Fabulous Redmen;: The Carlisle Indians and their famous football teams,

by John S Steckbeck

Jim Thorpe was hailed "as perhaps the finest American athlete in history." Part Sac and Fox Indian, Thorpe was sent to the Carlisle Indian School in 1903 by his father and was named three times to Team All-America, leading Carlisle to national fame as team captain in 1912. That same year at the Stockholm Olympics, Thorpe won two gold medals and "King Gustav of Sweden pronounced him the 'greatest athlete in the world'" (ANB). Thorpe returned to Carlisle and, as Steckbeck notes in Fabulous Redmen; it was on Thanksgiving Day, 1912, that "Carlisle closed its most successful season by overwhelming Brown University, 32 to 0, at Providence in a blinding snowstorm... The team owed its success to the efficient coaching of 'Pop' Warner and the able leadership of its captain, James Thorpe." After years of professional football, Thorpe died tragically in 1956, just five years after this book was published. He had been forced to return his Olympic medals in a controversy over his amateur status, but the decision was reversed posthumously and in 1999 the House of Representatives named Thorpe "America's Athlete of the Century."

150 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1951