Sheinkin, Steve,
Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle
Indian School Football Team. Roaring Brook Press, 2017; grades 6-9
(Potawatomi, Sac and Fox)
PREFACE
In “The School
Days of an Indian Girl,” a chapter in American
Indian Stories, [1], Zitkala-Sa (Dakota) writes of her experiences at White’s Manual Labor Institute
in Wabash, Indiana:
The
melancholy of those black days has left so long a shadow that it darkens the
path of years that have since gone by. Perhaps my Indian nature is the moaning
wind which stirs them now [2] for their present record. But, however tempestuous this is within me, it comes
out as the low voice of a curiously colored seashell [3],
which is only for those ears that are bent with compassion to hear it.
Zitkala-Sa devoted
her life to seeking justice for her people and was one of the few early Native
writers who wrote without the “aid” of a white editor, interpreter or
ethnographer. While her stories describe the everyday humiliations, turmoil and
pain that encompassed the Indian residential school experience, she also wrote
of resistance and rebellion.
It’s my firm
belief that no one could or should attempt to represent what the children
experienced in the Indian residential schools without listening to the stories
of their descendants, and with “ears bent with compassion to hear it.” And even
Zitkala-Sa is not saying that those people are entitled to voice, much less to
interpret, what they have heard.
--------------------------------
The 1951 movie,
entitled “Jim Thorpe, All American” (starring Burt Lancaster as Jim Thorpe),
begins with this hyperbole-laden voiceover:
“Jim
Thorpe, All-American, the man of bronze who became the greatest athlete of all
time, an Oklahoma Indian lad whose untamed spirit gave wings to his feet and carried
him to immortality. Here in a mighty cavalcade of sport are all the giants who
faced this champion among champions, each test adding new honors to his
ever-growing fame. Here is the thrilling panorama of the Olympic Games, the
nation’s praise for its returning hero, and behind the glory and glamour,
colorful days at Carlisle University [sic]…”
Stories of
heroism and singlehandedly overcoming adversity are well received in European
and European American children’s literature as well, and Jim Thorpe fits into
this mold. He’s larger than life, a legend, almost mythic, so many stories
about him—both true and false—lend themselves to the persona we know as “Jim Thorpe.”
That’s why,
especially in a biography for children, it’s important to get things right.
Unfortunately, Sheinkin writes through a cultural filter that objectifies
Native lives, histories, and experiences, and in doing so, misleads young
readers about Jim Thorpe, the real person.
--------------------------------
“CARLISLE INDIAN
SCHOOL,” COVER AND BACK MATTER
Although Sheinkin
refers to the “Carlisle Indian Industrial School” by its full name a few times,
he then shortens the name to “Carlisle Indian School,” the name that’s
reflected on the cover and front matter as well. Omitting the word “industrial”
from Carlisle’s name—which Sheinkin does often in this book—belies the school’s
purpose: to train its Indian students to be servants and other low-wage workers,
rather than to educate them. (Referring to the school as the shortened version,
“Carlisle,” after using its correct name is acceptable. Not acceptable is
referring to “Carlisle Indian School” as
its correct name.)
On the front
cover flap—the first text the reader sees—there is this, in large print:
JIM
THORPE:
SUPER
ATHLETE, OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST,
NATIVE
AMERICAN
POP
WARNER:
INDOMITABLE
COACH, FOOTBALL MASTERMIND,
IVY
LEAGUE GRAD
Here, Jim Thorpe
is identified by his ethnicity, while Pop Warner is not. This introduction
objectifies Jim Thorpe and sets the stage for much of what is to come.
--------------------------------
JIM
THORPE AND BLACK HAWK
A caption on
page 12 reads:
Young
Jim’s first hero, Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, Black Sparrow Hawk, or Black Hawk.
Black Hawk was a member of the Thunder Clan of the Sac and Fox, the same clan
as Jim Thorpe.
This 31-word
caption goes off in several confusing directions, echoed in the text that
follows it.
