Native American Son – The life and sporting legend of Jim Thorpe

 

By Kate Buford

Knopf, 2010

 A review by Steven Halpern

Kate Buford wrote a compelling biography of one of the greatest athletes of all time.

Reading Kate Buford’s biography of Jim Thorpe made me realize that a thorough look at this great athlete’s life was long overdue.  Those who argue that Thorpe was the greatest athlete who ever lived have a persuasive argument.  

Thorpe was a dominant college and professional football player over a period of more than twenty years.  He won two gold medals in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics in two of the most grueling events.  While he never was an outstanding baseball player, he worked hard to develop his skills in the game and became a very good competitor.

Kate Buford started her book by giving a short outline of the history of Native Americans.  Jim Thorpe’s father was of the Sac and Fox nation and his mother was Potawatomi.  Thorpe was born towards the end of the more than 100 years of genocidal warfare carried out against Native Americans by the United States government.  These wars concluded with hundreds of treaties that the U.S. government had no intention of respecting.

Jim Thorpe was born in the state that today is known as Oklahoma.  Oklahoma used to be called the “Indian Territory” because many treaties declared that Native Americans would have the right to this land “forever.”  The land in Oklahoma would become some of the most lucrative in the nation because of the oil reserves discovered in the state.

While Jim Thorpe was supposed to own an allotment of land in Oklahoma, he needed to ask the government for any revenue from that land.  Even after Thorpe won two gold medals in the Olympics, the government determined that he was not competent to use the money generated from his land.

This was the atmosphere when Thorpe attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.  Sally Jenkins wrote an interesting book about the history of football at this school titled The Real All-Americans – The team that changed a game, a people, a nation.  The positive side to this book was how Jenkins gave the history of how football, as we know it, largely came from the Native American team at Carlisle.  

The problem with Jenkins’ book is how she portrayed Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt, who was the superintendant of the school.  Pratt demanded that the students at this school to never use their native language, to entirely forget their culture, and to immerse themselves in the culture that had committed numerous acts of genocide against their people.  Sally Jenkins argued that Pratt played a positive role in the education of the Native American Students.

To the contrary, Kate Buford gave many of the facts that showed how the education at Carlisle robbed the students of their heritage.  In fact, the norms of this school violated the student’s First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

In spite of this atmosphere, Jim Thorpe played on the Carlisle football team that dominated the colleges of that time.  Thorpe also saw his time at Carlisle as the best of his life largely because he was surrounded by Native Americans.

After the 1912 Olympics the International Olympic Committee stripped Thorpe of his medals.  Their argument was that he received a small amount of money for playing summer league baseball.  Buford pointed out that the IOC violated their own rules stating that any questions about an athlete’s eligibility would have to be made thirty days after the Olympics.  It took the IOC about six months before they raised this question.

Buford also gave the evidence that showed how the general public denounced the IOC’s decision.  In fact, Jim Thorpe was honored with huge parades in New York and Philadelphia when he returned from the Stockholm Olympics.

We might also consider that during these years the so-called “major league” baseball prohibited Black players from competing in their league.  In 1910 Jack Johnson became the first Black heavyweight boxing champion in the world.  The U.S. government conspired to convict Johnson of violating the Mann Act and he eventually served one year in prison.  In reality, Johnson’s real crime was that he was a Black man who was the heavyweight champion.

Once Jim Thorpe became a professional, he did the unheard of feat of competing in football and baseball for over twenty years.  We should consider that Thorpe played football during these years with a minimal amount of protective gear.

Clearly Thorpe did not receive the fantastic salaries that athletes receive today.  This meant that Thorpe needed to find work where he could in the midst of the depression.  He also endured the devastating loss of his first son.  These were some of the factors that led Thorpe to become dependent of alcohol.

This is one of the areas where Kate Buford’s book might have been improved.  She might have given a more realistic context to her book.  Clearly Jim Thorpe wasn’t the only person who had problems finding work during the depression.  Clearly he wasn’t the only one who drank more than he should have.  

However, Kate Buford gives us the evidence that shows how Jim Thorpe never gave up.  When he had to, he worked in a paint gang, or dug ditches, or worked as a security guard, or as an extra in Hollywood movies.  My opinion is that in Thorpe’s later life his challenges were greater than when he won the Olympics.  However, these challenges were also faced by millions of workers all over the country.

We also see how Jim Thorpe was a tireless defender of Native American rights.  While the government has routinely trampled on the rights of Native Americans, this same government is setting records for deporting workers who were born in other countries.

Clearly, Jim Thorpe made many mistakes that he would have admitted to.  However, his story is of an athlete who never gave up in the face of a political economic system that has no respect for real achievement.