The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation Review

“The Real All Americans,” the story of the Carlisle Indians football team, is more history than sports. Sports fans might be disappointed since the first 125 pages are mainly history, focusing on the Indian chief “American Horse” and a young soldier Richard Pratt, who went on to found the Carlisle School for Indians.
Pratt’s experiment with the Indians began at Fort Marion with Sarah Ann Mather helping to teach and educate the Indians. Pratt’s goal was “total erasure of the old tribal life and the abolishment of the corrupt reservation system.” Many of the chiefs were upset by the changes forced upon the Indians at Fort Marion.
Carlisle, “a social experiment unlike other schools,” fielded its first football team in 1894. Its players were usually outsized, physically abused by opponents, and discriminated against by officials. They played, however, with lots of heart.
The book details the evolution of college football, particularly among the Ivy League teams, the center of power. The Carlisle Indians gained respect of their opponents, while helping to revolutionize the sport.
The arrival of Jim Thorpe and his rise to fame is chronicled. From 1911 through 1913, Carlisle posted a 38-3 record.
After Carlisle beat Army, 27-6, in 1912, the New York Times wrote that “Carlisle played the most perfect brand of football ever seen in America.” Carlisle’s football program, however, ended after the 1917 season.
In the epilogue, author Sally Jenkins gives a thumbnail sketch as to what happened to some of the major figures associated with the Carlisle School for Indians after its football program ended.
Jenkins does a wonderful job telling the story of this legendary school and its football program. The book is thoroughly researched, footnoted and easy to read. Highly recommended for anyone interested in sports history.
The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation Feature
The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation Overview
Sally Jenkins, bestselling co-author of It’s Not About the Bike, revives a forgotten piece of history in The Real All Americans. In doing so, she has crafted a truly inspirational story about a Native American football team that is as much about football as Lance Armstrong’s book was about a bike.
If you’d guess that Yale or Harvard ruled the college gridiron in 1911 and 1912, you’d be wrong. The most popular team belonged to an institution called the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Its story begins with Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt, a fierce abolitionist who believed that Native Americans deserved a place in American society. In 1879, Pratt made a treacherous journey to the Dakota Territory to recruit Carlisle’s first students.
Years later, three students approached Pratt with the notion of forming a football team. Pratt liked the idea, and in less than twenty years the Carlisle football team was defeating their Ivy League opponents and in the process changing the way the game was played.
Sally Jenkins gives this story of unlikely champions a breathtaking immediacy. We see the legendary Jim Thorpe kicking a winning field goal, watch an injured Dwight D. Eisenhower limping off the field, and follow the glorious rise of Coach Glenn “Pop” Warner as well as his unexpected fall from grace.
The Real All Americans is about the end of a culture and the birth of a game that has thrilled Americans for generations. It is an inspiring reminder of the extraordinary things that can be achieved when we set aside our differences and embrace a common purpose.
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