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

Bibliographic Essay

Bibliographic Essay Teachers at many levels tell me that the subject of mascots works well as a way to introduce students to many issues. Teachers will find that Jay Rosenstein’s film In Whose Honor complements this book well and is accessible for diverse ages and groups. A Native point of view about mascots can be easily found in many columns published in Indian Country Today, the nation’s largest native newspaper (www.indiancountry.com). Another valuable resource is the American Indian Sports Team Mascots webpage edited by Robert Eurich (members.tripod .com/earnestman/1indexpage.htm). For a general introduction to this topic, I recommend first turning to two encyclopedias. The Encyclopedia of North American Indians, edited by Frederick Hoxie, has entries that range from “mascots” and “Meriam Report” to “powwows ” and “Illinois Indians.” The encyclopedia’s introduction, written by Hoxie, provides useful guidelines for thinking about American Indian issues. Another essential text is the Smithsonian Institution’s Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 4, History of Indian-White Relations, edited by Wilcomb Washburn , contains detailed articles by scholars, many of which are relevant to this story. Volume 15, The Northeast, edited by Bruce Trigger, contains an entry on the Illinois Indians. For examining white images of Indians, I have been guided by Robert Berkhofer ’s comprehensive study, The White Man’s Indian, which is widely available in paperback. A summary of his work can also be found in volume 4 of the Smithsonian Handbook of North American Indians. Brian Dippie’s book The Vanishing American examines the misconception that American Indians are disappearing from American life. Philip Deloria’s insightful and evenhanded Playing 291 Indian would have answered many of my questions had it been published when I began. For the history of football and student life at Illinois, I sorted through documents from the university archives, mostly football programs, yearbooks, and articles in alumni publications, but also some newspaper clippings. In antiques shops I found student handbooks and songbooks from the 1920s. The section on Boy Scouting relies on handbooks from 1914 and 1942, and a Cub Scout handbook from 1943, as well as a recent book about the meaning of Scouting by the historian Robert MacDonald called Sons of the Empire. The information on Ralph Hubbard was taken from a biography called A Man as Big as the West, by Nellie Snyder Yost. It is a curious mixture of biography, dictated memoir, and testimonial. To comprehend the U.S. government’s American Indian policy in the 1920s and to understand the decade itself, I highly recommend Hazel Hertzberg ’s Search for an American Indian Identity. Other books that provided a context for the debates over dance in the 1920s were Kenneth Philp’s John Collier’s Crusade for Indian Reform, John Collier’s Indians of the Americas, and Brian Dippie’s Vanishing American. Some of the regulations themselves can be found in Wilcomb Washburn’s American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History. I have turned to Vine Deloria, Jr.’s work, especially his book Custer Died for Your Sins, again and again. Each time I have been inspired by his knowledge and his wry, humorous style. The story he recounts about dancing at Pine Ridge is reprinted in Red Power, by Alvin Josephy. A great deal has been written by art historians about images of the frontier and about Edward Curtis. I relied on the book The Vanishing Race and Other Illusions , by Christopher Lyman. It includes an introduction by Vine Deloria, Jr., from whom I have borrowed the eloquent idea of the “wistful reservoir.” I opened the leather bindings of the Jesuit Relations for the first time in the BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY 292 reading room at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. I’ve since read them in less elegant surroundings and the contents were just as interesting. If a reader wants to experience New France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these documents convey life lived on the ground in a way that scholarly texts written much later simply don’t. There are seventy-three volumes in all and the last two are the index. The Illinois are mentioned in nearly every volume from 51 to 71. Marquette’s voyages can be found in volume 59. Another contemporary account of the Illinois was written by the nephew of Henri Tonti, Pierre de Liette (or Delliette ), who spent many years in the Illinois...