It’s playoff time in the NFL—coaches are being sent packing left and right, really poor teams make the cut (9 and 7 gets you in the playoffs?), and movies about football related concussions are feeling the Oscar™ buzz.
What does this have to do with repatriation?
Well, two things. First, with all the brouhaha about the Chargers needing a new stadium, I’m reminded of all the municipalities who are feverishly clearing public lands for sports venues that may or may not be the best use of money, space, and time (I’m looking at you, Twin Cities).
In St. Louis, the new Rams stadium has raised repatriation issues. According to current plans, the Rams’ new venue would be situated over an ancient indigenous urban center.
Artist rendering of proposed Rams stadium (http://www.ksdk.com/story/news/local/2015/01/09/rams-task-force-announce-stadium-proposal-bernhard/21514423/)
As bioarchaeologist Kristina Kilgrove writes in the May 15, 2015 issue of Forbes, “Just a few blocks northwest of the current Edward Jones Dome, the remains of two dozen earthen mounds dot the Mississippi River bank. While the mounds were flattened in the 1800s to accommodate the rise of St. Louis as an urban center, underneath the buildings and parking lots is a 900-year-old Native American town.”
Over on the Illinois side of the river, the state has preserved the city of Cahokia, a regional trade and religious center dating back to AD 1000. But Missouri long ago decided to level Cahokia’s sister city to make room for progress. Now, as it seems likely that “objects of cultural patrimony” will be unearthed in this new construction, the land is private and Missouri law does not require an archaeological impact survey. Indian Country Today reported that Everett Waller, chairman of the Osage Nation’s Mineral Council, responded to the plans like this: “It has been a major pre-historic landmark for the Osage. It wasn’t just us, but we were encamped there for at least 400 years. So much of the history of my family campsites, both oral and educational, come from that area.” Waller, whose ancestors include the Osage leader Watiankah rightly feels there are plenty of places to put a new stadium. (Ever been to St. Louis?) Waller put things in perspective by using a particularly topical analogy: “If this was in the Middle East, you’d have a Holy War over it.”
The second thing the NFL playoffs have to do with repatriation rests with the team from Washington, DC who will play the Green Bay Packers this weekend (the team that shall not be named). Their presence in the playoffs brings up the larger issues of mascots, alternative team names, boycotts and the like. I kind of want to watch the Packers, but I don’t want to support all this other stuff. What course to take?The only single response I could come up with was to ask, “What would Jim Thorpe do?”
Jim Thorpe at the 1912 Olympics
Thorpe was not only the greatest athlete of his generation, he was also a member of the Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma. He’s in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In 1916, he earned $250 per game for the Canton Bulldogs. The hall of fame website tells his football story this way:
“In 1920, when the National Football League was organized, the charter members named Thorpe league president. While Thorpe’s exploits tend to be exaggerated with the passing years, there is no question he was superb in every way. He could run with speed as well as bruising power. He could pass and catch passes with the best, punt long distances and kick field goals either by dropkick or placekick.
Often he would demonstrate his kicking prowess during halftimes by placekicking field goals from the 50-yard line, then turning and dropkicking through the opposite goal post. He blocked with authority and, on defense, was a bone-jarring tackler.
Of mixed French, Irish, and Sac and Fox Indian heritage, Thorpe was born in a one-room cabin in Oklahoma, but when he was sixteen his father sent him to the Carlisle Institute, a school for Indian youth. His Native-American name was Wa-Tho-Huk, meaning “Bright Path,” something he was destined to follow in the sports world.”
The Hall of Fame site hits the high points of Thorpe’s relationship to American Indian history, but his attendance at Carlisle, his being stripped of his Olympic medals for having been a “professional athelete,” and his curious afterlife are also relevant to my question: “What would Jim Thorpe do?”
His biography, as much as I know of it, doesn’t reflect the life of an activist so much as an “ambassador”—for football, for Indian people. Maybe he would just watch the Packer game and shrug off the Washington team’s demeaning name. Nothing against Jim Thorpe, but it might be a generational thing. Still, I can’t be sure, and part of me would like to think that he would stand against team mascots that insult Native people.
Yet it’s Thorpe’s “afterlife,” the circumstances surrounding his burial and commemoration, that give me a clue as to what I should do.
After his death from heart failure in 1953, Jim Thorpe’s body was interred in a Pennsylvania mausoleum, as a roadside attraction of sorts. The website explorepahistory.com displays this pitch: “Visit the grave site of a famous Native American athlete, an Olympian and baseball player. It’s located just outside Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania – a beautiful Victorian town in the Poconos.”
Jim Thorpe never lived in the town formerly known as “Mauch Chunk” before it changed its name to Jim Thorpe, PA as part of the deal that brought his body to the Pocanos. The original town moniker is—like so many place names in America—indigenous and, according to one source, means something like “Bear Mountain.” So, in order to consecrate the ground for Thorpe’s burial, the Pennsylvanians had to erase the original Native presence. In a maudlin gesture of homage, they then placed Thorpe’s casket on “a mound of dirt comprised of soil from his native Oklahoma and from the stadium in Stockholm where he participated in the 1912 Olympics” before encasing it in pink granite. Like a professional sports player, Jim Thorpe’s body was “traded” to a “club” he had no connection to at all—not for his skills as a player, but for his marquee value as an Indian and “the greatest athlete in the world.”
In 2013, Thorpe’s son’s sued to have their father’s remains repatriated to Oklahoma. Carrie Johnson’s report for NPR News in June, 2015, explains:
“Two years ago, Thorpe’s sons convinced a district judge of the merits of their case. But a federal appeals court threw out the lawsuit using something called the absurdity doctrine. William Schwab is a lawyer for the Pennsylvania town now named after Thorpe. He says in an emailed statement that the absurdity doctrine is simply a matter of common sense. The appeals court found that family and spousal rights trump tribal rights. Schwab says he expects the Supreme Court will rule the same way if the justices agree to hear the dispute.”
Johnson concluded her report with this comment: “Advocates for the Native American community say the case could have ramifications beyond Jim Thorpe. That’s because the 1990 law has been deployed hundreds of times to repatriate remains and artifacts.”
I guess I’ll never know what Jim Thorpe would do about that Washington football team, its racist name, and whether to boycott watching it on television this weekend. I do, however, know what his sons would do. One, Jack, fought for his father’s repatriation until his death in 2011. Jack went to boarding school, served in the Army, and became the principal chief for the Sac and Fox tribe. At Jack’s death, his brother Bill said, “It’s important to the family . . . Jack was the representative, really, for our family. But nieces, nephews and grandchildren are in favor of bringing his body back. And the tribe, too.”*
With tomorrow’s forecast for Iowa City a whopping 5 degrees, maybe I’ll just throw a couple of buckets of water on the driveway, put on my ‘Leafs jersey, and knock the puck around with my son.
Sources
To read more on the Rams, check out Veronique LaCapra’s piece at St. Public Radio, “New football stadium threatens what remains of St. Louis’ Native American past —and present ,” or Rodney Harwood’s article at Indian Country Today Media Network, “Sacred Native site to be buried by new St. Louis NFL stadium .” Also: Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/04/29/sacred-native-site-be-buried-new-st-louis-nfl-stadium-160186
Kristina Killgrove is a bioarchaeologist at the University of West Florida. For more osteology news, follow her on Twitter (@DrKillgrove ) or like her Facebook page
On the Thorpe grave: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/3583#sthash.jLA1SuWI.dpuf
*John Branch “Thorpe Family Split Over Sons’ Lawsuit,” Bew York Times MAY 18, 2011
