The annelation of their childhood, stripped of their language, culture and spiritual believes, because the white man wanted it all.
Jim Thorpe, a full-blooded Indian was born in 1888. The first 25-years of his life, he was dealing with the U.S. Army's mission to hunt down and kill every Indian in their path, including babies, women and children or enslave them into being white.
Driven from their land again and again by broken treaties, subjected to every known spoliation and classified as beavers, buffalo and other wild creatures and compelled to give way to the march of civilization. The distorted cultural lens of whiteness is sagacious exposed in David Maraniss's 2022 book, "Path Lit by Lightning the Life of Jim Thorpe"
In 1904, Jim began attending the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and for at least one year, Pop Warner ran it. It was a very football orientated school. The official policy at Carlisle was to exterminate the Indian, not in body, but in language, dress, tradition, behavior and soul.
In 1912, Thorpe became the caption of the college Carlisle team and game by game he became the icon for the American Indian, reaching mythical proportions, he was an athletic odyssey.
Thorpe excelled in college and pro football and did very well in Major League Baseball. In 1916, while playing for the Milwaukee Brewers, Thorpe lead the league in stolen bases and banged in 10 homers with a .274 batting average.
In 1912, Thorpe won two gold medals, the last year the Olympic gold was solid gold. He won gold in the Pentathlon and Decathlon. The putrid politics of having his medals taken away and finally restored to him decades after his death is all covered.
The director of "Casablanca" directed the 1950s flick, "Jim Thorpe-All American." Documentary ends, movie making begins, Pop Warner said upon the movie's release.
Having read this book, it's clear, I'm not a man. Hiram Thorpe, Jim's father had 15 children with five different women and Jim recalls his dad killing and skinning two deer's and hoisting one on each shoulder and walking several miles to the house to feed the family. Both Jim and his father were avid hunters and fishers. Thorpe said hunting and fishing was his favorite sport. By the time Jim was 10 years old, he would trek more than five miles alone into the woods to hunt and fish, often being gone from home for days.
Jim Thorpe was an Olympic track champion, all American college and pro football player. He also played in Major League Baseball and the World Famous Indians basketball team. Thorpe was also one the founding presidents of the NFL.
Jim was an absentee father for all seven of his children. His first son, Jim jr. died of sickness when he was just 3-years old, and booze certainly didn't help in Thorpe's private life. In the 1920s while playing college football for the Canton Bulldogs, and Carlisle, Jim had bouts with the three B's. Booze, broads and brawls.
His life was an impressive legacy laden with the ecstasy of victory, the gnawing pain of defeat and the exquisite ecstasy of athletic dominance.
I've simply tinged the tip of the ice burg of this amazing five-star book. You don't have to be a sports buff or have heard of Jim Thorpe to enjoy this book, it's simply and amazing tale of tragedy and triumph.
Mark Izzy Schurr
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