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 Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we
Speaker 1: have the third part of what I think is our
Speaker 1: first ever three parter on the show. There may have
Speaker 1: been three parters by briar hosts that I'm not remembering,
Speaker 1: but for Holly and me, it's the first sort of
Speaker 1: trilogy of podcast. In part one, we talked about Jim
Speaker 1: Thorpe's early life and his upbringing in boarding schools for
Speaker 1: Native American children, including his time on the track and
Speaker 1: football teams at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and then in
Speaker 1: part two we talked about his just incredible performance at
Speaker 1: the nineteen twelve Summer Olympic Games in Stockholm, and then
Speaker 1: how he was later stripped of the medals that he
Speaker 1: had earned in those games. And are concluding episode, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about his time the professional athlete and
Speaker 1: then his life after the end of his career as
Speaker 1: an athlete, including two weiss of the story that have
Speaker 1: just tragically continued for a long time after his death.
Speaker 1: One aspect of it I find particularly heartbreaking, which we
Speaker 1: will get to After being stripped of his Olympic medals,
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe publicly tried to downplay things, saying he knew
Speaker 1: that he had earned them, but really he was heartbroken
Speaker 1: at the loss of his medals and the fact that
Speaker 1: he was now barred from being an amateur athlete. He
Speaker 1: started trying to figure out what he was going to
Speaker 1: do next after the Olympics. Thorpe had turned down offers
Speaker 1: to box and to appear on vaudeville. After his medals
Speaker 1: and amateur status were revoked, he started looking for opportunities
Speaker 1: as a professional baseball player. In Thorpe signed with the
Speaker 1: New York Giants, which was the top ranked team in
Speaker 1: the league. His contract was for six thousand dollars a
Speaker 1: year for three years. He had never been as strong
Speaker 1: at baseball as he had been in football or track
Speaker 1: and field, and there were also some rumors that he
Speaker 1: was being brought onto the team basically to bring in
Speaker 1: fans and not to actually play. Running alongside that was
Speaker 1: the idea that the expense of paying him was going
Speaker 1: to be worth it as long as his presence on
Speaker 1: the team sold tickets. One of the reasons that Thorpe
Speaker 1: had wanted to qualify for the Olympics was that he
Speaker 1: wanted to prove that he was worthy of marrying Iva Miller,
Speaker 1: also called Ivy, who was his longtime sweetheart from Carlyle.
Speaker 1: Ivy's background is a little bit complicated. She had been
Speaker 1: born in Cherokee Country and her mother was reportedly part Cherokee,
Speaker 1: but there's no evidence to back that up. Her father
Speaker 1: seems to have fabricated an indigenous ancestry for her and
Speaker 1: her siblings so that he could enroll them in a
Speaker 1: boarding school after their mother died. It is not entirely
Speaker 1: clear how much or what indigenous ancestry she had, if any,
Speaker 1: and whether or not Jim knew about any of this.
Speaker 1: Jim and Iva got married after the nineteen thirteen World Series,
Speaker 1: which the Giants lost to the Philadelphia Athletics four games
Speaker 1: to one. They got married at the Catholic Chapel that
Speaker 1: they had attended while they were at Carlisle, and their
Speaker 1: honeymoon was the Giants White Sox World Tour, in which
Speaker 1: the Giants and the White Sox traveled west across the
Speaker 1: United States and then to Japan, with stops all over Asia, Europe,
Speaker 1: and Northern Africa. Jim and Iva would go on to
Speaker 1: have four children, Jim Junior, Gayl, Charlotte, and Grace. Back
Speaker 1: at Carlisle, students were petitioning for an investigation into poor
Speaker 1: conditions at the school. The results of this investigation were appalling,
Speaker 1: detailing deprivation, beatings, and virtually the entire school being quote
Speaker 1: made subservient to football and athletics. The report also leveled
Speaker 1: numerous charges against Pop Warner, who had been the coach
Speaker 1: of the athletics there and one of the people who
Speaker 1: really encouraged Jim Thorpe, from abusive treatment of players to
Speaker 1: financial corruption. Warner denied these charges, claiming that they were
Speaker 1: the work of a vendetta by disgruntled former athletes. He
Speaker 1: left Carlisle and took a job with the University of Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: The Carlisle School closed in nineteen I think this report
Speaker 1: is like it's indicative of one of the truths about Carlisle,
Speaker 1: which is that Jim, as an athlete and other athletes
Speaker 1: there were shielded from some of the worst things about
Speaker 1: the school in their position of being athletes, And like
Speaker 1: this report brought a lot of that to like for
Speaker 1: people who didn't know about it. On December fifteenth of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen, Thorpe got a letter that he was now
Speaker 1: qualified to be a US citizen and closed was the
Speaker 1: deed for his land allotment. As we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: there was a whole process where if somebody had been
Speaker 1: able to maintain a land allotment for a long enough time,
Speaker 1: they were qualified to become a citizen. That same year,
Speaker 1: he also started playing and coaching the Canton bull Dogs,
Speaker 1: which is a professional football team based in Canton, Ohio.
