Welcome to the Deep Dive, the place where we
sift through the sources, extract the golden
insights, and deliver the context you need fast.
Today, we are undertaking a deep dive into a
figure whose biography reads like an impossible
sports fantasy, yet whose later life reflects
a painful reality of systemic inequality and
institutional failure. We're talking about Jim
Thorpe. If you need a single definition for the
phrase athletic versatility, you honestly need
to look no further. Not at all. We are unpacking
the story of Jim Thorpe, a citizen of the Sac
and Fox Nation who remains the only person to
excel at Olympic track and field and played professional
baseball in the MLB, professional football. He
was, in fact, an NFL founder. A founder. And
professional basketball. It's important to stress
that this wasn't just, you know, participation.
In many of those arenas, he was the star attraction,
the difference. maker and often the highest paid
player of his era. The mission today is to truly
understand the sheer magnitude of these achievements,
especially when you juxtapose them with the profound
controversy and injustice that followed him throughout
his career and tragically, even after his death.
We have two main narratives that seem to dominate
all the sources we've reviewed. First, you've
got the story of unmatched. Just instant physical
genius. A talent so complete that it transcends
decades in sports. And then the second story.
The second story is one of systemic racism, bureaucratic
rigidity, and personal hardship that plagued
his career and legacy. It almost acts as an institutional
counterweight to his natural ability. Exactly.
Let's start with the basics of his identity,
which is just so central to his entire story.
He was born James Francis Thorpe, likely in late
May 1887. And this was near Prague, Oklahoma,
in what was then called Indian Territory. That's
right. And the sources all highlight his sack
and fox name, Wathahuk. I love this name because
it's so evocative. It translates to bright path
the lightning makes as it goes across the sky.
Which is often just shortened to bright path.
Given the suddenness and brilliance with which
he burst onto the world stage, it's an almost
prophetic piece of nomenclature. It really is.
It speaks volumes about the expectations placed
upon him by his community. But what we absolutely
cannot lose sight of is the critical context
of the time. Thorpe achieved these feats during
an era of severe racial inequality in the U .S.
Our sources make it clear that while he was competing
for the United States, Native Americans faced
immense barriers. Just think about this for a
second. Go on. Native Americans were not even
universally granted U .S. citizenship until the
Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. 1924. That's
12 years after he won his Olympic gold medals.
So he was navigating a system that actively worked
to suppress his culture and opportunities, even
as he represented the country. That structural
reality is essential. He wasn't just a great
athlete. He was a revolutionary figure who rose
from profound disadvantage in a deeply unequal
system to achieve global superstardom. And the
history books, I mean, they confirm that stardom
has not faded. Even decades after his passing,
his stature remains just unparalleled. In 1950,
the Associated Press ranked him the greatest
athlete. from the first 50 years of the 20th
century. But the truly stunning measure of his
continued relevance, for me, came in the year
2000. The ABC Sports Poll. Exactly. They conducted
a poll asking for the greatest athlete of the
20th century, and Thorpe won. He beat out legends
like Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, and Babe Ruth.
That kind of historical consensus beating figures
who define their respective sports in massive
television eras is extraordinary. It is. It tells
us that his physical talents were recognized
not merely as high level confidence, but as a
genuine, unique, historical peak of human motor
skills and versatility. OK, let's unpack this,
starting with the foundation of that talent,
which was forged in a surprisingly difficult
early life. It was a childhood marked by. immense
instability and tragedy thorpe was baptized jacobus
franciscus thorpe reflecting the blend of his
family's heritage right his father hiram thorpe
was sack and fox and irish and his mother charlotte
view was citizen potawatomi and french and tragedy
arrived very early he attended the sack and fox
indian agency school with his twin brother charlie
and when they were nine Charlie died of pneumonia,
which must have been, I mean, just a catastrophic
loss for a young boy. Unimaginable. And that
compounding grief just followed rapidly. Just
a few years later, his mother died due to complications
from childbirth. Wow. So these two losses create
a profound instability, leading Thorpe to run
away from school repeatedly. He was, you know,
understandably struggling deeply to cope. This
behavior is what led to his enrollment in 1904
at age 16 in the infamous Carlisle Indian Industrial
School in Pennsylvania. Right. And this move
in itself is a fascinating paradox. How so? Because
schools like Carlisle were founded with the explicit
mission to assimilate Native American children,
often brutally suppressing their cultural identity.
