Pigskin Warriors
How the Carlisle football team started a new Indian war.
Categories: History
By: Mark Boardman 01/01/2008
Ben American Horse eyed his white opponents, ranged across the field of battle on a cool day in November 1894. They were better equipped, more experienced and had every advantage. But Ben had tradition on his side—and a desire to get even with his rivals for the oppression and degradation he and his people had suffered over the years.
It was payback time for Ben American Horse and his teammates on the Carlisle Indian Industrial School football team.
Their story is told in the new book The Real All Americans by noted sportswriter Sally Jenkins. She remarkably recounts our nation’s attempt to assimilate Indians into white society in the latter part of the 1800s and how the students at the famed Carlisle used a game to regain some of their pride. They did so in ways never seen before.
Carlisle changed football forever. The forward pass, the reverse, the end around, the crouching start and the single wing and double wing offenses? All came from Carlisle. The players were the first to wear shoulder and thigh pads. Another novelty to the game was the number sewn on the back of each young man’s jersey. Yep—a bunch of so-called backward Indians taught the white teams a thing or two about a game first developed by colleges founded during America’s colonial period.
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