0:00

Hi, it's Anne. Today

0:05

on To the Best of Our Knowledge, we're celebrating one

0:08

of the greatest athletes the world has ever known. The

0:10

greatest athlete in the world. One of the greatest

0:13

athletes of all time. Just damn much better than

0:15

everybody else. A pro football player,

0:17

Major League Baseball player, gold medal

0:19

winner in the Olympics. Everything that

0:21

anybody can do is better. He

0:24

can do anything. His

0:26

name was Jim Thorpe. And

0:29

because he was Native American, he

0:31

battled racism and discrimination every day

0:33

of his life. It's

0:35

been 70 years since Jim Thorpe

0:37

died, but today he's inspiring a

0:40

new generation of activists, artists and

0:42

athletes. I'll

0:44

tell you his story after

0:46

this. From

0:52

WPR. Progressive

1:18

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1:20

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between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential

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in all states and situations. I'm

1:37

Anne Strangchamps and welcome to To the Best

1:39

of Our Knowledge. Today, we

1:43

celebrate an American icon. The

1:46

greatest all round athlete America has

1:49

ever produced. Ladies and gentlemen, Jim

1:52

Thorpe, All-American. Jim

1:57

Thorpe was a Native American athlete who died in the Olympics.

2:00

70 years ago and is still one

2:02

of the greatest athletes who ever lived.

2:05

Maybe the greatest. A

2:07

legendary pro football player, Olympic gold

2:09

medals for the US, and

2:12

a major league baseball player. I

2:15

thought he was a hell of a ball player. MLB

2:18

coach Al Schacht. He

2:20

could hit a ball as far as anybody. He

2:22

could run as good as anybody. He

2:24

was one of the passes men I ever saw in a run

2:26

and run in the bases. He was

2:29

fast. That man was a great

2:31

athlete. He could do anything. Former

2:34

President Dwight D. Eisenhower actually played

2:36

against Thorpe in college. He

2:39

can do everything that anybody else can do

2:41

and he can do it better. And

2:44

we saw him, just without the slightest

2:46

form, put the football on

2:48

his foot and kick it out 60 yards in

2:51

a punt. There's no trouble

2:53

at all. We were standing back there, it

2:55

looked like, from 75 yards in

2:57

one. He could boom the ball, it wasn't spiraling

2:59

or anything else. It was just boom, down there,

3:01

that's all it was doing. He

3:03

could throw the ball, he could run, he could tackle

3:05

you, he could do anything. He could do anything. Except

3:11

outrun racism. As

3:14

a Native American athlete, Jim Thorpe proved over

3:16

and over again that he was better

3:18

than anyone else in

3:20

the world. Today,

3:28

Jim Thorpe is having a moment. He's

3:31

important to me as a Native man and as

3:33

a Native youth when I was growing up, just

3:36

because of that representation. Tall

3:38

Paul is an Anishinaabe and Oneida

3:40

hip-hop artist enrolled on the Leech

3:42

Lake Reservation in Minnesota. And for

3:44

him, Jim Thorpe was everything.

3:48

Born in Indian territory, Oklahoma, with his

3:50

twin brother Charlie just out of Belmont's

3:53

border. As a kid, I didn't see

3:55

him. Native

4:00

men or Native women on the big

4:03

screen too often, especially not

4:05

in an athletic sense, like

4:07

I was watching the NFL, the NBA, never

4:10

seen any Native superstar athletes. So

4:12

I got curious and started doing

4:14

some research and found out about

4:17

Jim Thorpe in my school library

4:19

and that inspired me hearing about

4:21

him being an Olympic athlete and

4:23

everything. Even though he's

4:25

been gone at this point for a long

4:27

time I needed somebody to look up to

4:29

who was Native and that was important

4:31

for me as a kid. If

4:35

you don't think Jim Thorpe is the greatest athlete of

4:37

all time, you need to watch this video. There's

4:39

a feature-length film in the works. There's a

4:42

new best-selling biography out. The greatest athlete in

4:44

the world. One of the greatest athletes of

4:46

all time. Jim Thorpe. Jim Thorpe. Just damn

4:48

much better than everybody else. Wow. He's

4:51

popping up in Netflix documentaries and

4:53

in Hulu's hit series Reservation Dogs.

4:57

It doesn't surprise me at all that there

5:00

are Native kids running around with Jim

5:02

Thorpe t-shirts on. Patti

5:04

Lowe directs the Center for Native American and

5:07

Indigenous Research at Northwestern University and

5:10

she's a member of the Bad River Band

5:12

of Lake Superior Ojibwe. I

5:14

think young Native kids finding somebody like

5:16

Jim Thorpe are thinking, hey, I'd like

5:19

to be able to do something like

5:21

that and really distinguish

5:23

myself in some awesome way

5:25

and have people write songs and

5:27

write books about me 70

5:30

years after my achievements. I

5:33

think almost any person who

5:35

follows sports knows the name Jim Thorpe

5:38

and understands that

5:41

his story is really

5:43

part of a larger narrative

5:45

about America and how we've

5:47

come to deal with race

5:49

relations. So,

5:54

who was Jim Thorpe? Where

5:57

did he come from? How did he achieve what he

5:59

did? Here's Shannon

6:01

Henry Kleiber with Thorpe's biographer David

6:03

Marinus. What

6:06

originally drew you to Thorpe?

6:08

I know you've obviously written

6:10

about politicians and your sports

6:12

biographies of Roberto Clemente and

6:14

Vince Lombardi. What drew you

6:16

to Jim Thorpe at this moment in time? I'm

6:20

always looking for the dramatic arc

6:22

of a story, just a great story. And

6:25

then for a way to illuminate history

6:28

and sociology through that story.