Speaker 1: So he was playing professional baseball and football at the
Speaker 1: same time. There their seasons didn't entirely overlap, but he
Speaker 1: was going from one professional sport to another, and then
Speaker 1: going back to Oklahoma to support himself and his family,
Speaker 1: primarily by hunting when neither of those sports was in season.
Speaker 1: As all of this was happening, Thorpe was still under
Speaker 1: contract to the New York Giants, although his baseball career
Speaker 1: involved being repeatedly sent down to the minor leagues or
Speaker 1: loaned out to other teams. When the Selective Service Act
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventeen was passed to allow the United States
Speaker 1: to conscript an army for World War One, many Native
Speaker 1: American men registered, and about twelve thousand served in the
Speaker 1: military during the war. Because he was married and supporting
Speaker 1: his wife and children, Thorpe was exempt. Apparently. The Giants
Speaker 1: manager John J. McGraw also discouraged Thorpe from volunteering, arguing
Speaker 1: that as an internationally famous fleet he could become a target.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighteen, Jim and Iva's son, Jim Jr. Died
Speaker 1: of polio, and it was only three Jim was obviously bereft,
Speaker 1: absolutely grief stricken. People who knew him said that he
Speaker 1: was just never the same afterward. But McGraw really did
Speaker 1: not have a lot of patience for Thorpe's lack of
Speaker 1: focus on the field in the aftermath of his son's death.
Speaker 1: He already thought that Thorpe was too prone to goofing around.
Speaker 1: Thorpe's nickname back at Carlisle had actually been libbling, which
Speaker 1: meant coursing around. Jim's relationship with Iva had already been
Speaker 1: kind of strained over the issue of alcohol. Jim's drinking
Speaker 1: was comparable to that of his teammates, but Iva would
Speaker 1: have much preferred him to be a teetotaler. In the
Speaker 1: wake of Jim Junior's death, both Jim's relationship with his
Speaker 1: wife and his performance at work really started to suffer. Then,
Speaker 1: in nineteen nineteen, Thorpe left the New York Giants. Report
Speaker 1: worded Lely McGraw had called him a dumb Indian after
Speaker 1: he missed a signal, and Thorpe, outraged, had chased him
Speaker 1: down the field until his teammates intervened. Thorpe was traded
Speaker 1: to the Boston Braves, and he played with them for
Speaker 1: one season before going back to the minor leagues. Thorpe's
Speaker 1: career in professional football was going somewhat better, though. The
Speaker 1: American Professional Football Association was formed in nineteen twenty and
Speaker 1: Thorpe was named its first president. This organization would later
Speaker 1: become the National Football League, or the NFL, so you'll
Speaker 1: see a lot of times Jim Thorpe was the first
Speaker 1: president of the NFL. In the nineteen twenties, Thorpe also
Speaker 1: started to move from playing and coaching in existing teams
Speaker 1: to starting new ones. In nineteen two, Thorpe helped Canton
Speaker 1: fan and dog breeder Walter Lingo start the All Indigenous
Speaker 1: Urrang Indians football team. As part of this arrangement, Lingo
Speaker 1: paid Thorpe to start and coach the team and to
Speaker 1: manage his kennel for five hundred dollars a week. This
Speaker 1: may sound like an out of the blue arrangement, but
Speaker 1: Thorpe had a lot of years of experience training and
Speaker 1: caring for hunting dogs. In addition to so many other
Speaker 1: things we've talked about him being good at, he was
Speaker 1: very good with animals. Carlisle Indian Industrial School had aggressively
Speaker 1: recruited and then trained many of the best indigenous football
Speaker 1: players in the United States, had sort of sucked up
Speaker 1: all of the football talent, and then it had closed
Speaker 1: down four years before all of this happened, So a
Speaker 1: lot of the players on this team were actually older
Speaker 1: than Thorpe was. Although the team did not do particularly
Speaker 1: well in its first season, Lingo seemed to enjoy it
Speaker 1: and funded it for a nineteen twenty three season as well.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty three, Jim and Iva separated. Their marriage
Speaker 1: had just never recovered from the death of Jim Jr.
Speaker 1: They legally divorced in n that same year. Jim remarried
Speaker 1: to FRIEDA. Kirkpatrick, who was eighteen years his junior and
Speaker 1: who he had started getting to know as his marriage
Speaker 1: to Iva was crumbling. They went on to have four sons,
Speaker 1: carl Bill, Richard, John, who was known as Jack. Jim's
Speaker 1: relationships with Iva and Frieda, and with the children that
Speaker 1: he fathered during those two marriages could be a little complicated,
Speaker 1: as was the case with Iva. Frieda did not really
Speaker 1: approve of Jim's drinking, which was kind of hit or miss.
Speaker 1: There were times when he gave it up, but there
Speaker 1: were times that it became heavier as their marriage went on.
Speaker 1: As a professional athlete playing two different sports, he was
Speaker 1: also away from home a lot when his children were young.
