Carlisle Indian School | Tom Benjey's Weblog

Archive for the ‘Carlisle Indian School’ Category

More 1903 Carlisle All Stars

February 9, 2012

Walter Camp didn’t name any other Carlisle players to All-America team teams that year but James Johnson wasn’t the only Carlisle player to receive an honor. Walter Camp also picked an All-Western Team for 1903 “from the University teams of the Middle West,” essentially the teams that would become the Big Ten plus Notre Dame. “What does this have to do with Carlisle Indian School?” you say. Plenty.

Camp’s All-Western Team included Ed Rogers, Captain of the 1903 University of Minnesota team, at end and James Phillips, Northwestern University guard. Perhaps Camp shed some light on his picks when he wrote, “Rogers is an Indian, experienced, quick, and certain” and “Phillips is another Indian, and as he would not play against Carlisle, Northwestern’s line was correspondingly weakened. That game also showed what a large part Phillips had been in Northwestern’s defense.” Rogers and Phillips had both starred at Carlisle before leaving to embark on careers as lawyers. While at Carlisle, Rogers had taken courses at Dickinson College and Dickinson School of Law while playing football for Carlisle. However, in 1898 as a Dickinson College student, Ed played for Dickinson in their game against Penn State. The college’s school newspaper claimed that he was a bona fide player because Carlisle’s season was already over and he was a legitimate student enrolled in the college. However, his Dickinson College football career was limited to that one game. Later, he starred at Minnesota and captained his teammates to a 6—6 tie with Fielding Yost’s undefeated Point-a-Minute team in the first Little Brown Jug battle.

James Johnson and Ed Rogers were eventually inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. James Phillips ended his collegiate football career at the end of the 1903 season, married, and migrated west to Aberdeen, Washington where he had an illustrious career, but that is a story for another time.

The story of Carlisle Indians starring for colleges and universities in 1903 is far from complete…

Posted in Carlisle Indian School, Dickinson College, Doctors, Lawyers, Indian Chiefs, Ed Rogers, Football, James Johnson, James Phillips, Pop Warner | 1 Comment »

1903 Carlisle All Stars

February 7, 2012

The 1904 Spalding Guide includes various pundits’ All Whatever Teams, ranging from Walter Camp’s annual All America teams to others’ nationwide selection to various regional teams composed of who they thought were the best players from the 1903 season. Not surprisingly, some Carlisle players’ names were included in some of these selections. More surprising was that some former Carlisle stars were listed but as members of other teams, usually major universities!

Walter Camp named James Johnson to his All-American Team for 1903 First Eleven at quarterback, saying this about him:

“Johnson, captain and quarterback of the Indian team, demonstrated in his Harvard and Pennsylvania games his ability as a strategist as well as his power as a quarter-back. He is versatile, watches the ball splendidly, understands how to use his men, and plays so as to get good work out of them, and finally is a dangerous man on field-kick goals.”

Johnson’s photo differs from that of the other All Americans in that he is wearing a helmet. About half wear their playing clothes while the others sport their letter sweaters. Only Johnson wears his headgear. Perhaps Spalding selected this photo of him because he was wearing something that looks a lot like Spalding’s Head Harness No. A, which at $5.00 made it, along with the equally priced Pneumatic Head Harness No. 70, Spalding’s most expensive headgear at the time. (Less expensive headwear options started at $1.50.) Modern readers might find Spalding’s ad copy for Head Harness No. A interesting:

“Made of firm tanned black leather, molded to shape, perforated for ventilation and well padded. Adjustable chin strap. This head harness presents a perfectly smooth surface, and while giving absolute protection is one of the coolest and lightest made. When ordering specify size of hat worn.”

Next time, more on 1903 Carlisle Stars.