6:31

Jim Thorpe is both an incredible

6:33

story of perhaps the greatest athlete

6:35

ever, someone who did things that

6:37

were unparalleled. No one before had

6:39

won gold medals in the

6:41

decathlon and pentathlon, been an

6:43

all-American football player, the first president of the

6:46

National Football League, and a Major League Baseball

6:48

player. And he was also, by the

6:50

way, a great ballroom dancer and could

6:52

play ice hockey and people said he was even

6:54

good at marbles. He could do sort of anything.

6:58

So that's part of it. But it was also

7:00

most important to me was to be able to

7:02

use his life as a lens

7:04

looking at the Native American experience. And so it

7:06

was that combination that drew me to Jim Thorpe.

7:10

Well, yeah, let's talk more about the

7:12

Native American experience. The name of

7:14

your book is Path Lit by Lightning, which is a

7:16

translation of, how do you pronounce it? Is

7:19

it Wathowhuck? Wathowhuck, yes. It's most commonly

7:21

shortened to Bright Path, but I saw

7:23

a translation of Path Lit by Lightning

7:26

and I thought, that's illuminating. Yeah.

7:28

Was that like a North Star for you, his

7:31

name, as you were working on this book? Yes,

7:33

absolutely it was in so many different ways. He

7:44

was born in 1887 in a little

7:46

cabin near the North Canadian River in

7:49

Oklahoma. The

7:51

reason he got that name, I think was

7:53

literal. There

7:56

was a thunderstorm along the North

7:58

Canadian River. The night that he

8:00

and his, by the way, he was a twin, his

8:03

twin brother Charlie and he were born. So

8:05

that's where he got the name path lit by lightning.

8:09

Wathohok. But

8:12

I viewed it as both a description

8:14

of this incredible, I

8:16

mean, lightning reflects sort of

8:18

energy and electricity. It

8:21

also describes something that is

8:23

dangerous in a way. And

8:26

then the word path I liked so much because the

8:29

story of Jim's life is a path of

8:31

great accomplishment, difficulties,

8:36

and perseverance. His

8:41

mother always told him

8:44

that he was the reincarnation of Black Hawk,

8:46

who was the greatest second

8:48

Fox warrior. And so Jim sort

8:50

of always lived with that in his mind, that he

8:52

was following the footsteps of Black

8:54

Hawk. By

8:58

the time he was growing up though, it was the 1890s and

9:01

native people were living under white man's rules.

9:06

It was very

9:08

oppressive. Patty

9:10

Lowe again. The

9:12

government had the right to tell you where

9:15

you could live, the religions that

9:17

you could participate in and native religions

9:19

were not among them. Native

9:22

governments were illegal. They

9:24

had the power to tell parents where they

9:27

had to send their children. They

9:30

could arbitrarily decide to send the

9:32

children to boarding school. Every

9:34

aspect of a native person's life

9:37

was controlled by the Commission

9:39

on Indian Affairs, later the Bureau of

9:42

Indian Affairs, which during this time was

9:44

located in the War Department, which tells

9:46

you something. Jim

9:51

Thorpe was among the native children sent to

9:53

those Indian boarding schools. He

9:55

ran away from one and then

9:57

wound up at the most famous.

10:00

The Carlisle Indians. industrial school in

10:02

Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Its founder's

10:04

motto was, Kill the Indian, Save

10:06

the Man. The mission? To

10:09

Americanize Native children through a

10:11

military-style program of forced cultural

10:13

assimilation. Carlisle's

10:17

coach, Pop Warner, spotted Jim's athletic

10:19

talent first in track and field,

10:21

then on the football field, and

10:23

the baseball diamond. In

10:26

those days, sports was one of the

10:28

few paths to mainstream achievement even available

10:30

to Native people. You

10:36

know, these athletic fields were the only

10:38

place where Native people

10:40

were free to express themselves, to

10:43

compete against themselves,

10:45

to compete against white

10:47

men. Some

10:50

of them the sons and grandsons

10:53

of the military leaders

10:56

had fought against those

10:59

Native men's parents

11:02

and grandparents. So,

11:06

imagine Jim Thorpe, whose

11:09

great-grandfather, Black Hawk, was

11:13

ruthlessly pursued by the American

11:15

military, and

11:17

now he's playing against teams

11:20

from West Point. You

11:23

know, I can't imagine what must

11:25

have been going through his head.

11:27

It must have been... He

11:30

must have had some pretty interesting thoughts before

11:33

those games. Whatever

11:35

fueled him, everyone who saw him

11:37

agreed. Jim

11:40

Thorpe was unstoppable. Sometimes

11:46

he would score all the

11:48

points for his team, because he

11:51

was a running back, he was a kicker,

11:53

he punted, he drop-kicked

11:55

70-yard field goals. It's

11:58

really, really remarkable. what

12:00

he was able to accomplish. But

12:31

his achievement was surpassed by an American Indian

12:33

Jim Thorpe, who won the

12:35

5 event pentathlon, and then

12:37

would attempt to win the first Olympic

12:39

decathlon ever held. Jim

12:43

started training for the Olympics in the spring of 1912. Just

12:47

a few months before the games

12:49

began, he'd always been a fast runner.