Speaker 1: His grandson Michael D. Koehler, writing in an article and
Speaker 1: Educational Digest, wrote that his mother, Charlotte, had sometimes felt
Speaker 1: like Thorpe didn't even know her name. At the same time, though,
Speaker 1: Thorpe's children really seemed devoted to him, although that devotion
Speaker 1: could take somewhat different forms, which we will get to
Speaker 1: in a bit. In ninety six, Thorpe played his final
Speaker 1: season with the Canton Bulldogs. In seven, he played and
Speaker 1: coached a season with the all Indigenous World Famous Indians
Speaker 1: basketball team. By this point, though his career is a
Speaker 1: professional athlete was really winding down. He played his last
Speaker 1: professional football games, which ended his time as a pro
Speaker 1: athlete in Thorpe was about forty at this point, which
Speaker 1: would be a little older for a pro athlete, like
Speaker 1: it's hard on your body, but it also wasn't entirely
Speaker 1: what he was planning. In nineteen twenty nine, the Carnegie
Speaker 1: Foundation published a report called American College Athletics, which revealed
Speaker 1: all kinds of issues. There were payments to players and
Speaker 1: secret funding and just corruption in college athletics. This report
Speaker 1: framed college athletics as a threat to education, and the
Speaker 1: suspicions that it raised trickled over into professional sports as well.
Speaker 1: In the ninety nine stock market crash and the Great
Speaker 1: Depression also seriously reduced the number of opportunities for pro
Speaker 1: athletes and coaches. So regardless of what Thorpe may have
Speaker 1: wanted to do as an athlete at this point, there
Speaker 1: just were not many opportunities in professional sports at all
Speaker 1: for him to try to pursue. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about Jim Thorpe's life after professional sports. After we first
Speaker 1: pause and have a sponsor break between n and Jim.
Speaker 1: Thorpe did all kinds of jobs to make ends meet.
Speaker 1: He worked as a laborer and a movie extra. He
Speaker 1: eventually started a casting agency to advocate for Indigenous actors
Speaker 1: to be cast as indigenous characters on screen. This, of course,
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a tangle because a lot
Speaker 1: of the roles that were available at the time were
Speaker 1: really heavily stereotyped. But his goal was really to help
Speaker 1: indigenous actors get a foot in the door in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: including stuff like helping them find housing, helping make sure
Speaker 1: they had enough to eat. He was doing a lot
Speaker 1: of work to just help, especially other Indigenous people in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: By the mid nineteen thirties, Thorpe was most supporting himself
Speaker 1: through speaking engagements and acting as well as odd jobs.
Speaker 1: He appeared in more than seventy films as an actor
Speaker 1: or an extra. His busiest year on that front was
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, when he appeared in seventeen films. He
Speaker 1: also sold the rights to his life story to MGM
Speaker 1: ahead of the nineteen thirty two Olympic Games. He also
Speaker 1: collaborated with Thomas F. Collison to write Jim Thorpe's History
Speaker 1: of the Olympics, and then he followed up the publication
Speaker 1: of that book with public readings and signings. The nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two Summer Olympic Games were held in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and that's actually where Thorpe was living at the time,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't afford a ticket. When his fans heard
Speaker 1: about this, people offered to buy one for him, and
Speaker 1: then he wound up getting a press pass for the
Speaker 1: press box. During opening ceremonies, Vice President Charles Curtis, member
Speaker 1: of the car Nation and the first person of color
Speaker 1: to serve as Vice President of the United States, read
Speaker 1: an article about Thorpe being moved to tears from the
Speaker 1: press box, and he invited Thorpe to sit in the
Speaker 1: presidential box. The next day. The crowd gave sorp a
Speaker 1: standing ovation as he took his seat. As all of
Speaker 1: this was going on, the United States federal government was
Speaker 1: really shifting its policies toward Indigenous people. The Wheeler Howard Act,
Speaker 1: also called the Indian Reorganization Act and later nicknamed the
Speaker 1: Indian New Deal, was passed in We talked about this
Speaker 1: a little bit and sort of how it fits into
Speaker 1: the overall context of of federal Indian law in our
Speaker 1: two part on the occupation of Alcatraz. This act moved
Speaker 1: the federal government away from re allotting indigenous lands to
Speaker 1: individual people and trying to assimilate indigenous people's into white culture.
