Carlisle at Army 1912 Part 1

One of our listners and readers Mark J. pointed me to a great book recently by Lars Anderson titled: Carlisle vs. Army: Jim Thorpe, Dwight Eisenhower Pop Warner and the Forgotten Story of Football's Greatest Battle. Mark was absolutely right it is phenominal book and an even better story of a game I had little awareness of ever taking place, as the vaunted Carlisle Indians faced off against a very good Army eleven. With Mr. Anderson's book, people like Mark J. shouting it from the roof tops and this podcast and post I hope the game will be in the recollection of many of us fans of football for times to come.

There was a game on the 1912 schedule that almost every football fan in America was looking forward to. The November 9, 1912 Carlisle at Army game which featured the star power of Jim Thorpe of the Carlisle Indian School against Dwight D. Eisenhower and his Army teammates. The men of Carlisle with their legendary Head Coach Pop Warner had national Title aspirations with a 9-0-1 record coming in to West Point, while the Cadets sported a 3-1 record, and were picked by many, including the "Father of American Football" himself, Walter Camp to be the top team in the East.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School, located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania was the flagship native American boarding school in the United States from 1879 to 1918. It was founded by the U.S. Government as a means to take young native American boys and train them in Western culture to assimilate the culture into the people that were cast into reservations across the country. Native boys from nearly 140 different tribes left their homes on the reservations during the span of the school's tenure. They were taken out of their own familiar culture and placed into an almost miliatary style boarding house and were made to wear uniforms and have their long hair cut to much shorter lengths.

It had been just over twenty years since the last death had occurred in the Plain Indian Wars, when Plenty Horses, a former student at Carlisle, fired a shot that killed a former West Point Cadet, Edward Casey in January of 1891. Though most of the players of this 1912 game were either not born yet or too young to remember, there were plenty in the stands and at home that had a rooting interest in this football contest that had relevance to the fighting between white settlers, the U.S. Army and native peoples.

There is a great biography in Anderson's book on the founder of the Carlisle School, Richard Henry Pratt. In the bio the author takes the reader to a touching tale on Pratt's realization of the importance of Indian football and its connection to white fans. Early on in a game where Carlisle was hosting the powerful Yale team, the Carlisle Indians appeared to gain a scoreboard advantage on the Eli when they appeared to score a break-away touchdown on a long 35 yard run. The team celebrated until a Referee on the game informed the crowd that he felt that the runner had been stopped at the line and his momentum stopped before he broke loose cause a whistle to be blown. The Carlisle captain and his teammates were distraught and felt cheated on the call and started to walk off of the field until Pratt stopped them. The school's founder convinced the boys that if they stopped now they would be remembered as quitters and not for the team that played hard against the heavily favored Yale squad and had a TD called back. The men returned to play the game and though they lost, Pratt learned that he needed a coach to mold these talented natives into a football team, thus Pop Warner was brought on to coach.

On February 6, 1904 a scrawny 115 pound youth exited the train near Carlisle to enroll at the school. Leaving his family behind at the revervation out west a 15-year old Jim Thorpe first stepped on to the campus and what an impactful day that was. Living at the school was no easy life for youths like Thorpe. The boys often slept in the same rooms with many others and diseases like tuberculosus were prevelant, often spreading and even taking the lives of students at the school. It was truly a case of the strongest surviving, but in many cases it was much better opportunity to succeed in life if they could survive the conditons of the school.

Army's Cadet team

Army had a star in the making themselves, a born leader named Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower grew up in Kansas as a boy that loved playing games like cowboys and indians, as well as athletic activities. He was a youth that was atracted to trouble often times fueled by his hot temper. One such event was talked about in Abilene, Kansas for decades. Eisenhower from the poorer side of towns had somehow found himself where after a full day of buildup at Garfield Grammer School he would be in a public bare-knucled street fight with a kid named Wesley Merrifield from the more affluent northside of town. Merrifield was thought to have the upperhand in this battle. He was bigger stronger and was known to have won many a fight for show off neighborhood supremecy. Ike be the smaller, younger and less experienced of the two would surely be another notch in Merrifield's belt. What wasn't expected as the ferocity, fortitude and all-out charge by Eisenhower who started the match with a fierce charge is fists flying. This showed the rest of the world what a competitor Dwight Eisnenhower would be in a fight and on a football field!

The competitors of this game were intense, they were good athletes and knew what they were doing. This should have been a sure sign to all of what would occur in this 1912 contest. We will continue this story in part 2 later this week.

The picture in the banner above is from the Wikipedia Commons photo collection of the Public Domain of the 1912 Carlisle Indian School offense.

Special thanks to Mark J. for the recommendation of Lars Anderson's book Carlisle versus Army 1912.