12:51

But now he added jumps, hurdles, the

12:54

shot put, pole vaulting, javelin, discus,

12:56

hammer. He'd be competing in

12:58

the 5 event pentathlon and in the

13:00

first ever decathlon, the most

13:02

grueling contest in Olympic history. He

13:04

would win them both, outstripping

13:06

every other competitor, and despite

13:09

an unexpected handicap. So

13:16

he's competing in Stockholm, and

13:18

he's doing really well. I

13:21

think it was the last day, and

13:23

Thorpe was about to do the

13:26

high jump. And his shoes

13:28

are missing. Somebody

13:30

may have taken them, or somebody walked

13:32

off with them mistakenly, but he doesn't

13:35

have any shoes. And so,

13:37

Pop Warner finds two

13:39

mismatched shoes. They're

13:42

not the right size, so he's got

13:44

to adjust with a couple of extra

13:46

socks on one, and some jury-rigged

13:49

cleats. And I

13:51

think he had to wear two socks on

13:53

his left foot. And he

13:57

still performs, and he winds up

13:59

winning. That's

14:04

a pretty extraordinary story, I think. There's

14:07

a photo from that day. Must have been

14:09

taken shortly after he won. Jim

14:11

is standing on the field, still in

14:14

his track clothes, looking directly, almost challengingly

14:16

at the camera. You can

14:18

see muscles clenched in his face. And

14:20

on his feet, sure enough, two

14:23

mismatched shoes. There's

14:28

another moment from that day, also part

14:30

of the Jim Thorpe legend, about the moment he

14:32

stepped up to receive his two gold medals from

14:34

the King of Sweden, David

14:36

Marinus. What transpired

14:38

between Thorpe and King Gustav V during

14:41

those 15 seconds would

14:43

become a defining scene of Jim's life. The

14:46

accepted story goes that the King greeted

14:48

Thorpe in English by saying, you, sir,

14:50

are the greatest athlete in the world.

14:53

To which Jim replied, thanks, King.

14:56

Thanks, King. It's probably inappropriate to

14:58

address a royal that way, but

15:02

kind of endearing. But

15:04

the question arises, how is this

15:06

conversation known to have happened? Was

15:09

it a reasonable, if slightly imprecise description of

15:11

what was said, or was it

15:13

myth? That's

15:20

the thing about iconic figures. It

15:23

can be hard to separate the person from the myth.

15:27

And how different is a myth,

15:29

really, from a stereotype? In

15:32

the press, Jim could be cast as

15:34

both a heroic athlete and an ignorant

15:36

rube, brave warrior or

15:39

quote unquote, dumb Indian. The

15:42

romantic myth and the derogatory

15:44

stereotype wrapped together. He

15:47

would be dogged by both throughout his career. Some

15:50

of the myths are small, you know, like the

15:52

myth that Jim Thorpe hit home runs

15:54

into three different states in one

15:56

game, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma

15:59

while playing in Texas. It's a

16:01

great story, but it's geographic

16:03

impossibility. Throughout his life,

16:06

he had to deal with people

16:08

who romanticized and diminished him

16:10

at the same time. People

16:13

who helped him rise and then turned away from

16:15

him at the times of his crisis. So

16:17

I would say the largest myth I deal with is

16:20

the myth that the white fathers know best. The

16:31

legend of Jim Thorpe was born in Stockholm.

16:34

His performance there catapulted him to

16:37

superstardom. But the events that

16:39

followed would haunt him for the rest of his

16:41

life. He

16:43

arrived back in the U.S. a hero with

16:45

a ticker tape parade down Broadway and national

16:48

acclaim. Six months later,

16:50

the International Olympic Committee stripped him of

16:53

his medals. Could

16:55

you tell that story a little bit? Sure.

16:59

Because I don't think a lot of people

17:01

know. I mean, they know he won gold

17:03

medals in Stockholm and they were taken away,

17:05

but why? Yes. Well,

17:08

he played Bush League Baseball for

17:10

two summers in the Eastern Carolina

17:12

League. This was in 1909 and 1910, two

17:14

years before the Olympics. It

17:18

was a period when literally hundreds

17:20

of college athletes were playing summer

17:22

baseball for money. Most

17:25

of them were doing it under aliases. Dwight

17:28

Eisenhower played in the Kansas State League

17:30

under the name Wilson. There

17:32

were so many aliases in the Eastern

17:35

Carolina League that the joke was, they

17:38

called it the Pocahontas League because everyone

17:40

was named John Smith. Or another line

17:42

was, there are

17:44

more aliases in the Eastern Carolina League than there are

17:46

aliases for gunman in New York City. But

17:49

Jim Thorpe played under the name Jim Thorpe. He never hit

17:51

it. His name was in

17:53

the paper in North Carolina for two summers almost

17:56

every day. But nonetheless, after

17:58

he won the World Cup, his gold

18:00

medals, a story broke

18:02

in the Worcester Telegram in

18:05

Massachusetts interviewing one

18:07

of Thorpe's old coaches from the

18:09

Eastern Carolina League, and it

18:11

just broke into this huge scandal from there when

18:13

the guy said that Jim Thorpe played for him.

18:16

All of the people who were

18:19

important to Jim's rise

18:21

lied about their knowledge of what

18:24

he was doing to save their own reputations.