Speaker 1: It returned a lot of the so called surplus lands
Speaker 1: back to indigenous nations, and then also tried to move
Speaker 1: those nations toward a state of sovereignty rather than Indigenous
Speaker 1: people being managed by the federal government. This act and
Speaker 1: fluted provisions for funding as well. If an indigenous nation
Speaker 1: adopted a written constitution, it was eligible for loans to
Speaker 1: pay for things like new infrastructure and educational programs. For
Speaker 1: people in Jim Thorpe's generation, who had spent most of
Speaker 1: their lives in schools that systematically tried to strip them
Speaker 1: of their Indigenous identity and force them to assimilate with
Speaker 1: white culture, and being told that their nation's cultures and
Speaker 1: practices were inferior to white culture, this shift could be
Speaker 1: profoundly disorienting. Different tribes also responded really differently to the
Speaker 1: federal government's encouragement to draft and vote on a new constitution,
Speaker 1: and there were also differences of opinion within those tribes
Speaker 1: and nations about how best to move forward. As we
Speaker 1: say on the show, a lot no group is a
Speaker 1: monolith and not everybody agreed with all of this. For example,
Speaker 1: there were members of the Second Fox Nation who wanted
Speaker 1: to approve a tribal constitution under the terms of the
Speaker 1: Wheeler Howard Act. Then there were others who just totally
Speaker 1: distrusted this entire idea you and saw the requirement for
Speaker 1: a constitution as just another way for the federal government
Speaker 1: to try to control indigenous nations. It was this faction
Speaker 1: that recruited Jim Thorpe to advocate on their behalf. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the Sac and Fox Nation did approve a new constitution,
Speaker 1: although it has taken decades and a series of court
Speaker 1: battles for the nation to put many of the terms
Speaker 1: of that constitution into practice. In the words of Jim's son, Jack,
Speaker 1: who was principal chief of the Second Fox Nation for
Speaker 1: seven years beginning in nineteen eighty, quote, the Sac and
Speaker 1: Fox went through eleven major lawsuits to exercise our right
Speaker 1: to control our destiny. We are still in court battles.
Speaker 1: Jack Thorpe, by the way, died in eleven at the
Speaker 1: age of seventy three. He will come up again in
Speaker 1: just a bit. Jim Thorpe's position in the middle of
Speaker 1: all this was that indigenous people should be able to
Speaker 1: manage their own affairs rather than being perpetual wards of
Speaker 1: the United States government, and in his mind, this included
Speaker 1: things like being able to follow their own religions and
Speaker 1: observe their own cultural practices. But he also generally disagreed
Speaker 1: with legislation that was targeted specifically at Indigenous people, even
Speaker 1: if that legislation was meant to be helpful. He thought
Speaker 1: that indigenous people experienced lots of hardships, but so did
Speaker 1: people of other races and ethnicities, so he thought that
Speaker 1: legislation that set indigenous people apart in some way was
Speaker 1: really infantilizing and controlling. In nineteen thirty seven, Burton K. Wheeler,
Speaker 1: who was one of the legislators who the Wheeler Howard
Speaker 1: Act had been named for, had actually come to oppose it,
Speaker 1: and he introduced a bill to try to repeal it.
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe actually supported this repeal bill, which ultimately failed.
Speaker 1: In one Jim's wife, Frieda, filed for divorce. As we
Speaker 1: noted earlier, she had never really approved of Jim's drinking,
Speaker 1: and while he had given it up at one point,
Speaker 1: he did still drink from time to time, and as
Speaker 1: time went on. When he did choose to drink, he
Speaker 1: then drank more heavily and he was more likely to
Speaker 1: get into some kind of altercation while under the influence.
Speaker 1: Frieda also thought that Jim was not careful enough with money,
Speaker 1: and he also spent long stretches of time away from home.
Speaker 1: That was something that was normal for him, but it
Speaker 1: was really a strain on her. Jim did not contest
Speaker 1: the divorce, Yeah, like he there were there are two
Speaker 1: things here. One is that even though he had spent
Speaker 1: so much of his upbringing in boarding schools, like he
Speaker 1: also grew up in a culture where it was normal,
Speaker 1: especially for men to like go on prolonged hunts away
Speaker 1: from the family like that. That was just sort of
Speaker 1: a thing that happened, and it was not what Frieda
Speaker 1: was expecting or about at all um. And then the
Speaker 1: other thing was he gave a lot of money away
Speaker 1: to people that needed it, especially other indigenous people, and
Speaker 1: so he would be broke. Were like, why don't you
Speaker 1: have any money, and it was because he gave it away,
Speaker 1: And that was like another thing that caused a big
Speaker 1: rift in between them. When passing through Dearborn, Michigan in
Speaker 1: the early nineties. On a speaking tour, Thorpe was offered
Speaker 1: a job as a secure guard at the Ford plant there.
Speaker 1: He wound up taking it, and then while he was
Speaker 1: living in Dearborn, he had his first heart attack. Then,
Speaker 1: during World War Two, he was too old to be
Speaker 1: accepted into the Armed forces, so he joined the US
Speaker 1: Merchant Marine. He sailed aboard the USS Southwest Victory, and
Speaker 1: then when people realized who he was, they got him
Speaker 1: to start doing things like hospital visits and public appearances
Speaker 1: to try to boost you know, soldiers and other people's morale,
Speaker 1: which is a thing that I kind of love. Like.
Speaker 1: That was not what he had gotten on board for.
