Frank Loney, a collector of Carlisle memorabilia, called to ask about a football player named T. A. Engleman. He had a letter written by a Carlisle Indian School football player who was visiting the St. Louis World’s Fair. The letter was written the morning of the big game against Haskell Institute on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in 1904. The letter was written to Mr. Ziegler in the harness shop at the Indian school.
Frank could find no student named Engleman listed in Linda Witmer’s book, so further research was necessary. Steckbeck listed an Eagleman. The author of the letter wrote, “The second team played the Ohio State University on the 24th, Thanksgiving-day. I played out the whole game, and felt as though of being eighty years old after the game. My man was more than two hundred pounder and so you can imagine I had something to buck up against.” I knew that the first team sat out the Ohio State to be rested for the big game with Haskell that President Roosevelt was expected to attend. Finding a newspaper write-up of the game that included line-ups, I noticed that a player named Eagleman played left tackle across from either Gill or Marker. Because Marker was ejected from the game along with Fremont for engaging in a hair-pulling contest, Gill must have been the 200-hundred pounder and Eagleman was Engleman or vice-versa. Ticket prices for the Carlisle-Ohio State contest, a deluxe game, ranged from 25 cents to a dollar. Ohio State’s only other deluxe game was with the University of Michigan.
Witmer’s book listed an Eagle Man but no Eagleman. However, various censuses listed Thomas A. Eagleman, Sioux. He married a white woman, Grace More, in 1909 and they had 3 sons and 5 daughters. They farmed near Crow Creek in South Dakota, probably on an allotment.
Mystery solved.
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