Jim Thorpe

Athlete

• Born: May 22, 1888
• Birthplace: Indian Territory (near present-day Prague, Oklahoma)
• Died: March 28, 1953
• Place of death: Lomita, California

American athlete

In 1950, the Associated Press voted Thorpe the best athlete of the first half of the twentieth century, a judgment based on his two gold medals won at the 1912 Olympic Games and on his athletic achievements as a football, track, and baseball star.

Area of achievement Sports

Early Life

Jim Thorpe and his twin brother Charlie were born to Hiram Thorpe and Charlotte Thorpe, in a small cabin on the banks of the North Canadian River near what is now Prague, Oklahoma. Intermarriage among whites and American Indians had become prevalent, and both Hiram and Charlotte were of mixed race. Hiram’s father, a blacksmith, was Irish; his mother was an American Indian of Sac and Fox ancestry. Hiram eventually had nineteen children from five different women. Charlotte was his third wife; her great-grandfather had been Jacques Vieux, a French fur trader who had founded Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Charlotte was also the granddaughter of the Potawatomi chief Louis Vieux. As a descendant of this multinational family tree of what might be considered the upper-class Indians of the Midwest, Thorpe was of Irish, French, and Indian stock. His rugged looks were overwhelmingly Indian, and this fact would always be emphasized in his athletic life story.

Because of the government’s desire for land, American Indians were moved about like so many checkers on a board. They were compensated with both financial allotments and new land farther west. Hiram and Charlotte lived under these conditions and received land and a stipend each month based on the number of children they had.

Thorpe’s early childhood was filled with endless swimming, fishing, and hunting. At the age of six, however, he and his twin brother were sent to the mission boarding school. The white instructors there imposed strict discipline to indoctrinate the Indian children into the white culture. Students wore uniforms, Indian languages were forbidden, and the children’s lives were regimented and time marked off by the ringing of bells. Thorpe eventually ran away, but his father forced him to return. Thorpe would never be a strong student, but he did benefit from the difficult experience: Without the basics he received in school, a college career would have been virtually impossible.

In 1897, Thorpe’s schooling was sidetracked when his brother Charlie was stricken with pneumonia and smallpox and died in March. Thorpe returned to school, but overcome with grief, he then ran away for the second time. The tragedy of the loss of his twin brother would remain with Thorpe throughout his life.

Hiram decided that his son had run away from school for the last time. At ten Thorpe was sent by train to Haskell Indian Junior College in Lawrence, Kansas, hundreds of miles from home. There, he would board with about six hundred other children of Indian parentage and receive much the same education he had received at the agency school, with one important addition: organized football.

Tragedy again struck in Thorpe’s life when, on November 17, 1901, his mother died from complications while giving birth to her eleventh child. Again the smooth flow of events in Thorpe’s life had been disrupted. Hiram remarried and young Thorpe’s relationship with his father became strained. In January, 1900, the Carlisle Indian School football team had visited the students at Haskell. Thorpe dreamed of playing for Carlisle, and in February, 1904, he took the train to Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Life’s Work

The administration at the Carlisle Indian School desired to increase its national recognition through a first-rate sports program. Public support was vital to Carlisle’s future, and football was the sport with which to reach a vast number of people. The administration at Carlisle hired Glenn Scobey “Pop” Warner to be their head football coach. Almost as if the Fates had planned it, one of America’s most skilled and, later, most famous coaches would have as his pupil one of the best athletes of the century.

Once again, however, the flow of life was interrupted for Thorpe as he received the news that his father had died of blood poisoning. Thorpe, too far from home to attend the funeral, was sixteen and had lost both his parents and his twin brother.

Soon Thorpe got a chance to demonstrate his track-and-field abilities. Competing against students in the upper class, Thorpe easily won the 120-yard hurdles and the high jump. He placed second in the 220-yard dash. From that point on, Thorpe was assured a place on the varsity squad. Word quickly reached Warner, and soon Thorpe received special coaching and an open summer schedule to work on athletics. Thorpe became a member of the varsity football team, having already lettered as a member of the varsity track team. In 1907, Thorpe proved to be an adept runner but, since he was still raw in terms of game skills, he was made a reserve.

During the 1908 football season, Thorpe, who now weighed 175 pounds, developed his famous placekick accuracy. His ability to kick field goals contributed to Carlisle’s 10-2-1 season. That year, because of his kicking prowess, he was named a third-team All-American. During the summer of 1909, Thorpe made a decision that would prove very costly to him for the rest of his life. He loved baseball and decided to play for Rocky Mount in the East Carolina League for the princely sum of fifteen dollars a week, barely enough to cover living expenses. He enjoyed playing so much that he decided, in 1910, not to return to Carlisle and to play semiprofessional baseball instead.