Speaker 1: But as soon as they realized that they had Jim
Speaker 1: Thorpe on their ship, they were like, WHOA, okay, we
Speaker 1: gotta work out a way for you to make people
Speaker 1: feel better. On June two, n Thorpe got married for
Speaker 1: the third time to Patricia Gladys ask you. She went
Speaker 1: by Patsy. They got married in Tijuana, and apparently Thorpe
Speaker 1: was inebriated enough not to remember the ceremony when he
Speaker 1: woke up next to her the next day. Patsy acted
Speaker 1: as Thorpe's manager in addition to being his wife, for
Speaker 1: example getting him to start charging five hundred dollars for
Speaker 1: speaking engagements rather than doing most of them for free.
Speaker 1: She also led an attempt to get his Olympic medals
Speaker 1: restored in the late nineteen forties. But Patsy has also
Speaker 1: been described as opportunistic, controlling, and even cruel, with expensive
Speaker 1: tastes that burned through the money that she was helping
Speaker 1: Jim bring in. Their relationship was often stormy. By this
Speaker 1: point in his life, Thorpe had become an advocate for
Speaker 1: athletics programs to try to curb juvenile delinquency, including a
Speaker 1: plan to develop a Junior Olympics program. He also advocated
Speaker 1: for the Sac and Fox Nation to be compensated for
Speaker 1: land that the government had bought in eighteen fourteen, which
Speaker 1: later turned out to contain oil fields. It's a whole
Speaker 1: different topic of like land rights versus the mineral rights
Speaker 1: that are associated with them. After World War Two was over,
Speaker 1: he started appearing in exhibition games, and also inspired by
Speaker 1: the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, he started a
Speaker 1: baseball team for girls. In ninety nine, Weren't Brothers announced
Speaker 1: that a film was in the works about Jim Thorpe's life.
Speaker 1: This became the first mainstream Hollywood movie about a living
Speaker 1: Indigenous person rather than a Western or a movie about
Speaker 1: an Indigenous historical figure or event. This announcement brought him
Speaker 1: a new wave of fame, including offers to work as
Speaker 1: a coach. In the early nineteen fifties, Thorpe noticed a
Speaker 1: sore on his lip that turned out to be cancer,
Speaker 1: and as he was undergoing treatment, Passy made a tearful
Speaker 1: televised plea for help, saying that they were penniless. They
Speaker 1: definitely were not wealthy. They were not penniless, though, but
Speaker 1: this allegation led people to do things like send outrage
Speaker 1: letters to Warner Brothers under the idea that Thorpe had
Speaker 1: not been compensated for his life story, even though he
Speaker 1: had sold the rights to this story like way earlier
Speaker 1: on this film, Jim Thorpe All American came out in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one, and it started Burt Lancaster as Jim Thorpe.
Speaker 1: Thorpe also worked as an adviser on the film, including
Speaker 1: teaching Lancaster how to kick a football. The movie premiered
Speaker 1: in Carlisle in Oklahoma City on August Also in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one, the Associated Press called on sports reporters to
Speaker 1: compile lists of the best athletes of the first half
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. It's like the same thing that
Speaker 1: happens at the end of every year and decade now.
Speaker 1: Jesse Owens was named the best track and field athlete,
Speaker 1: with Jim Thorpe coming in second. And then the greatest
Speaker 1: athlete overall was Jim Thorpe, with two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: two of three hundred nine voters placing him in that
Speaker 1: top spot. Coming in second was Babe Ruth. Jim Thorpe
Speaker 1: spent the last couple of years of his life trying
Speaker 1: to start various projects, but none of them really took off.
Speaker 1: He died on March nifty three at the age of
Speaker 1: about sixty four, shortly after he had had a third
Speaker 1: heart attack. In the words of his New York Times
Speaker 1: obituary quote, his memory should be kept for what it deserves,
Speaker 1: that of the greatest all around athlete of our time.
Speaker 1: There's more to Jim Thorpe's story, though, uh in part
Speaker 1: because the Olympic medals that we have talked about a
Speaker 1: few times, but then also because of a dispute over
Speaker 1: his body, and we're going to talk about that after
Speaker 1: a sponsor break. After Jim Thorpe died in his body
Speaker 1: lay in state in California and it was viewed by
Speaker 1: hundreds of mourners. Family received condolence letters from public figures,
Speaker 1: including President Dwight Eisenhower. His body was then taken to Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: and the plan was for both a Catholic funeral and
Speaker 1: a Sacking Fox ceremony followed by a Sacking Fox burial.
Speaker 1: The Oklahoma legislature had passed a bill a lotting funds
Speaker 1: for a monument that would serve as his final resting place.
Speaker 1: Thorpe had not left a will, but his sons reported
Speaker 1: that he told them and others that he wanted to
Speaker 1: be buried on sac and Fox Land. However, without really
Speaker 1: explaining why, Governor Johnston Murray vetoed the legislation that set
Speaker 1: aside funding for a memorial to Jim Thorpe. On April twelfth,
Speaker 1: ninety three, the thunder Clan of the Second Fox Nation
Speaker 1: started a two day funeral ceremony. Patsy Thorpe arrived at
Speaker 1: the ceremony with police interrupting the proceedings and saying that
Speaker 1: it was too cold. She had Jim's body loaded into
Speaker 1: a hearse and take into a mortuary. A Catholic funeral
Speaker 1: mass followed at St. Benedict's Roman Catholic Church in Shawnee.