Tags:Caspar Whitney, Walter Camp
Posted in Carlisle Indian School, Ed Rogers, Football, James Johnson, James Phillips | Leave a Comment »

The Little Buffalo Robe

February 2, 2012

The last few days have been spent cleaning up the scanned PDF of The Little Buffalo Robe, a task that proved to be much more time consuming and tedious than expected. I am reprinting this book and Yellow Star because they were illustrated by Lone Star Dietz and his wife, Angel DeCora, while they were on the faculty of Carlisle Indian School. Because these books have been out of print for the better part of a century, it is likely that few people have ever heard of them and, thus, have not seen the artwork contained in them. Yellow Star contains four full-page black and white reproductions of what were likely color paintings done jointly by the couple and signed by both of them. In 1911, when this book was first printed, Dietz preferred to be called William Lone Star and signed the artwork in this book with that moniker. The Little Buffalo Robe includes four full-page black and white illustrations as does Yellow Star, but only the frontispiece was done jointly; the other three were Angel DeCora’s work alone. In addition, the book contains numerous, and I mean a lot, of smaller pen-and-ink drawings of things related to the story line. Most of them were done by Dietz, a few by Angel, and others were not signed. One of the joys of reading this book is admiring the frequent illustrations.

I found The Little Buffalo Robe to be very interesting because it says much about the culture of Plains Indians at the time. The protagonist, a young Omaha girl, tells the tale of her odyssey after becoming separated from her tribe and parents. Her adventures as she encounters Assiniboine, Dakota, Pawnee and Winnebago adults are told from a Omaha child’s perspective and reveal much about the customs, culture and beliefs of her people. The author, Ruth Everett Beck, was a white woman who grew up Lyons, Nebraska along the Missouri River in the time and place where this book was set. She likely learned the Omaha customs as a girl as she was reputed to be an authority on some aspects of Indian life.

Tags:Assiniboine, Dakota, Omaha, Paul Ward Beck, Pawnee, Ruth Everett Beck
Posted in Angel DeCora, Carlisle Indian School, Lone Star Dietz | 2 Comments »

Carlisle Players in WWI — 1918

January 27, 2012

War years, at least those for WWI and WWII, affected college football greatly, so much, in fact, that Spalding’s guides for those years had to adapt to the changed environment. The 1919 guide, for example, includes a large section, titled Part II Spalding’s Official Foot Ball Guide: Army and Navy Foot Ball. A July 24, 1919 letter from President Woodrow Wilson to Hugh Miller extolling the virtues of football in training troops for combat served as a frontispiece for this section of the book. Ironically, or not, Miller wrote publicity pieces for Pop Warner when Warner coached the Carlisle Indians. Apparently, Hugh Miller was more than just a hack writer who did Warner’s bidding.

This focus on military teams was necessary because the 1917 and 1918 football seasons were disrupted, to put it mildly, by the large number of college football players who were inducted into the service during WWI. Many colleges stopped fielding teams where others played with lesser talent than usual. Most college teams included military teams on their schedules. It’s fair to assume that the military academies were not impacted nearly as much as their civilian counterparts. Carlisle Indian School canceled its 1918 season because the school was closed to allow Carlisle Barracks to be used as an army hospital. However, many of the former students continued to play football—even after they enlisted.

Perusing the pages of the Army-Navy section revealed the names of several Carlisle students with whom I was not familiar. Follows is a list of those names and the teams on which they played:

Name Unit

Sgt. Mickel Air Service Department, Garden City, NJ

Buffalohead Fort Ontario, Oswego, NY

M. Le Claire Camp Travis, Fort Sam Houston, TX

Ojibway Wissahickon Barracks, Cape May, NJ

Webster 3^rd Army Troops, Europe

Kalama* 35^th Division, Europe

*Selected as center for All-American Expeditionary Forces Eleven

If you know anything about any of these men, please get in touch with me.

Tags:Buffalohead, Hugh Miller, Kalama, M. Le Claire, Ojibway, Sgt. Mickel, Spalding Guide, Webster, Woodrow Wilson, WWI
Posted in Carlisle Indian School, Pop Warner | Leave a Comment »

Carlisle’s 1918 Schedule

January 13, 2012

Yesterday’s mail brought the 1918 Spalding Guide. It includes a couple of interesting things about the Carlisle Indians. First off, the team photo (of the 1917 team) shows the players in different jerseys than we’re accustomed to them wearing. These appear (the small photo on the yellowed page isn’t the clearest) to have two stripes above the midriff and above the elbows on the sleeves. I think I may have seen one of these jerseys before, possibly in Wardecker’s store.

About all that was written about the 1917 team, their last as things turned out, was what George Orton of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in his piece about the mid-Atlantic region : “Carlisle showed improvement over the previous year, but until they get a team of first rate caliber they will do well not to schedule so many matches with the big colleges.” Perhaps, he thought Carlisle had been playing opponents well above their weight since 1914. Their 1917 schedule was brutal, causing the overmatched Indians to lose by huge scores to the likes of Army, Navy, Penn and John Heisman’s Georgia Tech, arguably the best team in the country that year.

