Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This Carlisle story is more than Jim Thorpe and football, June 23, 2007
For a few years, I lived adjacent to Haskell, an "Indian school" in Lawrence, Kansas. I had some, but little direct contact with the federal effort to provide higher educational opportunities for American Indians. It was a cursory exposure. It was also the place where Jim Thorpe started his formal education. For any longstanding football fan, the Jim Thorpe Carlisle story is familiar, popular and tragic territory. It may be a coincidence that Lars Anderson, who earlier covered the Jim Thorpe Army-Carlisle story has another book, "The All-Americans". Now we have the REAL All Americans and the story is a whole lot more fascinating than a simple rags to riches back to rags story like Thorpe's.
Although the opening scene is a fateful football match in New York, the real roots of the story lie in the Midwest, forty years earlier. Jenkins builds her story slowly, with a thorough history of the debacle we call "Indians and the U.S. Army". The horrendous treatment of the Indians by the federal government finally prompts a visionary officer to propose an educational alternative to warfare, as a method of assimilation into the white man's culture. In some respects, and certainly on the surface, this is an arrogant solution. Dragging children and young adults from their families, culture and land is the ultimate form of cultural smugness. But, given the period, the problem, and the potentail for a solution, the Carlisle solution was worth the effort. And, in many resepcts, it worked. Henry Pratt, an enlightened -- for that period -- Army officer commits most of his life to building an institution to serve Indians deprived of almost all of their land and dignity by Manifest Destiny and broken treaties. He is both a caring, paternal figure and a stern task master, both loved and despised. Much of the same can be said for Pop Warner, Carlisle's most famous coach. He once left the team for a year in a pique and went on first to Pitt, then to other schools before ending his career at Temple.
Football became a tool, one part of a strategy for the assimilating Indians to not only become part of American culture but also to wreak some symbolic vengeance on the oppressor, taking on Army on the playing field rather than the battlefield. And, for a time, this worked well. Pop Warner and Jim Thorpe helped build a short-lived but memorable dynasty, an ironic all-American icon. The sad part is their victory over Army was bittersweet and their success short-lived. Carlisle lost their following game and within five years, Carlisle was no more. War in Europe and a re-examination of this public investment in Indian education closed the school. Few students ever earned degrees from Carlisle in its forty years. Assimilation via education worked -- but only a little.
Jenkins offers a fascinating read with a strong narrative, interesting anecdotes and angles, and a healthy respect for history. She provides brief, follow up biographies on the key players and their lives after Carlisle. It isn't always a pretty picture, but you needn't be a football fan to enjoy this sad but engrossing story.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book, even for non-football folks, June 10, 2007
I heard this book reviewed on NPR and immediately purchased it. I am not particularly interested in football ( sacrilege, I know!) but the game between Carlisle and West Point peaked my interest. I saw a great exhibit at the Heard Museum several years ago about the Indian schools, Carlisle among them, and I wanted to know more about the school and the famous game.
The book is a fascinating account of the Carlisle school, the development of football, coach "Pop" Warner, Jim Thorpe and the famous football game with West Point. It will interest anyone with an interest in football history, but it is also of interest to those who want to know more about the great Indian chiefs, what the US did to try and control the Indians, what happened to the children of the great chiefs at Carlisle. The book also has other facts and anecdotes I found of interest. There is a fair amount about football at Princeton, Harvard, Yale and U of Pennsylvania (these teams all played Carlisle). There is also mention of Teddy Roosevelt and poet Marianne Moore, who taught at Carlisle for a short period.
The book is well written, a real pleasure. A great father's day gift! I have already purchased another copy for a friend and am passing my copy to my adult son as a "gotta read this!"
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Team That Invented Modern Day Football, June 12, 2007
If you are a student of Indian culture and the game of football, you are in for the treat of your life. Sally Jenkins has given the reader an engrossing overlay of a school that attempted a social experiment of indoctrination and assimilation of displaced Western American Indians into a predominately white man's state of refinement. Though only partially successful in forcibly educating children of notable relocated tribes, Carlisle introduced students to life skills and to the newly emerging sport that would captivate the country in ensuing years.
Under tutorlage of the legendary coach Pop Warner, the Carlisle Indians would revolutionize the game. Reverses, hidden ball tricks, the single wing, sweeps, audibles, hurry up offense and most innovatively, the forward pass became the stock in trade of the team that included celebrated olympian, Jim Thorpe. In 1912, with a record of 11-0-1, including a 27-6 victory over the much touted Army team that fielded a young cadet by the name of Dwight D. Eisenhower, The Carlisle Indians became the highest-scoring team in the country.
Scandal, governmental mismanagement, lack of visionary leadership, and later gridiron failures would eventually bring down this once esteemed institution, but its legacy is resurrected through the author's informative, entertaining, thought-provoking handiwork.
This written documentary has given myself, and hopefully all who indulge, a most enjoyable, rich, and rewarding read as we enter the summer season and anticipate the beginning of another collegiate football year.
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