Jim Thorpe’s Harvard Victory

A century ago last Friday, America’s greatest athlete, Jim Thorpe, led the Carlisle Indians to an astounding 18-15 victory over Harvard, the returning national champion and the nation’s top-ranked team.

When the undefeated Indians took to the field against the undefeated Crimson, the celebrated running back was a doubtful starter. Injuries in previous contests had left the gridiron star with, as The Boston Globe described it, “a basket-weave of strapping adhesive plaster running almost from his toe to his knee.”

Harvard itself approached the clash of the unbeatens with casual arrogance. Mindful of Carlisle coach Pop Warner’s penchant for trick plays—and the joyous enthusiasm of his undersized Indian athletes to run them—Harvard’s imperious coach Percy Haughton had written his Carlisle counterpart a letter, warning him that any chicanery would result in cancellation of the game.

Haughton reportedly didn’t even attend the contest, boarding a train instead for New Haven to scout the Bulldogs, leaving his subordinates to oversee the second-string against what he considered overmatched foes.

Unfortunately for Haughton, Thorpe showed up at kick-off ready to play, encouraged by the fact that his lucky number 11 coincided with the 11/11/11 game date.

That the Native American athletes of a small Pennsylvania school had come this far was remarkable. A generation earlier, Massachusetts Sen. William Dawes had set out to break down Indian culture through his allotment act which substituted individual for communal ownership of land. Mission schools punished Native American students for speaking their native language and practicing their religion.

Institutions like Harvard had long turned their back on early commitments to Native American education, diverting trust funds for Native instruction to the schooling of the colonial elite.

The mixed-race Thorpe, christened “Watha Huk,” or “Bright Path” by his mother, embodied the troubled relationship between First Americans and European settlers. Descended from both the legendary Chief Black Hawk and an original English settler of New Haven, he grew up chasing rabbits on the Oklahoma plains and attending distant boarding schools.

A skilled tracker, he always called hunting and fishing his favorite sports but fame came his way via football, baseball and track—diversions of the colonizers.

Under the slate-gray sky of game day in Boston, accolades like the gold medal in the 1912 Olympic decathlon champion were yet to come. Thorpe was focused on one goal: defeating Harvard.

Despite a swollen ankle and a bandaged leg, Thorpe kicked two first-half field goals, taking Carlisle into the locker-room trailing 9-6. In the second half, Carlisle played “whirlwind football,” running sweeps and feints to keep the offense moving. Thorpe kicked another field goal to tie the game and began running more, breaking tackles on long runs.

Scoring after a nine-play drive, the Indians led 15-9. Harvard, with 12 minutes left, sent in the first string. The fresh Harvardians threatened to break through the Carlisle defense, but the Indians held them off. The only way to win, Thorpe figured, was to score another field goal and wait out the final onslaught.

“As Jim saw the day going against us, he forgot his wrenched leg and sprained ankle and called for the ball,” wrote Pop Warner. “And how that Indian did run! After the game, one of the Harvard men told me that trying to tackle the big Indian was like trying to stop a steam engine.”

After Carlisle got bogged down at the Harvard 48-yard-line, Thorpe stepped up to kick. Thorpe said his leg was “pretty sore” but found that the pain “sort of helped me because it made me more deliberate.”

“As long as I live, I will never forget that moment,” he recalled. “There I stood in the center of the field, the biggest crowd I had ever seen watching us…The ball came back square and true, and I swung my leg with all the power and force that I had, and knew, as it left my toe, that it was headed straight for the crossbar and was sure to go over.”

Thorpe’s teammates carried him off the field. Harvard scored a touchdown in the waning minutes but when the game ended, only Carlisle remained unbeaten, defeating the mighty Crimson 18-15. “This game was one of the two greatest I ever played,” Thorpe told an interviewer. The other was a victory the next year over undefeated West Point.

As for Haughton, he said of Thorpe’s performance that day: “I realized that here was the theoretical superplayer in flesh and blood.”

A lot has happened since Thorpe led the Indians to victory. Harvard has re-connected with its 17th century roots in Native American education; Olympic medals stripped from Thorpe for playing semi-pro baseball were restored; and Thorpe’s mortal remains, interred in Pennsylvania, may yet return to his family plot in Oklahoma.

Brian Wright O’Connor, Class of ’78, is Vice President at Citizens Energy Corporation in Boston and a Winthrop House Affiliate.