Sport as Cultural Assimilation: Representations of American Indian Athletes in the Carlisle School Newspaper

Abstract

The article analyzes archival Carlisle school newspapers to demonstrate how the institution used news representations of athletics and recreation to foster assimilationist aims. The article argues that athletics and recreation were imbued with different meanings for the various constituencies, all of whom used athletics and recreation to construct identities, express emotions, and struggle over the politics of assimilation. The conjuncture of Carlisle's athletic programs and the growth of sports coverage resulted in representations of Indian athletes within the context of a racial ideology that portrayed the Indian as both a noble and primitive savage whose instinctive abilities and cunning allowed him to compete against whites despite a lack of scientific training. In the process, a modern bicultural athletic world came into being, but it was not destined to last. The very cultural system that had supported Indian athletes in the early twentieth century was transformed in ways that rendered Indian athletes invisible.