When I last wrote about Joe Little Twig, in 2016, I could say nothing about his life before playing professional football in Ohio with any certainty. He reputedly went to Carlisle Indian School but I could find no documentation of his having ever been there. This is not that unusual because the records of a large number of students were lost when the school closed unexpectedly and Carlisle Barracks was transitioned back to the army in a rushed fashion.
Today that changed when I found a photo of him in a football uniform. The photo is in the Winnishiek collection held by Cumberland County Historical Society. William Winnishiek and Joe Little Twig both played for the Oorang Indians and may have been friends at Carlisle. Little Twig is wearing a Carlisle Indian School uniform in the photo, so he must have played football on some level at Carlisle.
His obituary and Ohio Soldier Grave Registration give conflicting dates of birth: 1893 and 1897 and dates of service in the U.S. Army: 1916 to 1922 and 1917 to 1921. His obituary lists Mr. & Mrs. Joseph Little Twig of Hogansburg, New York as his parents. Since he would have been no more than 46 years old when he died in 1939, it was quite possible for his parents to still be alive. The obit also said that he first played football at Cattaraugus Indian School near Buffalo before attending Carlisle.
We now have a couple more pieces to the Joe Little Twig puzzle.
For years I’ve wondered what the Oorang Indians’ uniforms looked like, having only seen black and white photos of them. For those who aren’t familiar with the Oorang Indians, they were an early NFL team formed by Jim Thorpe and Walter Lingo, owner and operator of the Oorang Airedale mail-order kennel. A complete history of the team can be found in Walter Lingo, Jim Thorpe, and the Oorang Indians by Chris Willis. A much shorter version is included in my book Doctors, Lawyers, Indian Chiefs.
A black & white closeup of a player sheds a little light on this question. Where the colorized photo has the same color on the sides of the jersey as on the pants but in the black & white photo, it is clear the sides of the jerseys are darker than the pants. My guess would be that the jerseys are a different color than the pants, possibly orange. Although Spalding’s list their PTP style of pants as being brown in color. Photos I’ve seen tend to be tan (a lighter shade of brown) or gold (special orders were accepted). Since the pants in the Oorang photos aren’t shiny, I’d guess they are tan.
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