Dancing at Halftime: Sports and the Controversy over American Indian Mascots

Chills to the Spine, Tears to the Eyes

Chills to the Spine, Tears to the Eyes The thirties were not great years for Illinois football. Attendance went down. Zuppke thought the rules needed an “appendectomy”—the removal of the extra point, for which he blamed his team’s losses. Zup loved the challenge of teaching a runner to play football or molding an ordinary player into a good one, but he refused to go out of his way to recruit high school stars. In the years after Grange left Illinois, he hadn’t needed to. Every young player wanted to run on the field where the Ghost had scored. But by the late thirties Zuppke’s refusal to recruit was forcing Illinois football into decline. Zuppke, who always said, “Only a dead man leaves the field,” resigned in 1941. In his retirement Zuppke continued what had always been a serious hobby—oil painting. To those who saw no connection between art and athletics, Zuppke gave an eloquent little dissertation on rhythm and movement—essential in both—and pointed out that good painters, just like good football players, needed to demonstrate vigor and endurance. Ed Kalb had been a clarinet player, but when he was recruited by the concert orchestra he switched to oboe for the chance to come to the university and play for Harding. It was 1933 and tuition was thirty-five dollars a semester, but Ed paid seventy since he used musical instruments. Music ran in the family. His father played trombone and his mother was a pianist who played sheet music in the “dimery”—the old Kresge variety store. When football season began his freshman year, the first game was Boy Scout Day and Scouts got in free. Ed put on his Scout uniform and attended. When he saw Bill Newton dancing with the band as Chief Illiniwek, he decided then and there that he would perform as the chief himself someday. 120 That spring, Newton was leaving, and the band held a tryout. “Newton’s kid brother wanted to be chief.” Ed chuckles, a deep throaty chuckle, at the memory. But at the end of the tryout, the assistant band director announced that Ed had the job. There was no interview. He was an Eagle Scout, a requirement in those days, although he doesn’t remember anyone asking. He became the fourth Chief Illiniwek and served from 1935 to 1938. “I learned my Indian dancing from the Indians in Scouting. This was during the Depression. Roosevelt tried to buy us out of the Depression. He would 121 Ed Kalb as Chief Illiniwek IV, 1935-1938. Courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives, Urbana-Champaign. send the Indians. There would be three, government wards, they were called. Roosevelt would send the Indians around to Boy Scout camps—two old men who were craftsmen and one young man—a dancer. I learned weaving and stonecutting and silvercraft, all that in Scout camp.” Ed has a strong, deep voice. It’s a little gruff. At first he talks about the old days with a kind of distance, but as we keep on talking, it seems as if he moves closer to those times, and his voice fills with enthusiasm. “Indians dancing told a story. These two old characters that taught crafts by day, they would interpret the dancer around the campfire. The two old characters would tell the story of the dance.” Ed pauses to laugh. “Thinking about the Boy Scout camp and those old Indians—it really takes me back. At night, the old guys would tell the story of the dancer and the young guy would dance. And I guess we had three or four summers of that. It wasn’t the same Indians every time. The Hopi, the Zuni, the Navajo. There was a fourth tribe I forget. They taught us the Ghost Dance, the Sun Dance.” He turns to me with enthusiasm. “I remember the Hoop Dance— the Hopi Hoop Dance. The Hopi had a hoop measured just so it would fit over the shoulders. They would dance and flick that hoop over their head!” Ed gestures with his arms to show what he means, but gives up at bending over to demonstrate how they slipped the hoops over their legs. “For years I tried to do that. I couldn’t do it now.” “I started when I was twelve. All summer we lived in cabins with screens on the upper...