(1) Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak was a Sauk war leader whose name, as
interpreted into English, was “Black Sparrow Hawk.”
(2) Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak
was born into the Thunder Clan of the Sauk Nation. He was not a “member of the
Thunder Clan of the Sac and Fox.” The Sauk and Meskwaki Nations formed a
political alliance after 1732, and, although the US government referred to them
as a single entity, the “Sac and Fox Confederacy,” each treaty had a separate
place for Sauk and Meskwaki chiefs to sign, and the Sauk and Meskwaki remain
two separate nations. As Johnathan Buffalo, Preservation Director of the
Meskwaki Nation, explained to me, “We are Meskwaki. When we deal in
government-to-government relations with the US, they refer to us as Sac and
Fox. We’re stuck for legal reasons but not for cultural reasons.” He added,
“They can terminate the Sac and Fox, but they can never terminate the Meskwaki
because only our God can do that.”
A lot of people,
including Jim Thorpe’s family, refer to themselves by the government name, “Sac
and Fox,” or even use “Sac Fox,” and historians and biographers should note the
distinction. Sheinkin did not.
(3) Since Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak
was born around 1767 and Jim Thorpe was born in 1887, Thorpe’s clan citizenship
was the same as that of his Sauk ancestor, not the other way around.
--------------------------------
THE DAWES ACT
On pages 9-10,
Sheinkin briefly describes the land rush that occurred after the General
Allotment Act of 1887 (Dawes Severalty Act):
Three
years later, twenty thousand settlers lined the edge of what had been Sac and Fox land. A government agent fired a gun, the
signal for the land rush to begin, and everyone raced on horseback or in
wagons, claiming open sections of land by driving stakes into the soil…. By
nightfall, the plains around the Thorpes’ farm were dotted with settlers’ tents
and campfires. In just a few hours, the
Sac and Fox had lost nearly 80 percent of their land. [italics mine]
In the General
Allotment Act of 1887, also known as the Dawes Severalty Act, the US government
seized and split up Indian reservation lands held in common and “allocated”
non-adjacent tracts of 160 acres each to individual Native families, forcing
them into subsistence farming. The government then sold the “excess” 86 million
acres of formerly communal lands to white settlers.
The government’s
intent was to break up tribal communities, which is what they did. By seizing
and “redistributing” the land, the government also destroyed the ceremony,
social structure, kinship, respect for elders, and community child rearing—in
short, the spiritual and material foundation of traditional Native beliefs and
lives. Three years later, the government-sanctioned land grab stole almost all
of the rest of the land. (Both the terms “allotment” and “severalty” euphemize what
was actually theft of land and culture.)
After the US
government forcibly relocated people from traditional lands to reservations,
and, within a generation or two, from those communal lands to individual
“allotments,” the Dawes Act became the metaphorical nail in the coffin.
When your family
is abruptly cut off from land, community, and culture and surrounded by a
hostile foreign environment, your life changes drastically. It’s not surprising
that in this cultural vacuum—exacerbated by the easy availability of the cheap
alcohol that can be likened to chemical warfare—Hiram Thorpe became a mean,
abusive alcoholic, regularly threatening, beating and abandoning his several wives
and many children.
Jim Francis
Thorpe was one of six children (later 11) born to Hiram Thorpe and Charlotte
Vieux Thorpe in 1887, the same year as the Dawes Act, and just before the
massive white land grab. This was the difficult life—no, turmoil—that shaped
Jim’s childhood. Land theft. Culture theft. Theft of Indian children into the
government schools. A violent father. A strong, protective mother. He was not
left unscarred. This is a crucial part of Thorpe’s life that Sheinkin leaves
out.
--------------------------------
WHAT’S IN A
NAME?
Native babies
and children are traditionally named in different ways and through different
practices. Buffalo Bull Who Sits Down (“Sitting Bull”) was named “Slow.” His
Horse Is Crazy (“Crazy Horse”) was named “Curly.” Some children are
traditionally given names that encourage them to “throw away” their baby names.
