John Eggers Column: The world's greatest athlete, Jim Thorpe

The world’s greatest athlete, Jim Thorpe, a member of the Thunder Band of the Sac and Fox from Oklahoma, played in one of the world’s most outstanding college football games in November 1912.

This is how it happened.

A top college football team in 1911 was the West Point Academy at West Point, New York. It comprised America’s finest young men who would go on to fight in both world wars.

On the West Point team of 1911 was Dwight David Eisenhower — the general who would lead allied forces to defeat the power of Hitler and Mussolini. Also on the team was General Omar Bradley, who led the U.S. Armed Forces at the invasion of Normandy and, by the war's end, was field commander of the largest American force in history.

The West Point cadets were going up against a small college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, named Carlisle Indian Industrial School. It was supposedly the model for all of the Indian Boarding Schools.

This is National Native American Heritage Month and an appropriate time to refresh our memory about boarding schools. They were meant to take the Indian out of the Indian.

Colonel Richard Henry Pratt, founder of a boarding school in 1879, said the goal was to "kill the Indian, save the man." Pratt and his followers calculated that if Indians could be assimilated into the world of whites, that would take the culture out of Native people, and they would become more "white."

To accomplish this change, Indians were not allowed to speak their language. Their hair was cut short, and they all had to dress alike.

There were few success stories at Carlisle. However, one success story was that of Charles Albert Bender (Chief Bender), a pitcher for Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics.

Bender earned baseball Hall of Fame status. He pitched three complete games in one World Series and invented a pitch known as a "slider," commonly used today in the major leagues.

Another success story was Jim Thorpe, who, in the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games, easily won the pentathlon by finishing first in four of the five events, and he set a world record of 8,412 points in the decathlon.

This was the first time anyone won both events and probably never will again. He also tied for fourth in the individual high jump and seventh in the long jump.

By the way, Billy Mills, another Native American from the Oglala Sioux tribe, was the first American to win the 10,000-meter gold medal race in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and set a world record. He remains the only American to win a gold medal in this event.

Walking distance from the field at West Point stands the obelisk gravestone of George Armstrong Custer. Custer was last in his class at West Point but first in fighting Indians, even though he was last again in the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.

Thorpe not only ran the ball, but he also punted and place kicked and played defense and offense, which was a common practice in the early days of football. It is said that he could kick the ball from one end zone to the other end zone.

In the first four games, Carlisle defeated its opponents by a score of 194 to 7. West Point, which always fielded an outstanding team, would not be a walk in the park. The first quarter was scoreless.

As one writer put it, "The Indians outplayed the white folks."

At the end of the first half, Carlisle was leading 7-6.

In 44 games that Jim Thorpe played for Carlisle, he had 53 touchdowns. He would finish this season with 25 touchdowns and 198 points; unthinkable totals for the day. The game's final score was 27 to 6 in favor of Carlisle.

As one writer put it, "It was a massacre in every sense of the word," and it occurred within a short distance from Custer’s tomb. On Thorpe’s team was Joe Guyon, also an All-American, from the White Earth Nation.

In 1912, football fields were shortened by 10 yards to make an even 100, and the downs were increased from three to four. Another note of interest about this game was that Dwight Eisenhower’s football career was to end due to a broken knee.

Jim Thorpe became the American Professional Football Association’s first president. This association changed its name later and went by the name of the National Football League.

In grade school, I first learned about Jim Thorpe when I saw a movie starring Burt Lancaster, who played Thorpe. In the early days of film, it was common practice to have white people play the role of Native Americans.

The movie inspired me, and I will never forget the amazing, truly unbelievable story of the world’s most outstanding athlete — Jim Thorpe.

Thorpe’s Native American name was Wa-Tho-Huk, meaning "Bright Path." Knowing his story is truly a bright path for not only Native Americans but for all of us who believe in the impossible dream.

(Note: Some of the information for this article is from “Path Lit By Lightning” by David Maraniss, copyright 2022.)

Riddle: Why did the coach go to the bank? (Answer: To get his quarterback.) Participating in sports is an excellent investment.

I want to thank the Red Lake schools for allowing me to work with its 10th and 11th graders.

John R. Eggers of Bemidji is a former university professor and area principal. He also is a writer and public speaker.