Jim Thorpe is still underappreciated. For more than a century, the Sac and Fox tribal member has been regarded as “the greatest athlete who has ever lived,” having been bestowed that title after winning gold medals in both the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1913, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stripped Thorpe of his medals when the American media broadcast that he’d been paid to play minor-league baseball years before, which was then a violation of the “amateur” requirement for competing in the Olympics. The draconian judgment overlooked the fact that countless athletes from across the world had also collected paychecks that should have nullified their medals and that Thorpe’s competitors at the games refused to have their runner-up finishes elevated to first-place status. In 1982, 29 years after his death, the IOC admitted that rescinding Thorpe’s medals a year after he won them violated their own 30-day requirement for punitive actions, reinstating the athlete as “co-champion” in their record books. This past July, the IOC finally righted the nearly 110-year-old wrong by placing Thorpe’s name alone at the top of the record books. While having Thorpe’s Olympic glory unequivocally restored was long overdue, his legacy extends far beyond his unmatched performance on that international stage.

Taking its title from the most poetic translation of Thorpe’s Sac and Fox name, Wa-tho-Huk, biographer David Maraniss’ new book, Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, chronicles the athlete’s life alongside contemporaneous quotes and commentary about Native American experiences. Born the same year as the passage of the Allotment Act, Thorpe achieved unmatched athletic success at a time when America was systematically trying to end tribal culture. Maraniss’ reportage of Thorpe’s glory in the sports arena is compelling, but what gives the text its pulse are the media reports, private letters, and public speeches from Thorpe’s life that reveal his complexity at a time when too many Natives were reduced to stereotypes. Perhaps Maraniss’ greatest service to his subject is separating fact from fiction by examining which accounts can be reconciled and which are apocryphal.

Yet, what cannot be contested more than a century later is that the National Football League owes a debt of gratitude to Thorpe. Thorpe was a household name when the NFL was founded in 1920, having had his greatest season on the gridiron while a student at Carlisle Indian Industrial School. In 1912, following his Olympic glory, Thorpe led Carlisle to victory against Army at West Point “near Custer’s Tomb” in a game some held up as one of the most iconic ever played. American president Dwight Eisenhower also played in the game but left early after sustaining a knee injury while trying to land a cheap shot on Thorpe. When the NFL launched its inaugural season, the game of football was seen as a college sport. The owners elected Thorpe as the first president of the league, and he agreed to serve in the largely ceremonial role, allowing them to use his name to help grow the sport he loved. Today, the NFL is the most popular athletic league in the world.

Thorpe’s achievements extended beyond any single sport. He played six seasons of Major League Baseball from 1913-19, eight seasons as a player-coach in the NFL from 1920-28, and was recognized as the “greatest athlete of the half-century” by the Associated Press in 1950.

Off the field, Thorpe criticized the federal trust system’s management of tribal money on behalf of Native people as well as Hollywood’s practice of casting non-Natives in Native film roles. Thorpe spoke out against injustice decades before the Indian Self-Determination Act recognized tribes’ sovereignty over their financial affairs, and a half-century before Indigenous filmmakers gained control over how tribal stories are represented in television and movies.

No conversation about Thorpe is complete without highlighting the battle over his remains. Thorpe’s third wife and daughters from his first marriage agreed to have him entombed in what was once two Pennsylvania towns that merged and were rechristened as “Jim Thorpe” in his honor, while the sons from his second marriage wanted his body repatriated to Sac and Fox soil in Oklahoma. In 2015, the United States Supreme Court agreed with an earlier ruling that the 1990 Native Graves Protection and Repatriation Act did not apply to Thorpe’s remains, but the matter is hardly settled in the minds of those who see injustice in his current resting spot. Even in death, Thorpe continues to challenge federal oversight.

Nearly 70 years after his death in 1953, the same year Indian Termination became federal policy, Jim Thorpe’s unmatched legacy continues to uplift the spirits of Indigenous people. While Thorpe still holds the title of “the greatest athlete who has ever lived,” he was so much more than that—he was a man who lived an unparalleled life that impacted generations of Native and non-Natives alike.

Jim Thorpe remains a man who inspires, albeit one who is underappreciated.

Ryan Winn teaches in the Liberal Studies Department at College of Menominee Nation.  

References

Maraniss, D. (2022). Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Wu, T. (2022, July 20). Jim Thorpe’s 1912 Olympic Medals Are Finally Reinstated. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved from: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/jim-thorpe-olympic-gold-medals-reinstated-180980444/.

Editor’s note: The opinions expressed in the Inquisitive Academic or any other opinion columns published by the Tribal College Journal (TCJ) do not necessarily reflect the opinions of TCJ or the American Indian Higher Education Consortium.