The Guide also includes schedules for most college and university teams as well as some prep school and high schools. Because Carlisle largely played against colleges and universities, its games were listed with theirs and not in the Scholastic schedule. Although the schedule wasn’t nearly as tough. It included Army and Pitt, the team that would be deemed National Champions for 1918. The schedule was as printed in the Carlisle school newspaper on May 24, 1918 except for the October 26 game with Detroit which wasn’t ultimately scheduled.

Orton didn’t even hint that Carlisle was about to close. The published schedules included Carlisle. Had it been know well in advance of the football season that Carlisle Indian School was closing, their games would have been stricken from the list. This is further evidence that Carlisle’s closing was not inevitable after the 1914 Joint Congressional Investigation.

By the way, Cornell’s 1917 jerseys again had stripes just below the elbow.

Tags:George Orton, Georgia Tech, John Heisman, Walter Camp
Posted in Carlisle Indian School, Football | Leave a Comment »

Cornell Wore Plain Jerseys in 1903

January 10, 2012

Among other things, today’s mail brought a copy of the 1904 Spalding guide and it provides some valuable information with regard to determining who first used football jerseys with stripes below the elbows. A photograph of the Cornell team on page 30 captured most of the team members in their playing uniforms, not their letter sweaters. The black and white photo has the players wearing dark-colored jerseys under what Spalding called sleeveless football jackets. The v-necked jackets laced up the front and were cut back where sleeves would have been connected, had there been any, to provide freedom of movement for the players’ arms. All of the sleeves, necks and a bit of the bodies of the jerseys were visible with the jackets on. One assumes that the jerseys were solid carnelian, a brownish shade of red, because Cornell’s school colors are that color and white. The school colors were chosen as a (possibly humorous) reference to the University’s founders, Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White. Those who are associated with the school are commonly referred to as “Cornellians” and the reddish-brown color is sometimes spelled cornelian.

From the photo of what was most likely the 1903 Cornell team because photos had to be submitted to Spalding well before the start of fall practice in order for the guide to be laid out, printed and distributed ahead of the beginning of 1904 football season. The Carlisle team photo on page 22 of this book is definitely that of its 1903 team because Pop Warner is in it and James Johnson is holding the football. Johnson was captain of the 1903 Carlisle team and played for Northwestern in 1904. Warner returned to Cornell for the 1904, ’05 and ’06 seasons. As reported previously, Cornell was wearing jerseys with stripes below the elbow in 1905 as shown in the 1906 Spalding guide. I have to wait for the 1905 guide to arrive before seeing if they had shifted to the unusual stripe configuration for Warner’s first year back at his alma mater (unlikely unless Warner had nothing to do with it).

Tags:A. G. Spalding, Andrew Dickson White, carnelian, cornelian, Cornell University, Ezra Cornell
Posted in Carlisle Indian School, Football, Pop Warner | Leave a Comment »

Were Carlisle’s Jerseys Unique?

January 6, 2012

As mentioned in this blog previously, I am in process of reprinting the Spalding Football Guides for the years that Carlisle Indian School fielded a team. That process is progressing well but I have not yet found the 1901 and 1911 books as yet and don’t hold much hope of coming across books for the years from 1894 to 1898. Be that as it may. I am already discovering interesting things without having a full set.

While flipping through the 1906 volume, I noticed that the Cornell team was wearing jerseys quite similar to those worn by the Carlisle Indians (a Carlisle jersey is depicted in the color drawing on the masthead of this blog). I had seen photos of many other teams wearing jerseys with stripes but none with the stripes located just below the elbow on an otherwise solid-color shirt. Of course, I haven’t done exhaustive research on this matter, so the possibility remains that this pattern was not unique, just not widely used. All the period photos are in black and white, so nothing can be known for certain about the colors on these jerseys just from the photos. Regarding the dates of photos in Spalding’s guides, most team photos seem to have been taken at the end of the previous season. In Carlisle’s case, players were generally wearing their letter sweaters which were a solid red and were acquired from Spalding in various styles (see photo below).