18:26

So Pop Warner, his coach at Carlisle,

18:29

knew exactly what Thorpe had done. He

18:32

had sent many of his players

18:34

down to play baseball before. They

18:36

were scouted by one of Warner's closest

18:38

friends. Warner met with Jim

18:41

several times during the period when he

18:43

was playing baseball and not at Carlisle,

18:46

and yet when the story broke he said he didn't know

18:48

anything about it. So

18:50

these people, you know, sort

18:52

of the white saviors, people

18:54

who were promoting the

18:57

purity of amateurism, lied about

18:59

Thorpe to save their own

19:01

reputations. George S. Patton was

19:03

on that Olympic team. He

19:05

was in the US Army. He participated

19:07

in the modern pentathlon, which

19:10

had five events that were

19:12

all military-oriented, and

19:14

he was getting paid by the Army to practice that

19:16

for a year before he went to the Olympics, but

19:18

he wasn't called an amateur. The

19:21

entire Swedish team was

19:23

allowed to take off from their jobs for

19:25

six months before the Olympics to just train

19:27

and still paid full time. They weren't. So

19:30

in so many ways Thorpe was victimized

19:32

and let down by people around him. Do

19:36

you think that he was targeted?

19:39

I mean it just seems so many other

19:41

people didn't have to play by those rules,

19:43

but they wanted him to play by those rules.

19:45

I don't know if he was targeted so much as he

19:47

was victimized by it because he was an easy scapegoat

19:50

for everybody. So that

19:53

when Pop Warner, for instance, when

19:56

the scandal broke, Warner actually wrote a

19:58

letter for Thorpe. Thorpe's

20:00

name explaining what happened. And

20:02

the basic defense was, well, he's just a, you

20:05

know, lo the poor Indian. He's just an ignorant

20:07

native, which was wrong

20:09

in every respect and in insulting.

20:12

So he was, it was easy to have Jim

20:14

take the fall. But

20:17

I think his story of

20:19

accomplishing the impossible and

20:22

then having it taken

20:25

from you as he did, distinguishing

20:28

yourself at the Olympics, having

20:30

your medals stripped from

20:32

you for transgressions

20:35

that nearly every major

20:38

athlete was doing at

20:40

that time in history. I

20:43

think those are the kinds of injustices

20:45

that really resonate with people. It

20:48

wasn't until the summer of 2022,

20:51

after years of pressure from his

20:53

family, that the International Olympics Committee

20:55

finally restored Jim Thorpe's gold medals,

20:57

110 years after

21:00

he won them. I

21:02

was happy for Thorpe's family.

21:04

And I know that there were

21:07

people in the Native American sports world

21:09

that were finally satisfied that

21:11

that had been returned. But, you

21:13

know, for me it was just a

21:15

reminder of how injustice

21:18

had worked for such a

21:20

long time. Sometimes

21:23

the best form of resistance is remembering.

21:26

Today, a younger generation of Native

21:28

activists and artists are rediscovering the

21:30

story of Jim Thorpe. As

21:33

I was writing this album, there were definitely moments

21:35

of anger. Take Tall Paul.

21:38

Just thinking about all the stuff that Jim

21:40

Thorpe had to go through, thinking about the

21:42

boarding school history and how they started. And

21:45

we had to get our hair chopped off and we

21:47

had to speak, look, dress,

21:49

walk, talk like civilized

21:52

white people, basically. Yeah,

21:55

yeah, there was some anger there. And

21:58

that's been the case throughout my whole life. about

22:00

Native history, you know, not even just this

22:02

album. So, yeah. Tall

22:09

Paul is a hip-hop artist. Anishinaabe

22:12

and Oneida enrolled on the Leech

22:14

Lake Reservation in Minnesota. His

22:16

new album is called The Story of Jim Thorpe.

22:30

You're not aiming for the top, what you

22:32

aiming for? Waging wars since Columbus came on

22:34

shore. Arrowhead to your head, nowadays we just

22:37

aim to fall. What you waiting for? I'll

22:39

blaze them all on past high. F*** you,

22:41

f*** your team, f*** your mascot. Trash talk,

22:43

talk, trash walk past, but don't look. I

22:46

can tell by the vibes, I got them

22:48

all shook. They wrote books, but left

22:50

the truth out, it's all lies. Next

22:52

summer might bring the coupe out, it's

22:55

all lies. All me, T-O-M-Y, and I

22:57

been fly, your Zika threat is none.

22:59

Better rep, poet's representer, word to talk,

23:01

Paul. Fourth and goal, lust against all

23:04

your. Coming

23:09

up, if what happened to Jim

23:11

Thorpe during his life makes you angry, wait

23:13

until you hear what happened after he died.

23:16

It's a story you could not imagine,

23:19

not in a million years. I'm

23:21

Anne Strangchamps. It's to the best

23:24

of our knowledge from Wisconsin Public Radio and

23:26

PRX. From

23:40

the story of his birth to those mismatched

23:43

shoes at the Olympics, Jim

23:45

Thorpe has become a legend. And

23:47

there are conflicting stories about him, even

23:51

after his death. what

24:00

happened then. They

24:04

were having the

24:07

fourth day of ceremonies. Native

24:10

American activist Suzanne Schoenhartjoe talking

24:12

with Steve Paulson. The

24:15

Sakenfahls have their

24:19

journey to the

24:22

ancestors ceremony. Each

24:26

day stands for something. After

24:29

everything's been done on the previous three

24:31

days, the fourth day is

24:34

where his

24:36

name is returned. So

24:39

that means it can be

24:41

used by other people again. It's

24:44

a good name, can be used by someone

24:48

else. So

24:50

that ceremony was in process

24:53

when his widow,

24:57

his third wife, came

25:01

in with large men and

25:05

some sort of legal paper saying

25:10

we can take him. And

25:15

people picked him up in

25:18

the casket and

25:21

took him out and

25:23

put him in a car. Her

25:27

car, and she

25:30

drove off. Thorpe

25:37

had been through many, many ceremonies

25:39

for other people, of course, and

25:43

he wanted that ceremony for himself.

