James Francis Thorpe was born in 1887 to Hiram Thorpe and Charlotte Vieux in a one-room cabin near Prague, Oklahoma. Hiram was a farmer and Charlotte, a Pottawatomie Indian, a descendant of the last great Sauk and Fox chief Black Hawk, a noted warrior and athlete. Jim’s Indian name, Wa-Tho-Huk, translates to “Bright Path,”.
In 1904, Thorpe started school at Carlisle Industrial Indian School in Pennsylvania, where he began his athletic career playing football and running track. Excelling on the field, Thorpe anchored the 1911 team that went 11-1 and had one of the greatest upsets in college football history, defeating football powerhouse Harvard 18-15.
Thorpe also was a standout on the track. In 1912, he joined the US Olympic Team in Stockholm Sweden for the 1912 Olympic Games. Thorpe blew away the competition in both the pentathlon and the decathlon and set records that would stand for decades. King Gustav V of Sweden presented Thorpe with his gold medals for both accomplishments and said “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world,” to which Thorpe replied “Thanks, King.”
Thorpe’s Olympic wins were jeopardized in 1913, when it surfaced that he had played two semi-professional seasons of baseball. The International Olympic Committee had strict rules about Olympians maintaining amateur status and not receiving monetary compensation for participating in professional athletics. As such, Thorpe was stripped of his medals and his records were taken away.
Thorpe moved on after the Olympic ordeal and signed to play baseball for the New York Giants. He played outfield with New York for three seasons before relocating and playing with the Cincinnati Reds in 1917. He played 77 games with the Reds before finally returning to the Giants for an additional 26 games. In 1919, he played his final season in major league baseball, ending on the Boston Braves team.
During much of his baseball years, Thorpe was also immersed in professional football. He played for the Canton (Ohio) Bulldogs from 1915 until 1920 and the Cleveland Indians in 1921. He organized, coached and played with the Oorang Indians in 1922-1923, a professional football team comprised completely of Indigenous peoples. Additionally, he was instrumental in forming the American Professional Football Association, which would be renamed the National Football League the follow year and became its first President. In all, Thorpe played with six different teams during his career in pro football, ending with a stint with the Chicago Cardinals in 1929. He was inducted into the inaugural class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963.
After his professional athletics career, Thorpe worked as an extra in movies, served as superintendent of recreation in the Chicago Park System, and was also quite vocal with matters of Indian affairs. He also had stints as a public speaker/lecturer and even led an all-Indian song and dance troupe entitled The Jim Thorpe Show.
Thorpe died on March 28, 1953 of a heart attack. Thorpe married three times and had eight children.
Jim Thorpe’s Olympic medals were eventually posthumously restored in 1982, when the Jim Thorpe Foundation was able to prove that the International Olympic Committee violated their own bylaw in stripping Thorpe’s medals, as their disqualification occurred after the 30-day time periods after competition allowed by Olympic rules. Jim Thorpe was declared co-winner alongside Ferdinand Bie and his Olympic records were reinstated.
Nellie Robertson Denny, born in 1871 on the Sisseton Wahpeton Sioux reservation in South Dakota, came to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) in 1880 as a nine-year-old child. After 10 years of schooling, she became a member of the second graduating class in 1890, where she was then hire