: players had reached their four year limit and had aged out,
Speaker 1: but also Thorpe was just flat out amazing. For example,
Speaker 1: in Carlyle's game against Conway Hall, Thorpe scored five touchdowns
Speaker 1: and through a thirty yard pass that led to another score.
Speaker 1: During the first half of the game, Warner finally pulled
Speaker 1: him out of the game because he felt like they
Speaker 1: were just humiliating the other team. The final score there
Speaker 1: was fifty three to zero. At this point Thorpe temporarily
Speaker 1: took a break from Carlisle. So that seems like a
Speaker 1: good point to also take a pause on this episode.
Speaker 1: We will pick it up next time. Do you have
Speaker 1: a little bit of listener mail for us? Sure? Do?
Speaker 1: This listener mail is from Gene and Jean sent the
Speaker 1: most wonderful picture. Jean wrote in after our episode where
Speaker 1: I interviewed Dr Catherine Sharp Landeck about Jackie Cochrane, and
Speaker 1: Jean says, Hi, Holling and Tracy, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for presenting such a thoughtful and entertaining interview with Dr
Speaker 1: Landeck about Jackie Cochrane. As a retired Air Force pilot
Speaker 1: and Air Force Academy graduate, I feel a deep debt
Speaker 1: of gratitude to Jackie and the other women's Air Force
Speaker 1: Service pilots. At the same time, I was surprised to
Speaker 1: find that my career path may not have met with
Speaker 1: her approval, especially considering I'm married to another military pilot
Speaker 1: and had two children while actively serving. As with many
Speaker 1: of your podcast episodes, you dealt honestly with Jackie's integrity,
Speaker 1: neither downplaying her accomplishments nor glossing over her shortcomings. Thank
Speaker 1: you for presenting women and all your subjects as authentic
Speaker 1: human beings with faults and flaws that coexist with their
Speaker 1: impressive feats and important events. Listening to your podcast as
Speaker 1: one of the highlights of my day, and I can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear what you'll be talking about next. Cheers
Speaker 1: Gane from Tampa. And then the attachment UH says ps.
Speaker 1: Here's the picture that would probably have Jackie rolling in
Speaker 1: her grave. It was taken about two weeks before my
Speaker 1: second son was born. My aunt said that I looked
Speaker 1: like a cross between a South American dictator and a
Speaker 1: pregnant Catholic schoolgirl. UM. So Jean is in her uniform, UM.
Speaker 1: She has all these medals pins to her her chest area.
Speaker 1: She's holding a certificate that presumably she has just been
Speaker 1: awarded UM and is definitely UH in the late time
Speaker 1: of pregnancy. I love this picture. UM. I love the
Speaker 1: extremely happy look on on Gene space and I love
Speaker 1: I mean, we didn't talk about this specifically in the episode,
Speaker 1: but I mean we talked a lot about Jackie Cochrane
Speaker 1: thinking that women needed to have babies and raised children,
Speaker 1: and we didn't really talk about the fact that a
Speaker 1: lot of women who serve in the military and who
Speaker 1: flies pilots also have children and raise them. Um, that's
Speaker 1: definitely true. So thank you Gene for this great picture
Speaker 1: and the great email. UH. Thanks to everybody uh for
Speaker 1: listening to the show today. If you would like to
Speaker 1: write to us about this or any other podcast, we
Speaker 1: are at History Podcast at i heart radio dot com,
Speaker 1: and then we are all over social media at missed
Speaker 1: in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
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