(I’m reminded here of Joe Bruchac’s excellent historical novel, Brothers of the Buffalo, in which
identical Cheyenne twins are named “Too Tall” and “Too Short.”) And the baby
name of a good friend of mine translates from the Ojibwe,
“Maniigimoogibineyans,” as “little bird making mess by making poo.” (She
remembers, she told me, that she tried her best to learn how to use the potty
so that everyone would stop calling her “little poo butt.”) Sometimes babies
are named by their parents, sometimes by a grandparent or by a spiritual leader
enlisted for that purpose. Sometimes babies are given a clan name.
Jim Thorpe was
born into the Sauk Thunder Clan, which assigned him his traditional name,
Wa-tha-sko-huk, meaning “The Light After the Lightning,” a Thunder Clan name.
Unfortunately, Thorpe’s birth name is often cited as “Wa-tho-huck,” and
erroneously translated as “Bright Path” by his biographers. Just about all of
the references to “Bright Path,” which lead back to Jim Thorpe himself, have a
romantic overtone, signifying that he was destined for greatness. Here, on page
9, Sheinkin writes:
Jim
would later explain that his mother, following Potawatomi custom, also gave her
sons names inspired by something experienced right after childbirth. Through
the window near her bed, Charlotte watched the early morning sun light the path
to their cabin. She named Jim Wathohuck,
translated as “Bright Path.”
In any event,
both of Thorpe’s parents would have followed traditional protocol and traveled
to spiritual leaders in the community who were responsible for providing names.
(Potawatomi and Sauk aren’t that far apart—they’re both dialects of Anishnaabemowin.)
Or they would have followed the father’s traditional protocol. Although it’s
possible that some individuals might name their children in this way (and
“Bright Path” could have been an endearing nickname) this “first-thing-they-saw-after-childbirth”
thing is a well-worn trope. It reminds me of the movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in which the great Will Sampson’s
tongue-in-cheek story ends with, “But why do you ask, Two Dogs Copulating?" [4]
--------------------------------
THE “OUTING” PROGRAM
One of the more infamous programs of the Carlisle experience
was the summer “outing” program, in which the young students were sent to live
with white farm families, who, more often than not, mentally and physically
abused them. The reasons that Pratt gave for this program was for the students
to experience living in the white world while being trained for regular work.
The actual purposes of the outing program were to keep the students from going
home for the summer and to continue to train them as domestic servants and farm
laborers while they provided an equivalent of slave labor. Sheinkin does not
acknowledge any of this. Rather, on pp. 100-101, he writes:
The Outing Program was a major part
of life at Carlisle. The idea was for students to live with a “civilized”
family,
practice English, and learn how to run a farm. “When you boys and
girls go out on jobs,” Pratt told students, “you don’t go as employees. You go
and become part of the family.” [italics mine]
Sheinkin continues:
That was not Jim’s experience. Assigned to a farm near Carlisle, he was put to
work mopping floors and doing laundry. He was made to eat alone in the kitchen,
and paid half of what a white laborer would typically earn.
While Pratt and the school administrators had full knowledge
of the rampant cruelty from the white “patrons” to their young charges,
Sheinkin describes the outing program as generally beneficent.
--------------------------------
ROW, ROW, ROW
YOUR BOAT
On page 141,
Sheinkin describes Gus Welch’s life with his grandmother and younger brother in
the woods of northern Wisconsin:
Gus
spent as much time as possible outside, hoping the cold air would keep his
lungs clear. His grandmother taught the
boys to paddle a birch bark canoe, to trap animals for their fur, to collect
maple syrup and wild rice. Gus earned money for the family by taking furs
into Duluth to sell—which is what had brought him to town the day he saw the
Carlisle football poster. [italics mine]
Here, Sheinkin, in one sentence—a wildly inaccurate one
at that—purports to describe everything two Indian children learned from their
one grandparent. The way it’s worded, as well as what it leaves out, implies
that Ojibwe (“Chippewa”) people were and are simple, primitive, nature loving,
and technologically impaired. All of it absents the reasoning, the science, the
skill sets, and the methods of traditional Indian education. And it absents the
fact that these traditional skills—valuable pieces of Indigenous knowledge and
technologies—have been handed down for thousands of years.