In the summer of 1911, by sheer chance, Thorpe ran into a football teammate, Albert Exendine. Thorpe was now twenty-four, stood six feet tall, and weighed almost two hundred pounds. Exendine explained to Thorpe that the football team had fared poorly and that Thorpe was sorely missed. Thorpe cabled Carlisle, and with Warner’s influence he was readmitted. Coach Warner wanted Thorpe to return for two reasons: to play football and to be placed in training as a candidate for the 1912 Olympics.

Thorpe returned to football with almost no effort. In the first big game with the University of Pittsburgh, he kicked and ran with extraordinary results and the final score was Carlisle 17, Pittsburgh 0. Thirty thousand fans turned out for the Harvard game at Cambridge. The coaches at Harvard decided they could win with their reserves. Nursing a leg injury, Thorpe still managed to score a touchdown and kick field goals, and Carlisle led 15 to 9 as the Harvard varsity finally came onto the field in the fourth quarter, but it was too late. Thorpe, with his ankle bandaged, kicked his fourth field goal (from a distance of forty-eight yards), Carlisle held Harvard to one touchdown, and the final score was Carlisle 18, Harvard 15. That afternoon, Thorpe had given one of his greatest game efforts, and historically it had been one of the greatest displays of football for all time.

Later that season, Thorpe punted against Brown for eighty-three yards, a new collegiate record. After that game, he was elected team captain. That same year Thorpe met Iva Miller, a Scotch-Irish Cherokee whom he would marry in October, 1913.

In the winter of 1912, Warner began training Thorpe and Louis Tewanima, a Hopi Indian, for the Olympic tryouts. In the tryouts, Thorpe won eleven gold, four silver, and three bronze medals while Tewanima won most of the long-distance races in which he competed.

Both men qualified for the Olympics that spring. The team trained rigorously as it crossed the Atlantic aboard the specially outfitted SS Finland, and Thorpe, who was twenty-five, found the trip to Sweden to be one of the most exhilarating parts of the whole experience.

Thorpe’s first event was the pentathlon. He won the broad jump with a distance of 23 feet 2.7 inches. In the javelin he placed third, but that loss may have propelled him to win the discus, the two-hundred-meter dash, and the fifteen-hundred-meter race, where he stunned spectators with a time of 4 minutes, 44.8 seconds. Sweden’s King Gustav V presented Thorpe with the gold medal for the pentathlon.

Thorpe’s next event, the decathlon, was only a few days away. Competition would be spread over three days, and during the interval Thorpe returned to the Finland to train. While Thorpe trained and watched his teammates dominate the Games, Louis Tewanima won a silver medal in the ten-thousand-meter race. On a rainy afternoon, the decathlon’s first three events were held. Thorpe finished third in the 100-meter dash and second in the running broad jump. He won first place in the shot put, heaving it 42 feet 5.5 inches and was in a slight lead after the first day. On the second day, the weather was ideal. Thorpe easily took a first in the running high jump with a height of 6 feet 1.6 inches. He also finished first in the 110-meter hurdles with a record time of 15.6 seconds, but finished fourth in the 400-meter race. Nevertheless, his lead was maintained.

Only one day was left for both the decathlon and the Games. Jumping and running came naturally to Thorpe, but he lacked the experience and training that one would assume he needed for the discus, the javelin, and the pole vault on the final day. However, he took second place in the discus, third in the javelin, and third in the pole vault. It was the final event, the 1,500-meter race, in which Thorpe displayed the qualities of the famed athlete that he had become. Despite fatigue, Thorpe proceeded to run the 1,500-meter in 4 minutes, 40.1 seconds an impressive finish in which Thorpe had bettered his own record.

Thorpe finished the decathlon with an incredible 8,412.96 points out of a possible 10,000. This point record would not be beaten until 1926. For the second time, Thorpe stood before King Gustav V. The king placed a laurel wreath atop his head, hung the gold medal around his neck, shook hands with him, and proclaimed Thorpe to be the greatest athlete in the world.

In January, 1913, a newspaper reporter revealed that Thorpe had played semiprofessional baseball prior to the 1912 Olympics, thus placing in question his status as an amateur athlete. After thorough investigations and extended testimony, the Amateur Athletic Union, despite a worldwide outcry, decided that Thorpe must return all medals won and have his name withdrawn from the record books for all athletic events in which he had taken part after his involvement in baseball. His two gold medals were returned to the International Olympic Committee, and Gustav V awarded them to the runners-up in the pentathlon and decathlon.