And yet. this institution that was designed for
erasure ultimately produced one of the most celebrated
cultural figures in modern history. But the tragedies
continued even then. They did. Later that same
year, his father died from gangrene poisoning
after a hunting accident. So now, Thorpe was
fully orphaned. He dropped out of Carlisle after
that, right? For a time. He worked on a farm
before eventually returning to the school. And
it's that return to Carlisle that really changed
the course of modern athletics. This is where
he meets Glenn Scobie Pop Warner. Pop Warner,
as we know, became one of the most iconic and
successful early American football coaches. But
what's fascinating is how Thorpe's athletic career
at Carlisle even began. It was almost accidental.
the story of his discovery in 1907 is perfect
he was just walking past the track field still
wearing his street clothes not bothering with
practice gear just sees the high jump it and
decides on a whim to give it a try he ends up
beating the standing school record right then
and there with an impromptu jump of five feet
nine inches that's the sign of a truly innate
natural athlete He wasn't practicing a technique
learned over years. He was simply expressing
a physical talent that was instantly superior
to those who were actively training. But Pop
Warner was initially a little concerned. Very
concerned. He saw Thorpe as a potential track
star for the Olympics, and he was extremely hesitant
to let him play football. Why? Because of the
risks? Exactly. He feared the physical risks
inherent in the early, really brutal versions
of the game might ruin his Olympic prospects.
But Thorpe, he had other ideas. Thorpe had zero
fear of physical risk and a very direct way of
communicating his intentions. The famous anecdote
is brilliant. Tell us. During a practice, he
asked to run against the defense. Warner expected
him to be instantly piled on. Instead, Thorpe
ran past and through the entire defense, not
just once, but twice. Wow. He then just casually
flips the ball to Warner and says, nobody's going
to tackle Jim. It's the ultimate mic drop moment
for a coach. It's a statement of self -assured
brilliance. It is. And that brilliance was spread
across every single field. Our sources note his
shocking versatility even in college. He excelled
in baseball, lacrosse, tennis, boxing, and handball.
But the detail that truly rounds out the profile
and makes you realize the sheer breadth of his
coordination. I think I know what you're going
to say. In 1912, the same year he prepared for
the Olympics, he also won the intercollegiate
ballroom dancing championship. Ballroom dancing.
It's incredible. It shows a mastery of rhythm,
coordination, strength, and finesse. All the
elements that would define his explosive play
on the gridiron. And it was college football
that first brought him true national prominence.
It began in 1911. Thorpe was Carlisle's all -in
-one player. Running back, defensive back, place
kicker, and punter. All of it. And that year,
in a major upset against the top -ranked Harvard
team, Thorpe single -handedly accounted for all
the offense. All of it. He scored all four field
goals, leading Carlisle to an 18 -15 victory.
And on top of that, he rushed for 173 yards that
day. We should pause on that for a second. In
an era when college football was still a brutal...
ground focused, low scoring affair, you know,
before the forward pass revolutionized the game.
A player scoring 18 points on field goals alone
while also dominating the rushing attack. was
just unheard of. It wasn't just a win. It was
an athletic revolution. The 1911 Carlisle team
finished 11 -1, and they were retrospectively
named National Collegiate Champions. He built
on that momentum in 1912, leading the entire
nation with 29 touchdowns and 224 points scored.
And the rushing statistics we have, 191 carries
for 1 ,869 yards, are likely an understatement.
Why is that? Because the records for two games
from that 14 -game season are just... Incomplete.
They're lost. He was a statistical outlier, a
full -field talent in a period of specialization.
