Bryan DeArdo posted the following as part of a July 3, 2020 article on CBSSports.com that predicts a name change for the Washington Redskins. It appears that it is true that the team’s owner is folding under financial pressure from large corporations and will likely change the team’s name. However, the reason he gave for the 1933 name change appears to be more fake news.
Boston Braves became Washington Redskins
After just one year as the Braves, the franchise was renamed to the Redskins in 1933, four years before the team moved from Boston to Washington. The reason for the name change was simple: Boston’s new coach, Lone Star Dietz, and several of his Native American players disliked the name Braves and lobbied for the team to change its name to the Redskins. The franchise has kept the Redskins as its name until now.
This is the first time I’ve read or heard that Dietz and his players lobbied for a name change and it is interesting that DeArdo does not provide a source for his claim. I find it suspicious that he conveniently left out that the team relocated from Braves Field to Fenway Park at that time and that move was the reason cited by George Preston Marshall for the need to change the team’s name. He said fans would be confused by a team named the Braves not playing at Braves field as they had in the past. If memory serves, he owed some unpaid rent to the field’s owner who might have had problems with continued use of the name.
At least DeArdo didn’t claim that Marshall chose another name with an Indian motif to eliminate the need to buy new uniforms as had The Boston Globe in a December 29, 2013 article. That unresearched claim was easily refuted by viewing Boston newspaper articles from the beginning of the 1933 season. Marshall not only bought new uniforms for the Redskins, he changed the team’s colors and placed an emblem on the front reputedly designed by Lone Star Dietz.
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.
The current pandemic brought to mind a favorite Carlisle Indian School football player. Sampson George Bird, son of John Bird, a white man of English descent, and Mattie Medicine Wolf, full-blood Piegan Blackfeet, lived on the Blackfeet Reservation near Browning, Montana, just east of present-day Glacier National Park before coming to Carlisle Indian School. Sam started receiving notice for his athletic ability at Carlisle in the fall of 1909, when he was elevated from the second team to the starting eleven. Because he was a lineman, he toiled in relative obscurity.
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