25:46

A traditional Sakenfahls ceremony,

25:49

that was his wish, and

25:52

he expressed it to all

25:54

sorts of family members, to

25:57

friends, to wives. And

26:00

that was his plan. He was always

26:02

going to go home. She

26:07

put him on ice. She

26:11

kept buying ice, putting

26:13

ice inside the casket, draining

26:16

the casket, driving

26:18

around. She drove to Pennsylvania.

26:22

She, I guess, had in her mind that

26:26

people there would like to pay

26:28

her for his body. They

26:31

offered her money

26:34

and she made a bargain

26:37

with them that

26:39

they would change the name to Jim

26:41

Thorpe. They would

26:44

build a mausoleum for him and

26:48

happiness would rain. And

26:51

on the side of the highway, as you're

26:54

entering Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, is

26:59

a mausoleum. And

27:04

it's not in very fine

27:08

taste. It's a little

27:10

garish. But I'm

27:13

sure it attracts the

27:15

casual tourist who's passing by.

27:18

Makes them wonder, oh, what's that? So,

27:25

he's a tourist trap. The

27:51

appropriation, not just of

27:53

Jim Thorpe's name, but

27:55

of his actual body, his

27:57

physical remains, is so obvious. It's

28:00

obviously a violation and a sickening

28:02

one. You

28:04

have to wonder how or why people

28:06

didn't see that. But

28:09

then think about the

28:11

backdrop. Think

28:22

about American sports and the racist

28:24

tradition of derogatory Native American mascots

28:26

and team names. I'm

28:28

not going to say them, but you know what I mean. Suzanne

28:31

Harjo, who's Cheyenne and Hidalgo Muscogee,

28:34

has been leading the fight against

28:36

them for decades. She

28:38

says that those names have genocidal histories that

28:40

are often hiding in plain sight. Like,

28:44

for example, the practice of

28:46

paying bounty hunters to kill Native people

28:49

and accepting, as proof of death, their

28:52

literal skin. In

28:55

the nation's very capital, the NFL team had

28:57

one of those names. And

28:59

Suzanne led the fight that finally got them

29:02

to change it to the Washington commanders, but

29:05

not until 2022. It

29:08

was inevitable that the name

29:10

would be changed. It was

29:12

just a matter of when. It wasn't a

29:14

matter of if. And

29:17

along the way, we've changed over 2,000 of them.

29:21

2,000 names of mascots of sports teams, you mean?

29:23

Or other kinds of names as well. Wow.

29:26

At the elementary, junior

29:29

school, middle school, high

29:31

school, community college

29:33

level, universities,

29:35

colleges. Let me

29:37

ask about your role in this. You have been

29:39

an activist for more than 50 years. Why

29:42

are these changes happening now, after all

29:44

these years? Well,

29:47

because we're still here. We

29:51

were supposed to be dead, gone, buried,

29:53

forgotten. But because

29:55

we're still here, it's

29:58

kind of a burr under every. and

30:00

saddle. And at

30:03

some point you just can't ignore

30:05

living human beings who are saying,

30:08

we have these treaties and

30:11

we've kept them and

30:13

you haven't. We

30:16

have been moved, we've been pushed

30:18

around and at

30:20

some point everyone has just

30:23

said enough's enough. We're

30:25

not going to do this anymore because

30:28

we have

30:30

had really strong ancestors

30:33

who have given

30:35

their lives so

30:37

that we could be here and

30:41

really strong ancestors who have

30:43

made us the people we

30:46

are who are here by

30:48

saying do this, don't let them

30:50

do that. Be

30:52

this kind of person, be this kind of

30:54

human being, don't accept

30:57

this kind of treatment. And

31:00

when you grow up with grandparents and parents

31:02

and aunts and uncles who are talking

31:04

to you in this way, you understand

31:07

that it's on you. In

31:15

this long struggle for Native rights, there

31:17

is such a sense of generations holding

31:19

hands, of messages and lessons

31:22

passed down and you can

31:24

see that happening again today with the story of

31:26

Jim Thorpe, with the way

31:28

he's re-emerging as a hero and role

31:30

model for a new generation of Native

31:32

activists and artists like the

31:34

hip-hop artist Tall Paul. Let's

31:38

go back to Charles Monroe Kane's conversation with him.

31:42

Do you remember that first time in the library

31:44

where you started reading or saw a picture, that

31:47

famous picture of Jim Thorpe in the Olympics? What

31:49

was like the first time you were like, oh

31:51

my god, this guy is Native American and

31:53

he's a great athlete? Yeah,

31:59

so I was living in a small town

32:01

at the time called Redwood Falls with my

32:03

family. And I was down in the library

32:05

and the school and I was doing

32:07

some research and I

32:09

was doing some digging and I found this book on

32:12

Jim Thorpe and I'm like, okay,

32:14

he's Olympic gold medalist, NFL Hall of

32:16

Famer, played major league baseball. All

32:19

right. I'm going to look into this guy, you know,

32:21

and I started doing a lot of research on him

32:23

at that point, but it just felt

32:25

inspiring to me, you know, because I had never

32:27

heard of him before. Nobody ever told me about

32:29

him. I just kind of had to figure out

32:32

about him myself and it was powerful to find

32:34

out that there was somebody out there like that

32:36

who represented us. I'm

32:57

curious about you though, before we kind of go further

32:59

with Jim Thorpe. What

33:12

is your story? Like what's Tall Paul's story? How did

33:14

you end up being a MC

33:16

making an album about Jim Thorpe?