In terms of
canoe building, maintenance and management, many stories were traditionally
used as instructive mnemonic devices. My friend and colleague, Lois Beardslee,
told me that children were taught everything about the physics of that canoe
and all mathematical things to know about a vessel: construction, ratios of
length to width, use and repair, how and where loads should be balanced. They
were taught hydrodynamics (the equivalent of aerodynamics), how each of the
materials the vessel is made of reacts with its environment. For instance, they
were taught how and why to weigh down a canoe and store it in the water. They
were taught that bark and wood fibers need humidity to swell so that they hold
together; that opposing tensions hold these materials together and the caulking
is spruce or pine-pitch with fat, using ash as filler. They were taught that a
canoe needs the coolness of the water.
Lessons about
how to trap animals for their fur were traditionally accompanied by stories
about how trapping assists in keeping animal communities healthy through
population control, how animals give themselves to humans and how they are to
be respected, how they are thanked and quickly killed, and how the pelts are
cleaned and dried and prepared. If there were any meat, it would certainly not
have been wasted. (My friend, Barbara Wall, commented: “Yum—muskrat and
beaver…beaver feast in midwinter!”)
Maple syrup is
not collected. People obtain maple sap from the sugarbush and again, there are
stories and mnemonic devices for children to understand how things are done in
a certain way. Children were and are taught that, as Lois told me, “When we
make the syrup, the sap is transformed. It’s all about chemistry; it happens
very fast. When the first crystals are formed at a certain temperature, they
are the catalyst for a massive rapid series of crystal formation. Our language
describes this chemistry accurately. Outsiders could not, because they didn’t
have the scientific language to describe it.”
“It takes ten
gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup and six gallons of syrup to make one
gallon of sugar,” Lois continued. “Earlier, we made maple sap into sugar cakes;
it wasn’t until the 1950s that glass jars were affordable in the Indian
community and we started making syrup instead of sugar. We’re always a
generation behind, financially.”
Manoomin (“wild
rice”) is not “collected,” nor is it “wild.” Anishnaabe families have harvested
and processed the rice, and seeded, cared for, and protected the rice beds for
thousands of years.
--------------------------------
CONCLUSION
On page 154,
Sheinkin writes:
The
Carlisle School was supposed to sever these young men from their heritage, to
“Kill the Indian in them,” as Pratt had so famously said. But fans and
sportswriters never let the players forget they were Indians—and there’s no
evidence they wanted to forget. They
did not call themselves the Carlisle Cardinals or the Carlisle Wildcats. They
were the Carlisle Indians.
It was Pratt who
named the team, “Carlisle Indians,” and the place they practiced, “Indian
Field.” These names were certainly not the choice of the Carlisle students. The
racist scorecards and the heavily altered “before-and-after” portraits that
depict the students’ so-called journey from “savagery to civilization” were made
into postcards and sold as souvenirs.[5] And the stereotypic headlines (“Indians Scalp Army”) and articles (“With racial
savagery and ferocity the Carlisle Indian eleven grabbed Penn’s football scalp
and dragged their victim up and down Franklin field”) were written by Carlisle
publicists to rake in money for the school, from which the Carlisle students
did not benefit. Rather, there was an athletic slush fund diverting money from the Indian students. Although
Sheinkin quotes from this material, he neither analyzes nor even questions it.
Sheinkin also
fails to follow the money trail regarding letters from the Carlisle students.
“Dear old Carlisle” is a phrase that shows up in virtually every student’s
letters—because these were also used as fundraisers. There were many letters
addressed to parents that were never sent, and there is clear evidence that
students were required to turn letters over to the “outing” parents rather than
sending them home. These letters were heavily censored; especially
heartbreaking are the letters to “Dear old Carlisle” from students who had
left, requesting the return of their belongings and the balances in their bank
accounts.