So, the Cornell team of 1905 wore jerseys similar to those that Carlisle was noted for wearing. But when did the Indians start wearing them and were they special ordered? A circa 1902 photo of James Phillips shows the stripes clearly as does the team photo for that year. More research is needed to determine exactly when Carlisle and Cornell started wearing those jerseys and who made them. What is known is that in 1902 Carlisle, then coached by Pop Warner, wore them as did the 1905 Cornell team that was also coached by Pop Warner. Were these stripes another Warner innovation? Much more research is needed to answer these questions.

Tags:Cornell, letter sweater, Spalding Football Guide, Spalding jersey, striped jersey
Posted in Carlisle Indian School, Football, James Phillips, Pop Warner | 4 Comments »

Christmas at Carlisle 1911

December 23, 2011

Tags:Christmas 1911
Posted in Carlisle Indian School, Football, Jim Thorpe | Leave a Comment »

Another Incubator of the Forward Pass

December 15, 2011

Periodically, one reads articles regarding the early development of the forward pass in football. It is now well known that Notre Dame did not invent the forward pass in their 1913 defeat of Army. It is also well known that Eddie Cochams, coach of the St. Louis University squad was an early implementer of the new strategy. Now, in a 1921 book, The Forward Pass in Football, written by Elmer Berry, Head Coach of Football and Baseball, Associate Director of Physical Education Department, Professor of Physiology and Physiology of Exercise at International Young Men’s Christian Association College, Springfield, Massachusetts, I hear of another proponent of the airborne pheroid.

It is doubtless fair to say that the early development of the forward pass was largely due to two teams, Springfield College of the Y. M. C. A. and the Carlisle Indians. Their game in 1912 at Springfield is said by competent experts to have been probably the greatest exhibition of open football ever staged. It is doubtful if two such finished exponents of the open game have ever met before or since. To Coach J. H. McCurdy of the Springfield team goes the honor, in the writer’s judgment, of the early recognition and development of the strategy of the forward pass, for in this respect at least, Springfield excelled even the wonderful Indian teams produced by Glen Warner. No one team can longer claim a leadership in this or any other department of the game, but it is fair to say that the Springfield team has continuously demonstrated an unusual aptitude for the forward pass and a high degree of leadership at least among the Eastern teams. It is not strange, in view of the fact that the great leaders of football have not taken more kindly to the forward pass, that its underlying principles have not been more thoroughly worked out and organized. It is the chief purpose of this work to state if possible some of these principles and fundamentals to the end that the open game of football, always in the past and still to some extent opposed by certain groups, may be better understood, more successfully coached and more firmly and thoroughly established.

Further research is required to determine how much salt to take with Berry’s claim.

Tags:Elmer Berry;Springfield YMCA, J. H. McCurdy
Posted in Carlisle Indian School, Football, Pop Warner | Leave a Comment »

Sam Bird’s Great Granddaughter

December 13, 2011

I’m often asked what life was like after Carlisle for former students. Doctors, Lawyers, Indian Chiefs discusses what life held for 50 star football players, most of whom had children and grandchildren. Now, I’m learning more about their descendants. Recently, I received word that Sam Bird’s great granddaughter, Denise Juneau, is running for re-election for the position of Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Montana. She is the first American Indian to hold a statewide executive position in Montana. Sam Bird promoted education for his children and grandchildren. Denise is a product of his efforts.

Sam Bird was captain on the great 1911 Carlisle Indian School football team. After leaving Carlisle, Sam returned home to Browning, Montana where he ran the family ranching operation, married a Carlise girl, and raised a family. Sam’s daughter, Margie, married a man named Juneau and had a son named Stan. Stan married Carol Cross. Denis is their daughter.

The other side of Denise’s family (Carol Cross Juneau’s family) is from the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota. Carol’s Grandfather, Denise’s Great Grandfather, name was Old Dog and he was the last traditional chief of the Hidatsa. Carol’s father, Denise’s grandfather, name was Martin Old Dog Cross and he was a member of the elected tribal council for more than 20 years and its chairman for 10 of those years. He led the fight against building the Garrison Dam that flooded their reservation, their homeland, and more acres that it was supposed to. Carol’s Brother, Ramon, was the lawyer who fought the Army Corp of Engineers many years later and, with the Supreme Court ruling in his favor, received a nice settlement for the Tribe. Coyote Warrior by Paul Vandevelder is a history of the family and also of the Supreme Court decision.

It’s not hard to see how Denise Juneau has achieved so much after seeing her bloodlines.