Pigskin Warriors
How the Carlisle football team started a new Indian war.
Categories: History
By: Mark Boardman 01/01/2008
Ben American Horse
Oglala Sioux leader American Horse, who helped defeat the U.S. Army in Red Cloud’s War back in the late 1860s, knew, within a decade, that his children had to learn to live in white society. He sent some of them to Carlisle when it first opened in 1879. When his son Ben reached an appropriate age—probably early teens, although the record is unclear—he, too, went to Pennsylvania in 1889.
Far from home and in a different climate and environment, Ben, like the other students, was not allowed to speak his native language or wear traditional garb. His hair was cut short (a near sacrilege in Indian culture), and he wore a military uniform. The school forced him to convert to Christianity.
Many students were demoralized; some literally died of broken hearts. But they quickly took to the game of football. The physical challenges and competition appealed to their nature. The Indians had been playing for several years at that point—Ben and his pals usually competed against each other in intramural contests. By 1894, school superintendent Richard H. Pratt decided that playing outside opponents would be good for student morale. So he scheduled five games against teams like Bucknell, Lehigh and Navy.
Ben American Horse and his teammates were relatively small, several inches shorter and about 20 pounds lighter than the whites they played.
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