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Last week I wrote about Indian boarding schools and mentioned that one aspect of Anglo culture that appealed to the boys was football. Problems often developed, however, that the coaches did not foresee.
For example, at the Phoenix Indian School the Anglo coach chose an athletic youngster, a Hopi, to be the quarterback. The linesmen who were to protect him all happened to be Navajo. The Phoenix team lost the first game they played because the Navajo linemen refused to protect their own quarterback.
Tribal rivalries passed down for many generations remained stronger than their newly-learned sport. It took some persuasion and explanations on the part of the coach to convince the boys that it was only a game and that they were all supposed to cooperate with each other. The opposite result also could happen. In Indian Territory (future Oklahoma) Comanches and Kiowas found themselves on the same team sometimes. A mostly Comanche school had a Kiowa or two on their team and played a similar native school that was mostly Kiowa. The Kiowa teammate of a Comanche quarterback heard the opposing team calling plays in Kiowa and told his Comanche teammate what they planned to do! When the Kiowa student next made a trip home, the story of his translating to the quarterback had preceded him. Old tribal loyalties and pride still reigned supreme in his father’s mind. In his Kiowa tongue he asked his son the equivalent of “What in the blankety-blank were you doing?!!” He couldn’t understand how his son could tell a Comanche (even on his own team) what the Kiowas on the other side were planning to do. In the father’s mind his son was betraying his own tribe. When I heard a research paper on the football games at Indian schools, presenter Travis Larsen explained part of its appeal to the youngsters. It became a contest for holding ground similar to the actions of the tribes and whites on the moving frontier. Perhaps that was why the young Native Americans adapted to it so quickly. Also, it is a rough contact sport.
The male students at the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania became so proficient at football that they challenged and fared well against the big four Ivy League schools of their day, Yale, Harvard, Penn State and Princeton. When the Carlisle team heard insults from the Ivy League players and learned that they looked down on them, it made them fight harder. The Native American football teams from the 1890s to 1920s learned to work together and did pretty well, actually. It was something the native students could feel proud about. The most famous Carlisle student was Jim Thorpe, a Sac and Fox who grew up in Indian Territory. He attended a Sac and Fox Indian Agency School, the Haskell Indian Nations University, and then Carlisle. In 1911 his team beat Harvard 18-15, with Thorpe having scored all his team’s points with four field goals and a touchdown. Thorpe played many sports in his career, including professional football, and he won two medals in the 1912 Olympics in track and field. In 1950 Associated Press sportswriters named Thorpe as the greatest athlete in the first half of the 20th century, and then in 1999 voted him as the third top athlete of the entire 20th century. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the Carlisle football team also met on the turf. The young Carlisle players were well aware that officers from West Point in earlier years had led cavalry troops against their ancestors. Remember the father who couldn’t understand his Kiowa son helping out a Comanche in the game? The transition from reality to the fun of a hard fought football game was difficult for the father to grasp. It seems like a lot of people still feel that way today. I remember a comment Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo made after a loss last season that it was “only a game.” That really got him in trouble with the fans who sometimes take the game of football awfully seriously. As a cultural feature of society, football became a uniting force, something that both the Anglos and Native American youngsters both enjoyed playing – once they got over their differences and saw it as just a game. Retired history professor J’Nell Pate of Azle has authored several books, many of which are on sale in the lobby of the Azle News. |
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