To earn his living, Thorpe became a year-round professional athlete, playing baseball for the New York Giants and football for the Canton Bulldogs and later with other teams during the off-season. Thorpe and the Giants manager John McGraw never got along well, and one afternoon after an argument between the two, McGraw demoted Thorpe to the Giants Triple-A system. Thorpe would spend the rest of his baseball career being shuttled from team to team. He eventually returned to the major leagues and played with the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Braves until 1919, but he never fulfilled his potential.

Throughout his life, Thorpe fought to regain reinstatement as an amateur, to no avail. Still, his fame did not fade, and he made a modest living lecturing and giving football exhibitions, one of which included a drop-kicking demonstration at New York’s Polo Grounds when he was sixty-one.

In 1945, Thorpe married Patricia Askew. She helped him organize his life and took up his cause after his death. In that same year, Thorpe supported the war effort by becoming a carpenter in the Merchant Marine. In 1952, he suffered his second heart attack. Seven months later, on March 28, 1953, the famed athlete’s heart gave out.

Significance

In January, 1950, a poll of Associated Press reporters and broadcasters named Thorpe the greatest football player of the first half of the twentieth century. The next month, the Associated Press selected Thorpe as the best male athlete of the half century. In 1963, he was elected a charter member of the Professional Football Hall of Fame. Thorpe’s legendary abilities in sports had once again received recognition, and indeed he will always be remembered as one of America’s greatest sports heroes. What other American athlete could make such a diversified claim on the American sporting record? The honors continued throughout his life and after it. One honor of which he would have been particularly proud was his election in 1958 to the National Indian Hall of Fame.

Alongside his monumental sports career, however, Thorpe suffered more tragedies than the average person. His wife, his children, and his supporters fought for the reinstatement of his medals after his death. The fight was a long one, filled with ugly political bickering. Finally, justice was served and the International Olympic Committee restored Thorpe’s honors at an official ceremony in 1983. Thorpe was named a cowinner for the two events that he won at the 1912 Olympics, and his descendants were given replicas of his gold medals. In 2020 the nonprofit Bright Path Strong, with 75,000 signatures and the support of the National Congress of American Indians and the Pro Football Hall of Fame, petitioned the IOC to reinstate Thorpe to sole winner status. IOC reinstated Thorpe as sole winner for the 2012 Olympic decathlon and pentathlon events in July 2022.

Bibliography

Crawford, Bill. All American: The Rise and Fall of Jim Thorpe. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2004. Comprehensive biography presenting new information about Thorpe’s relationship with Pop Warner and the revocation of Thorpe’s Olympic medals.

“Greatest Athlete.” Time, April 6, 1953. This obituary pays tribute to Thorpe as the world’s greatest athlete.

Hahn, James, and Lynn Hahn. Thorpe! The Sports Career of James Thorpe. Edited by Howard Schroeder. Mankato, Minn.: Crestwood House, 1981. A short paperback that covers the highlights of Thorpe’s life.

Jim Thorpe, All American. Directed by Michael Urtiz. Hollywood, Calif.: Warner Bros., 1951. This film is worth viewing, but it glosses over the tragedies of Thorpe’s life.

Masin, H. L. “Meet Jim Thorpe, Greatest Athlete of Them All.” Scholastic 60 (May 7, 1952): 6. Discusses Thorpe’s feats as an athlete. Includes a photograph.

“Obituary.” Newsweek, April 6, 1953. Thorpe’s greatest moments as an athlete and a brief sketch of his life.

Richards, Gregory B. Jim Thorpe: World’s Greatest Athlete. Chicago: Children’s Press, 1984. Updated with the story of Thorpe’s medal reinstatement. Detailed and well written. Includes a foreword by Grace F. Thorpe, one of Thorpe’s daughters. Contains photographs, a chronology, and an index.

Wheeler, Robert W. Pathway to Glory. 1975. Rev. ed. Jim Thorpe: World’s Greatest Athlete. University of Oklahoma Press, 1979. Recounts Thorpe’s athletic accomplishments. Includes index and bibliography.

Related Articles in Great Events from History: The Twentieth Century

1901-1940: May 5-July 27, 1912: Stockholm Hosts the Summer Olympics; August 20-September 17, 1920: Formation of the American Professional Football Association.

1941-1970: January 29, 1963: Professional Football Names First Inductees to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.