33:19

What's your path? Yeah. So

33:21

I was born and raised in South Minneapolis.

33:23

Just a little bit of my backstory, you

33:25

know, grew up, didn't really know my dad

33:27

too much, seen some pictures of me sucking

33:29

on his toes when I was like one

33:31

or two years old, but that was the

33:33

extent of my knowledge of him. Like I

33:35

didn't really know of his existence beyond these

33:37

funny pictures I've seen. Met him

33:39

a little bit later in life, about nine years old. Wasn't

33:42

the greatest experience. I do know him now

33:44

and we have a good relationship, but just

33:46

kind of prefaced him with that history. And

33:49

then growing up, bouncing all

33:51

over the place as a youth with my

33:53

mom and my brothers and sister through

33:56

foster homes, through women's shelters, because

33:58

my mom had been in some.

34:00

abusive relationships. Just that was

34:02

kind of my background. I kind of grew up

34:04

in a negative situation but I

34:07

always made the most of it with my friends.

34:09

We would get out and play big games of football

34:11

and I fell in love with football which is how

34:13

I found out about Jim Thorpe. And

34:15

then as I got older about 14 years

34:18

old I started rapping you know

34:20

I started freestyling from my friends.

34:22

Started writing little raps because I

34:24

was watching MTV music videos 106

34:26

and Park Freestyle Fridays on BET.

34:29

So I started getting some exposure to hip-hop

34:32

and rap. Had some struggles with like

34:34

alcohol for like five, six, seven years

34:37

and then I got sober and I needed something

34:39

to pick up and I

34:42

had all that free time open now so I was

34:44

like all right well I'm gonna try this rap thing

34:46

out because it's something that I've always been something

34:49

I consider myself to be good at. So I

34:51

started rapping and I got

34:53

some beats from local producers. Got some

34:55

studio time. Got

34:57

into the hip-hop thing and as I progressed throughout it

34:59

I was like well you know I connected

35:01

back to Jim Thorpe and I

35:03

made a song about him back about five years ago

35:06

and I just think it's important to push his

35:08

legacy if I can attach him to something like

35:11

hip-hop it'll do a lot to make

35:13

people know about him. All

35:28

I hear about is cheese but the raw

35:30

lung deceased man I wish I could have

35:32

seen you play ball on TV. I wish

35:34

that you would see the same notoriety the

35:36

mass media has given all these other athletes.

35:38

I just needed someone great who looked like

35:40

me. Jim Thorpe you could be my Muhammad

35:42

Ali afflicted with addiction alcoholic like pee no

35:44

submitting both spitting up in college like geez

35:47

my focus not that we probably both got

35:49

bees you're the star rb I'd skip to

35:51

smoke trees when I finally got sober I

35:53

became an emcee messing up on stage because

35:55

I care what people think I needed you

35:57

influence I don't care what people think see for me to

35:59

feel great Man, I needed that drink. Graduate way

36:01

to school and flush the lake down a sink. Now

36:03

I gotta be you for kids who wanna be me.

36:07

Woo! Damn, I mean, that's

36:09

it, right? That's what this

36:11

interview is totally about. That's what your

36:13

album is about. I mean, now I

36:15

gotta be you for kids who wanna

36:17

be me. You're

36:19

the legacy of Jim Thorpe, right?

36:21

I mean, that's how it works, right? Yeah, I

36:23

think that is how it works. You know, the

36:26

so-called passing of the torch. And so are all

36:28

of the other people out there in

36:30

the native community who are doing big

36:32

things. We are the legacies of our

36:34

ancestors and elders who did great things

36:36

before us, for sure. Coming

36:42

up, the legacy of Jim

36:44

Thorpe and the legal battle to repatriate

36:47

his remains. I'm Anne Strange-Hamps,

36:49

and this is to the best of our knowledge from

36:52

Wisconsin Public Radio and

36:54

PRX. Our

37:00

story of Jim Thorpe continues. The

37:12

story of Olympic gold medals won

37:14

and lost of an incredible

37:16

career in professional baseball and football,

37:18

which inevitably came to an end.