Speaker 1: Patty Thorpe didn't consult with Jim's children or other family
Speaker 1: members or the sac and Fox Nation about what happened. Next,
Speaker 1: she started looking for a place that was willing to
Speaker 1: provide a final resting spot for Jim's remains, one that
Speaker 1: she thought would be befitting of his life and his legacy,
Speaker 1: and that turned out to be the towns of mock
Speaker 1: Chunk and East mock Chunk, Pennsylvania. The towns were struggling
Speaker 1: after the collapse of the mining industry in the area,
Speaker 1: and town leaders hoped that this decision would make them
Speaker 1: a tourist attraction. The town's merged renamed themselves Jim Thorpe
Speaker 1: and started planning for the construction of a tomb that
Speaker 1: would house Thorpe's body. As this was happening, in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five, the NFL named its m v P Award
Speaker 1: the Jim Thorpe Trophy. Jim Thorpe's body was entombed in
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. In nineteen fifty seven, soil from four
Speaker 1: locations was placed at the tomb. This included Thorpe's family
Speaker 1: farm in Oklahoma, the Carlisle Athletic Field, New York's Polo Grounds,
Speaker 1: and the Olympic Stadium in Stockholm, Sweden. The memorial was
Speaker 1: inscribed with King Gustav the fifth of Sweden's statement that
Speaker 1: Thorpe was the greatest athlete in the world, and also
Speaker 1: adorned with medallions that depicted Thorpe's athletic feet. Thorpe's children
Speaker 1: did not attend this ceremony. This memorial did not, however,
Speaker 1: become a tourist attraction as the town had hoped. When
Speaker 1: Thorpe biographer Bob Wheeler visited as a child years later,
Speaker 1: no one in the town could even tell him about
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe, and he found the tomb neglected and hidden
Speaker 1: among overgrown weeds. Yeah, I watched to talk that he
Speaker 1: gave at the Museum of the American Indian and he
Speaker 1: talked about like he he was just such a fan
Speaker 1: of sports in general. And he was on this trip
Speaker 1: with his parents, and by total coincidence, they had driven
Speaker 1: past Jim Thorpe, and he was like, let's stop, and
Speaker 1: he sort of saw this spot. He was like, I
Speaker 1: feel like there's something there. We should look at whatever
Speaker 1: this is. And it turned out that that was like
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe's. It was Jim Thorpe's barial place, totally overgrown
Speaker 1: and would not have known it without stopping there to
Speaker 1: go look for it. To fast forward a bit in
Speaker 1: the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGRA,
Speaker 1: was en into law by President George H. W. Bush.
Speaker 1: This law was passed quote as a way to correct
Speaker 1: past abuses to and guarantee protection for the human remains
Speaker 1: and cultural objects of Native American tribal culture. Among the
Speaker 1: provisions of this law is the right to repatriation of
Speaker 1: indigenous cultural items, including human remains that are quote controlled
Speaker 1: by museums or federal agencies. The law basically paved the
Speaker 1: way for Indigenous people in nations to have the remains
Speaker 1: of their ancestors returned to them from museums where they
Speaker 1: are held. Jim Thorpe's youngest son, John again known as Jack,
Speaker 1: filed suit to have his father's remains repatriated to the
Speaker 1: Sac and Fox Nation under Nagpra on June. He thought
Speaker 1: that because his father's funeral ceremony had been interrupted, and
Speaker 1: because he had not been buried on Sac and Fox Land,
Speaker 1: that his soul was not at rest. As we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: Jack Thorpe died in eleven and after his passing, his
Speaker 1: surviving brothers, Bill and Richard were added to the suit,
Speaker 1: along with the Sac and Fox Nation. In United States
Speaker 1: District Court Judge Richard Caputo found in favor of Thorpe's sons.
Speaker 1: He ruled that NAGRA applied to the town of jim Thorpe.
Speaker 1: It could be defined as a museum receiving federal funds
Speaker 1: because the town had gotten money under the American Recovery
Speaker 1: and Reinvestment Act of two thousand nine. But by that
Speaker 1: point the town of jim Thorpe had become more of
Speaker 1: a tourist attraction, although not specifically because of the Jim
Speaker 1: Thorpe Memorial. The town had started hosting birthday celebrations and
Speaker 1: other Thorpe memorials, and even though the memorial where he
Speaker 1: was laid to rest wasn't its key tourist attraction, jim
Speaker 1: Thorpe had become a core part of the town's identity.
Speaker 1: Many residents, and at this point some of Thorpe's daughters
Speaker 1: and grandchildren objected to the repatriation and filed an appeal.
Speaker 1: As I understand it, by this point in the story,
Speaker 1: the memorial was a lot better maintained than it had
Speaker 1: been when his biographer found it as a child. On October,
Speaker 1: a three judge panel of the US Third Circuit Court
Speaker 1: of Appeals reversed the lower courts ruling under the absurdity doctrine.