And, of course, 1912 included the famous 27 -6
victory over the West Point Army team. It's here
that future President Dwight D. Eisenhower played
against Thorpe. Right. And Eisenhower's recollection,
delivered decades later in 1961, remains the
quintessential summary of Thorpe's almost mythical
talent. What did he say? Eisenhower said, Here
and there, there are some people who are supremely
endowed. My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He
never practiced in his life, and he could do
anything better than any other football player
I ever saw. That quote is often celebrated, but
let's stop and analyze it for a second. In the
context of early 20th century athletics, where
training was often rudimentary but still mandatory,
what does it truly suggest about his innate physical
advantages? It suggests his baseline physical
literacy was just astronomical. Most players
needed intense, repetitive drills just to master
the fundamentals of blocking or tackling, which
were much more dangerous back then. And Thorpe
didn't. Thorpe didn't just understand the game.
His body instantly knew the optimal movement
pattern for any situation. He had perfect economy
of motion. So Eisenhower's comment really confirms
that Thorpe's gap in raw, untrainable talent
was so immense that he didn't need the conditioning
or technical repetition required by every other
human being on the field. He was simply operating
on a different plane. He earned third -team All
-American honors in 1908 and then was a two -time
consensus All -American in 1911 and 1912. But
while football was his first love, the world
was about to realize the full extent of his talent
in the summer of 1912. That spring, he focused
entirely on preparing for the Stockholm Olympics.
His versatility meant he couldn't just train
for one event. He was mastering the jumps, hurdles,
shot put, pole vaulting, javelin, disc... Everything.
And when the decathlon trial was canceled, he's
chosen to represent the U .S., based purely on
his known all -around ability, joining a team
that included his future rival, Avery Brundage.
Let's put his raw metrics into perspective for
a minute. His New York Times obituary noted he
could run the 100 -yard dash in 10 seconds flat.
10 seconds flat. And high jump 6 feet 5 inches.
These are professional world -class numbers even
today, let alone for someone who was doing this
as a side project to football. The 1912 Stockholm
Games were the platform. He was slated to compete
in two brand new disciplines, the classic pentathlon,
which was the long jump, javelin, 200 meter discus
and 1500 meters, and the new modern decathlon.
He had a grueling schedule competing in the individual
high jump and long jump finals alongside the
two combined events. First up was the pentathlon
on July 7th. And this was a show of pure dominance.
Complete dominance. Thorpe won four of the five
events. He only placed third in the javelin.
And that's notable because he had literally only
just started training for that event that year.
Exactly. He took the gold medal easily. And astonishingly,
he finished up that same day by tying for fourth
in the individual high jump final. Then came
the decathlon. Yes. And this is the event that
truly crystallized his greatest athlete title.
This was a 10 event. three -day competition.
And here's the fact that Ida always needs repeating.
This was his first and only decathlon competition
ever. Ever. The American team was strong, but
the local expectation was that the Swedish favorite,
Hugo Weislander, would win. But Thorpe was. He
was just untouchable. His margin of victory was
staggering. He defeated Weislander by 688 points.
Put that into perspective for us. What does 688
points mean in a decathlon? It's the equivalent
of winning three or four separate individual
events. I mean, it wasn't a close contest. It
was a demonstration. And his final score of 8
,413 points set an Olympic record that stood
for nearly two decades. And crucially, he placed
in the top four in all 10 events total. Across
the combined disciplines, he won eight of the
15 individual events. It's statistical proof
of total physical supremacy. He wasn't relying
on one or two strong events. No, he was elite
in everything. And the anecdote surrounding this
is just legendary. The stolen shoes. Oh, the
shoes. Just before the competition, his actual
track shoes were stolen. He had to scrounge up
a mismatched pair, including one reportedly taken
from a trash can. And he won the gold medal wearing
those makeshift shoes. It's a detail that elevates
the legend because it suggests that his advantage
over the field was so massive, so inherent, that
external factors like proper equipment were simply
irrelevant. He was competing against the world
using gear literally sourced from a trash can,
and he still annihilated the competition. The
pinnacle arrived during the closing ceremony.