37:23

In his later years, Jim Thorpe struggled to

37:25

find work. Coaching jobs he

37:27

dreamed of somehow never

37:29

materialized. He had stents

37:31

as a bouncer, security guard, and ditch

37:33

digger, and he finally wound

37:35

up in Hollywood, mostly playing American Indian

37:38

chiefs in Westerns. He

37:40

did get to see a biopic made of his life, starring

37:43

Burt Lancaster. You think

37:45

you can do it right, Matt? Just give me

37:47

that ball. Working, swaying, training to go to the

37:49

Olympics for once. But

37:53

by then, he had slipped into alcoholism, and

37:55

he died destitute in 1953. At

38:00

which point, as we heard, his

38:02

third wife shows up at the funeral,

38:05

kidnaps his body, and sells it to

38:07

a small town in Pennsylvania for use

38:09

as a tourist attraction. There

38:12

are just aren't words. Jim's

38:14

children and the Saken Fox Nation took the

38:17

town to court and demanded his body be

38:19

returned to his homeland for a traditional burial,

38:22

as he requested. How

38:25

did the town of Jimthorpe,

38:27

Pennsylvania respond? This

38:30

is Suzanne Harjo again. Like

38:33

stuck pigs. We

38:35

have no intentions of letting him

38:38

go. There's

38:40

no reason for it. They

38:43

really did not respond graciously

38:45

at all. They said,

38:48

he's ours. We bought him fair and

38:50

square. And has the town

38:52

made money off of this, as far as you know,

38:54

after all these decades? I

38:57

do not know. I

38:59

would imagine they have because they fought tooth

39:01

and nail to keep him

39:03

there. He's their

39:06

trophy. This

39:08

is a time dishonored practice

39:10

in America, taking

39:12

native body parts and bodies

39:14

and capturing them and

39:17

somehow parading them. But

39:19

I know that after

39:22

a lot of our massacres and

39:25

our people were mutilated

39:27

and we're

39:29

still recovering parts

39:31

of our relatives,

39:33

our ancestors, from this

39:36

kind of practice. You

39:39

said this is a big deal, this whole

39:41

story of the push, the

39:43

move, the campaign to return Jimthorpe's

39:46

remains to tribal lands

39:48

in Oklahoma. Why is this such a

39:50

big deal about Jimthorpe in particular? Until

39:54

1989, when we got the

39:56

repatriation law. that

40:00

we started working on in 1967, by the way. We

40:07

were considered under law

40:10

the archaeological resources of the

40:12

United States of America. And

40:15

we wanted to change that. We wanted

40:17

to humanize ourselves like the

40:20

rest of the world. We've

40:22

had the horrors of grave

40:25

robbing and of people

40:27

being taken out of their graves after

40:30

being freshly buried and being

40:33

beheaded, and then their bodies

40:35

just left there. I mean,

40:38

that happened under the color

40:40

of law, under the

40:43

Indian Crania study of the U.S. Army

40:45

Surgeon General of the late 1800s. I

40:49

mean, there's a whole raft of Army

40:52

officer reports, written

40:55

reports in the National

40:58

Anthropological Archives. One

41:00

of them said, I waited until

41:03

the cover of darkness, till the grieving

41:05

family left the graveside, exhumed

41:07

the body and decapitated it. Now,

41:10

what they would do is take

41:13

the head, measure the

41:15

skull, weigh the brain, and

41:19

then dip the whole thing in lye. Wow.

41:23

Note the measurements have sent it as

41:25

freight to Washington, to the Army Surgeon

41:27

General, or depending on

41:30

what year it was, the Army

41:32

Medical Museum and the Smithsonian. Imagine

41:35

the people coming back

41:38

to that graveside the next

41:40

day and

41:43

finding their beheaded, headless

41:47

loved one outside the

41:49

grave. I mean, what

41:51

would you think? No, it's absolutely horrible.

41:53

I mean, it's just it's so horrible. You

41:55

can't even imagine that. It's

41:58

like a scene from a horror movie. movie. Except

42:01

it really happened. America's

42:06

genocidal war against indigenous people is

42:08

one of history's worst atrocities, on

42:10

a scale so massive it's

42:12

hard to wrap your mind, let alone your

42:15

heart, around. That's why

42:17

David Marinus wanted to write Jim

42:19

Thorpe's biography, because, as he

42:21

told Shannon, sometimes it's the small details

42:24

of history that can open up a

42:26

bigger truth and help you take it through.

42:29

For example. I knew that

42:31

he went to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, but

42:33

I didn't really know the story of what those

42:35

boarding schools did. The

42:37

first set of Native

42:39

Americans who went there were Lakota Sioux. These

42:42

kids thought they were going there to die, to

42:44

show their bravery. And many of

42:46

them did, in fact. When I'm

42:48

doing a book, I'm always looking for those moments

42:51

that sort of wash over, history washes

42:53

over me. And that happened at

42:55

Carlisle when I went to what is still the

42:58

cemetery there for those Indian children, and

43:01

there are 186 of

43:03

them still there. So

43:05

the cemetery's there, and you can read

43:07

their names on the... Absolutely. You know,

43:10

sometimes it's the name that the school

43:12

gave them, and sometimes it's their Native

43:15

name. Only in the

43:17

last several years have some of those

43:20

children been repatriated to their homelands. It's

43:22

run by the U.S. military now. It's

43:24

the Army War College. And

43:27

for decades, the War College was

43:29

not allowing that, but now finally

43:31

some repatriation is going on, and some

43:34

of the children are being repatriated to

43:36

their homelands. Which

43:41

is all Jim Thorpe's family is asking

43:43

for, for him. For

43:45

his body. The

43:49

public, the world had

43:52

Jim Thorpe all his

43:54

life. He was a public figure, and

43:56

the family just

43:59

had one... role and that was at

44:02

the end to carry out his

44:04

wishes and to do it

44:07

in the way that he would have been

44:09

proud to have done

44:11

for someone else. The

44:14

battle to reclaim Jim Thorpe's body has a

44:16

long legal history. His family

44:18

won the right to get his body back in a

44:20

U.S. District Court, but a federal

44:22

appeals court sided with the town and reversed

44:25

the decision. The Thorpe family

44:27

petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, but

44:29

it refused to hear the case. And

44:31

so now the only way Jim Thorpe's

44:34

body will ever be returned to his homeland is

44:36

if the town of Jim Thorpe,

44:39

Pennsylvania does so voluntarily. What

44:43

do you think will happen? I mean do you

44:45

think Jim Thorpe's remains will eventually return

44:47

to Sac and Fox tribal lands? I

44:50

do. I do because

44:52

great things can't

44:55

happen in that

44:57

spot. You're talking about

44:59

the people in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.

45:01

I am. I think at some point the

45:04

the younger people are going to say I

45:07

don't know what our parents and

45:09

grandparents and their parents were thinking,

45:12

but we can still be

45:15

Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, but

45:17

we don't have to hold on

45:19

to his remains.

