INDIAN ATHLETES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 18, 22 January 1927, Page 24

INDIAN ATHLETES

PASSING OF THE OLD STARS

Where once the annals of sports in'the United. States recorded regularly the -triumphs of Indian athletes, to-day there is no outstanding, redskin, in the ■whole field. The vanishing American'has truly vanished from gridiron and diamond and track as wooden statues of him have vanished from the. cigar store, states the "New York Times." The Indian athlete wrote a picturesque chapter in American sports but it seems to have been a final chapter. There may, of course, be a sequel. If the Btory is taken up again'if will probably be at Haskell Institute, in Kansas, which has the only Indian football team that figures. prominently in the news of to-day. Reoently a 250,000 dollar stadium was dedicated there before 2000. of the tribesmen, affording at last adequate facilities for Ms athletic development. ' Meanwhile there is no-Big Chief as. in the days wlien Jim Thorpe was in his prime, when Chief Bender pitched for the Athletics and when Tom Longboat shone in the distance races. Jim Thorpe has been playing professional football for tha Canton Bulldogs as has Pete Calac; the last heard of Tom Longboat was in connection with a speeding automobile after he had served with distinction in the war. John Levi a y few years ago distuv guished himself as a football player- with the Haskell team* and then passed into oblivion, failing as an outfielder with the Yankees. • . . The first. Indian football combination which challenged the Indian-sounding Big Three's supremacy was of "Hudson, Pierce, and Metoxen, playing with. Carlisle in the 'nineties. ~ In those pre-twen-tieth century days also, Louis Sockalexia made his appearance in baseball with, the old Cleveland National League Club. Sockalexis came from the Penobscot Reservation to Oldtown, Me., one 'day and saw some college players in practice. He was sent out to catch flies, more or less as a joke. He caught them arid held them. He was persuaded, to go to Holy Cross, where his big bat set a new college high mark: When he entered major league baseball he cut a swath also until civilisation got him. When last heard of on semiprofessional teams in Maine ,He was said still to retain his batting eye. . Another great Indian ball player was Charles Albert Bender, a Chippewa, the pitching 1 hero of three world's series games with the Athletics, with whom he played for twelve years/ Later, there was Chief Meyeres, a Mission Indian from California, who came to the Giants iii 1908. Besides Longboat in' track athletics there were Tewanima, Mount Pleasant, and Deerfoot. ' .. ■ ■ Greatest of all Indian athletes was Jim Thorpe, of the Sac and Fox tribes, from Oklahoma. As a football player he was rated among the greatest. In the Stockholm Olympics of 1912 he earned the distinction of being the greatest all-around athlete of the world. After that his sun began to set, though he was with the Giants several seasons. Guyon was with the Chicago Cubs for. a while, Chief Youngblood pitched for the Senators, and Tincup pitched for the Louisville team, but expectations of new Indian athletic heroeß seem to have faded! with them.