In terms of what
Jim Thorpe actually wrote, fact-checking material whose research is entirely
based on hype is impossible; what’s available is inherently problematic and
fundamentally wrong. Nothing is real or true. Jim Thorpe was encouraged to
market his life, so everything he publicly said and wrote has to be viewed in
this way. In searching out the truths of the Indian residential school era, it
would have been necessary—and it would have been Sheinkin’s responsibility—to
dig deeper. Rather, he chooses to represent “stereotypes as stereotypes”
without question.
And that is the
main problem with this book. Among the questions neither asked nor answered: Why is there a children’s cemetery on
the school grounds with 192 headstones? Why
were children sent home to die so as not to taint Carlisle’s statistics? Why was there a children’s jail on the
school grounds? Why did twice as many
children run away as were graduated?
Why did Sheinkin
not interview descendants of the Carlisle students and especially, Jim Thorpe’s
descendants? And why—when the sheer brutality that Pratt and his surrogates
inflicted on his young Indian students, mentally and physically, has left
generations of Indian people scarred and traumatized—does Sheinkin insist on
finding “balance” in Pratt’s intentionality?
The children who
were in the clutches of the Carlisle teachers and administrators were parroting
what they were expected to say. This is all clear from the school records—none
of them document what the children actually experienced at the school. However,
many first-person and descendants’ stories that relate the truths about Pratt’s
“noble experiment” at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School have been passed
down for future generations to know. But despite the copious research that
Sheinkin conducted for this book (including 25 pages of source notes and six
pages of works cited), his cultural filter as an outsider impedes his ability
to tell the real story.
The purpose of
this review is not to compare Undefeated
with the countless other books and materials about Jim Thorpe, but it invites
the questions: What if anything does Sheinkin offer here that is authentic,
fresh or innovative? Is this an exceptional work?
“Nothing” and
“no.” Just like the others, Sheinkin’s story only adds to the vast collection
of what a friend calls “manifest mythology.” It’s no lie that Jim Thorpe was a
remarkable human being. But praising only
the achievements of one or two or a few Native individuals while all but
ignoring the hundreds of Indian children whose lives and spirits were stolen
from them in that same place is an injustice to the Carlisle students and their
descendants and to both Indian and non-Indian readers as well. The forced
removals and brainwashing of children, after forced relocation, after forced
land theft—those are the stories whose importance is buried in the children’s
cemetery, and in Sheinkin’s book. The greater win is empathy and compassion,
and accomplishments and rebellions collectively shared. Whispering
encouragement in Lakota to frightened younger children. Protecting little ones
from being beaten for not knowing what is expected of them. Sneaking out in the
middle of the night to give food to runaways. Secretly turning the children’s
jail into a bonfire. Burying medicine bundles to save them from being
destroyed. Pouring salt into a pot of mush or mashing the turnips with such
fury that it breaks the jar. Many such stories have been told and many more are
waiting to be told.
Sheinkin’s Undefeated is yet another addition to
the cult of individual exception. It’s one person’s “bright path” superimposed
over everyone else’s dirt road. Our Indian children deserve better.
—Beverly Slapin
3/28/17
————————————————————————
‘Chi miigwech to
my dear friend, Barbara Wall (Citizen Potawatomi), whose grandfather was a
student at Carlisle, and whose great-great grandmother on her father’s side was
Jim Thorpe’s mother’s sister. You have strong shoulders and a good heart. And
to my friend and colleague, Barb Landis, whose life’s work has been devoted to
documenting the Indian students’ lives at “Dear Old Carlisle.” And to my friend
and colleague, educator and poet Lois Beardslee (Anishnaabe), who ceaselessly
speaks truth about power. And to my dear friend, Dovie Thomason (Lakota, Kiowa-Apache),
for her brilliant and compassionate stream-of-consciousness telephone
conversations and unwavering support.