Speaker 1: The basic idea was that a literal reading of the
Speaker 1: plain text of Nagar's provisions here would be in this
Speaker 1: context absurd. The ruling had two key parts. One was
Speaker 1: that Nagpra could not have been intended to overrule the
Speaker 1: intent of the decedent's legal next of kin and passy Thorpe,
Speaker 1: as the next of kin of Jim Thorpe had legally
Speaker 1: made the decision for where he would be buried. The
Speaker 1: other was that upholding the lower courts ruling would allow
Speaker 1: Nagpra to become a tool to settle family disputes among
Speaker 1: indigenous people, and in this case, the question of whether
Speaker 1: to repatriate Thorpe's remains was at its heart of family
Speaker 1: dispute and one that was complicated by centuries of indigenous history. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: as I understand it, when the court dispute started, Jim
Speaker 1: Thorpe's children were pretty unified in there. They're feeling that
Speaker 1: his remains should be returned back to the Second Fox Nation.
Speaker 1: But over time not all of them agreed anymore. And
Speaker 1: this is where to me, this just becomes so heartbreaking
Speaker 1: because you see these things play out in families where
Speaker 1: people start to disagree about something that important, and like,
Speaker 1: that is where we were at this point. On October five,
Speaker 1: the U. S. Supreme Court elected not to hear this case.
Speaker 1: While the sound of Jim Thorpe and some of Thorpe's
Speaker 1: descendants were satisfied with that outcome, it was heartbreaking for
Speaker 1: his surviving sons, Richard and Bill, both of whom were
Speaker 1: in their eighties and had hoped to see their father
Speaker 1: buried in Second Fox Land before their own deaths. Also
Speaker 1: heartbreaking for the Second Fox Nation as a whole. Bill
Speaker 1: Thorpe died at the age of ninety nineteen and Richard
Speaker 1: Thorpe died in January of this year at the age
Speaker 1: of seven. The ruling from the Third Court of appeals
Speaker 1: has been controversial, though nag press still applies when a
Speaker 1: museum's acquisition of a person's remains was done legally, so
Speaker 1: the legality of Patsy Thorpe's decision does not really apply.
Speaker 1: NAGPRA also includes specific language about mediating disputed claims. It
Speaker 1: has to since remains, burial objects, and other items being
Speaker 1: repatriated are often very old and can be connected to
Speaker 1: multiple families, tribes, or nations, and the years between Jim
Speaker 1: Thorpe's death and the court cases related to his burial place,
Speaker 1: there was a whole other effort going on that was
Speaker 1: related to his legacy, and that was an attempt to
Speaker 1: have his amateur status reinstated from the nine twelve Olympic
Speaker 1: Games and his medals returned to his family. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, after ongoing advocacy, the Amateur Athletics Union restored
Speaker 1: Thorpe's status as an amateur athlete for the time covering
Speaker 1: those games, but the IOC did not take any further
Speaker 1: action about his medals or his record. Thorpe biographer Robert
Speaker 1: Wheeler and his wife Dr Florence Ridland, who founded the
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe Foundation in two were a big part of
Speaker 1: this effort. Ridland managed to find a copy of the
Speaker 1: official by laws of the nineteen twelve Olympic Games sandwiched
Speaker 1: between two shelves at the Library of Congress, and one
Speaker 1: of its provisions was that any review of the game's
Speaker 1: outcome had to take place within thirty days of the games.
Speaker 1: The article that widely publicized Thorpe's time in semi professional
Speaker 1: baseball came out more than six months after the games
Speaker 1: were over. Yes, so, regardless of the question about whether
Speaker 1: semi professional baseball professionalized an athlete in a different sport
Speaker 1: three years later, the IOC had not followed its own
Speaker 1: rules in terms of this, basically the statute of limitations
Speaker 1: on how much time could pass before something like this
Speaker 1: could happen. So, based on this new information, on January
Speaker 1: nineteen three, the IOC presented Thorpe's descendants with replicas of
Speaker 1: his medals. It did not, however, alter the adjusted placements
Speaker 1: of the other finishers to reflect that Thorpe really had one. Instead,
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe and Ferdinand By are both listed as gold
Speaker 1: medalists in the men's pentathlon, with Thorpe's score of seven
Speaker 1: and Buys score of twenty one. Jim Thorpe and Hugo
Speaker 1: Vicelander are both listed as winners of the decathlon, with
Speaker 1: Thorpe's score of eight thousand, four hundred twelve point nine
Speaker 1: five five and Vicelander's score of seven thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 1: twenty four point four nine five, so they are all
Speaker 1: listed as sort of co gold medalists. The organization Bright
Speaker 1: path Strong started a petition to fully restore Jim Thorpe's
Speaker 1: Olympic record in July of Multiple indigenous tribes and organizations
Speaker 1: are involved, along with Picture Works Entertainment, which is working
Speaker 1: on a forthcoming biopic. Yeah that is all at bright
Speaker 1: paths strong dot com if you would like more information
Speaker 1: about it. Um that is Jim Thorpe. What you got
Speaker 1: in the way a listener mail this time around? I
Speaker 1: have listener mail from Rose and Rose wrote in after
Speaker 1: our recent episode on Cecilia Panga Poshkin and Rose says, Hello, First,
Speaker 1: I love your podcast and I've been listening since sometime
Speaker 1: in While staying up to the down new episodes, I've
Speaker 1: also been going methodically backward through the archive and am
Speaker 1: currently in December two thousand nine. I'm just gonna say soon,
Speaker 1: the episodes are going to get a latch shorter if
Speaker 1: you're going backwards in that way. The ones from oh eight,
Speaker 1: some of them are like four minutes. I caught your
Speaker 1: exasperation about the off handed suggestion that Cecilia Panga Poshkin
Speaker 1: could take over managing the glass plates collection if she
Speaker 1: went to work at the Harvard Observatory. That was made
Speaker 1: because she was female and interested after googling to make sure.