45:22

Why do we have to hold

45:25

him like he's a prisoner of war

45:27

or a trophy? The thing

45:29

that I find so I don't

45:32

know remarkable about this history that

45:34

you're describing is you've

45:36

been working on these issues for years,

45:38

for decades. You keep going.

45:41

You don't give up even when things

45:43

probably look kind of hopeless and I guess

45:45

I sort of wonder you know where how

45:48

do you manage to carry on and keep

45:50

fighting to restore your rights and the good

45:52

name and all of that. Well

45:56

it's my job to be optimistic.

45:59

I'm Cheyenne. in Haudelge, Muscogee.

46:02

And for the Cheyenne people, an

46:05

instruction was provided to the

46:07

people as a whole, that the

46:10

nation shall be strong so long as the hearts

46:13

of the women are not on the ground. And

46:16

what that means is that we

46:19

have a job to be optimistic. We

46:21

have a job to do a job,

46:23

to get things done and

46:25

to believe that it will be done eventually

46:28

because we're going to work to make it

46:30

so. Hey,

46:38

ya, eh, eh,

46:40

eh, ah, eh, ah, eh,

46:42

oh, oh, eh, eh, eh, Hey,

46:45

ya, eh, eh, eh, eh, ah,

46:48

eh, ah, eh, oh, eh, eh,

46:50

eh, Ay, oh,

46:52

hey, oh, hey, oh, hey, oh,

46:55

I hope you know, I

46:58

never wanna see you go.

47:03

I hope you know,

47:05

you've always been the

47:07

one. I

47:09

hope you know. I think in

47:11

a larger sense, the issue

47:14

that I dealt with as a biographer is,

47:16

is this a tragedy? And

47:18

I decided that there were tragic elements

47:20

to it, but that it wasn't, it

47:22

was a story of perseverance. You

47:26

know, how do you judge a life? How

47:28

do you view a life? My late brother used to say that

47:30

life is a series of sensations and I

47:32

sort of understand that and

47:35

Thorpe had some fabulous sensations throughout his life.

47:38

So that's not tragic. I

47:43

mean, you just think about all the people he encountered

47:45

in his life, starting

47:47

with playing football against Dwight Eisenhower with

47:49

Omar Bradley on the bench, going

47:52

to the Olympics with George S.

47:54

Beasley, George S. Patton, playing

47:57

baseball with Christy Matheson, traveling the

47:59

world with. Hall of

48:01

Famers, Tris Speaker and Sam Crawford

48:04

going out to Hollywood and acting

48:06

with Bob Hope and being in

48:08

a movie directed by Michael Curtiz who directed

48:11

Casablanca and having Burt

48:13

Lancaster play him. I mean, you

48:16

know, I think he had a lot of amazing

48:18

sensations in his life and also some very difficult

48:20

periods and he did struggle with

48:22

alcohol. He had seven children,

48:24

three wives, often didn't see

48:27

his children as he was traveling around the country.

48:29

So there were some elements of tragedy

48:32

to it and also some amazing

48:35

unparalleled sensations. Jim

48:38

Thorpe means to me

48:41

that phrase we call indigenous

48:43

excellence, embodying the human

48:45

spirit and all our flaws but

48:47

still being legendary and great and

48:51

not allowing all the

48:53

things that go against us in

48:55

life to tear us down and

48:57

stop us from being our greatest

48:59

version of ourselves. That's what Jim

49:01

Thorpe represents to me. I think

49:03

for such a long

49:06

time native people and

49:09

native communities have been

49:11

defined by our deficiencies.

49:15

We're poor, you know, we're if

49:17

you look at educational attainment we're at the

49:19

bottom of the list. There's

49:21

always somebody trying to take our land

49:24

or our children or it's always

49:27

what's wrong with us and

49:30

over the past 20 years

49:32

I think as treaty rights

49:34

have been asserted successfully

49:37

in courts and there's

49:39

been this this renewal of

49:42

culture and language especially in

49:45

Native America. I think

49:48

people are starting

49:50

to understand that

49:53

yeah we've got generational

49:56

trauma but generational

49:58

trauma didn't help us

50:01

survive. We survived

50:03

because of generational joy

50:05

and ingenuity and innovation

50:08

and achievement. And I

50:10

think there's probably nobody that better

50:13

describes that than Jim Thorpe.

50:45

I'm Anne Strangchamps and

50:48

this is To The

50:50

Best Of Our Knowledge.

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I'd like to thank our guests today for sharing

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their knowledge and their hearts. Rapper

51:00

Tall Paul's album is called The Story Of

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Jim Thorpe. Go to Spotify and

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check it out. Tall Paul is

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an Anishinaabe and an Ida hip-hop artist

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enrolled in the Leech Lake Reservation in

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Minnesota. Biographer David

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Maraniss, author of A Path Lipped By

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Lightning, The Life Of Jim Thorpe, activist

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Suzanne Shown Harjo is the recipient of

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a 2014 Presidential Medal

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of Freedom. She's Cheyenne

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and Haudelge Muscogee. And

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Professor Patty Lowe, director of the

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Center for Native American and Indigenous

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Research at Northwestern University. She's

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a member of the Bad River Band of

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Lake Superior, Ochipoy. To The Best

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Of Our Knowledge comes to you from Wisconsin Public Radio. Charles

51:41

Monroe Kane produced The Sour, with

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help from Angelo Batista, Shannon Henry Kleiber

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and Mark Rickers. Our technical

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director and sound designer is Joe Hartke,

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with help from Sarah Hopel. Additional

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music this week comes from

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Tall Paul, Randy Wood, Superman,

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Ketsa and Audio Res Out.