Speaker 1: I'd like to point out that the collection is still
Speaker 1: managed by women, and I am not sure if a
Speaker 1: man has ever been in charge of it. The fact
Speaker 1: seems now to be a point of pride for the collection.
Speaker 1: If you poke around that site, Rose included a link
Speaker 1: to the plate stacks at Harvard. If you poke around
Speaker 1: that site a bit, you'll see that there is an
Speaker 1: effort to digitize the place that has been going on
Speaker 1: since two thousand three or so, which men have been
Speaker 1: involved in. But the curator of the collection is currently
Speaker 1: still a woman. I agree with your exasperation from the story,
Speaker 1: but generally speaking, the management of this collection staying in
Speaker 1: the hands of women as the fields of archives and
Speaker 1: library science professionalized, is actually kind of impressive. Often women
Speaker 1: get pushed out of prestigious positions as fields professionalized, and
Speaker 1: I am not quite sure how that managed to be
Speaker 1: avoided in this case, especially with the added factor of
Speaker 1: the collection being scientific in nature. Uh. We've talked before
Speaker 1: about how when we came on as hosts, we got
Speaker 1: a lot of criticism about what our voices sounded like
Speaker 1: in the fact that we were ruining the podcast, And
Speaker 1: so Rose sort of talks about the experience of going
Speaker 1: backward in the archive in in the way of continuing
Speaker 1: to keep up with new episodes, but then also going
Speaker 1: back through them in sort of a first order, and
Speaker 1: the sort of jarring experience of suddenly having different hosts
Speaker 1: who don't sound the same. UM. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: read that whole bit, but thank you so much Rose
Speaker 1: for sending this on. UM. This is a really great
Speaker 1: point about how, UM, like a lot of fields that
Speaker 1: were considered to be women's work, women got pushed out
Speaker 1: of as it became more a thought of as a
Speaker 1: professional field and not like a more clerical one. So
Speaker 1: we saw the same kind of things with like computer coding,
Speaker 1: like women were a lot of the first coders, and
Speaker 1: then that gradually came a field that was seen as
Speaker 1: one that was for men. UM. So that is a
Speaker 1: totally fair point about the fact that the collection of
Speaker 1: Harvard is still being created by women, even as the
Speaker 1: field of museum curation UM and and collections curation became
Speaker 1: more and more professionalized. UM. In terms of back when
Speaker 1: Cecilia paying Kapashkin came on to Harvard as part of
Speaker 1: that collection, it was not regarded as like a professional
Speaker 1: field that required any kind of professional ability or training
Speaker 1: at all. UM. The very first person to start cataloging
Speaker 1: all of those glass plates at Harvard had really been
Speaker 1: uh Pickerings housekeeper, who he basically hired because he was like,
Speaker 1: you seem generally competent, you could probably do this, And
Speaker 1: then it just sort of just became how it was
Speaker 1: like that some competent woman could probably do this was
Speaker 1: sort of the attitude. UM. We've also talked in previous
Speaker 1: sisodes before about how Pickering recruited all of these women
Speaker 1: to work with him, and they got derisive nicknames about
Speaker 1: being his harem for example. So thank you so much, Rose,
Speaker 1: We're for sending UM this email. That is a great point.
Speaker 1: I also enjoyed reading the story about the sort of
Speaker 1: jarring experience of of suddenly getting to the prior episode
Speaker 1: hosts part of the podcast, even though I did not
Speaker 1: read that whole thing on this episode. I hope everyone
Speaker 1: has enjoyed hearing about Jim Thorpe. Uh enjoyed is maybe
Speaker 1: not always the best work, because some parts of that
Speaker 1: history are really difficult. Um, but yeah, I think Jim
Speaker 1: Thorpe is amazing. If you would like to write to
Speaker 1: us about this or any other podcast, we are a
Speaker 1: history podcast at i heeart radio dot com and then
Speaker 1: we are all over miss in History, which is where
Speaker 1: you'll find our Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram. You can
Speaker 1: subscribe to our show on the I heart Radio app
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