King Gustav V of Sweden presented him with the
two gold medals and the two ornate challenge
prizes donated by King Gustav and Tsar Nicholas
II of Russia. And that's the moment immortalized
by the famous quote. King Gustav V looked at
Tharp and said, You, sir, are the greatest athlete
in the world. The ultimate compliment acknowledged
worldwide. But here's where it gets really heartbreaking,
because that pinnacle of glory was immediately
followed by a steep, unjust fall. And it all
centered on the draconian amateurism rules of
the era. The contrast is shocking. In 1912, the
Olympic movement was governed by strict rules
designed to preserve the ideal of the gentleman
amateur. So what did that actually mean? It meant
athletes were strictly barred if they had received
any money prizes, worked as sports teachers,
or had competed against professionals. The rules
were primarily designed to exclude the working
class who needed pay to play. And the controversy
erupted six months after the Stockholm Games
in January 1913. Right. Reports surfaced in a
Worcester newspaper and were quickly picked up
nationally, revealing that Thorpe had played
semi -professional baseball in the Eastern Carolina
League. This was for Rocky Mount, North Carolina
in 1909 and 1910. And we need to clarify what
that meant financially. This wasn't some lucrative
contract. He received what our sources describe
as meager pay, as little as $2 per game. Maybe
up to $35 a week. It was essentially money to
cover living expenses during the summer off -season.
And critically, this was a very common practice
for college athletes at the time. It was. The
difference. They all used aliases, ringer names,
to protect their amateur status. And Thorpe,
in what can only be described as astonishing
honesty or maybe profound naivete, used his own
name. His admission to the Amateur Athletic Union,
the AAU, is often cited because of its simple
honesty. It really demonstrates his lack of worldliness
regarding these bureaucratic traps. He wrote
a letter to the AAU secretary, James Edward Sullivan,
admitting guilt, and he said, I hope I will be
partly excused by the fact that I was simply
an Indian schoolboy and did not know all about
such things. He basically says, I didn't know
I was doing wrong because other college guys
were doing it. They just didn't use their real
names. It's an apology that explains, I didn't
know the rules and I was just trying to earn
a few dollars. But despite this public honest
letter and a strong wave of public support, the
AAU and the IOC chose to be ruthless. They moved
immediately, retroactively, withdrawing his amateur
status. The International Olympic Committee followed
suit later that year, unanimously stripping Thorpe
of his titles, his gold medals and all associated
awards. He was declared a professional. And here
is the core injustice that fueled the decades
long fight for justice. They violated their own
rules to do this. Absolutely. The rulebook they
invoked mandated that protests regarding an athlete's
eligibility had to be made within 30 days from
the closing ceremonies of the games. 30 days.
And Thorpe's report surfaced in January 1913,
about six months later. So they just ignored
their own rules. The IOC and AAU consciously
chose to ignore their own statute of limitations
to enforce this punitive measure. Critics widely
suggest this was fueled by racial prejudice against
a Native American athlete challenging the elite
gentleman amateur establishment. The stripping
of the medals was immediate and brutal. Yet the
only positive outcome, and there's a real irony
here, was that being declared a professional
immediately cleared the path for the ultimate
professional career. If the amateur establishment
wouldn't have him, professional sports certainly
would. This forced pivot led directly to the
explosion of the professional multiverse career
that followed. He immediately signed with Major
League Baseball. In January 1913, he chose the
New York Giants. The defending National League
champion. Right. And he was instantly the biggest
celebrity in American sports. He joined the Giants
as an outfielder. In 1913, when the Giants repeated
as NL champions, he was immediately chosen to
be the star attraction for a world tour. This
tour featured the Giants and the Chicago White
Sox. And it was a masterclass in global sports
marketing. It proved that Thorpe's fame transcended
borders and language. He was the main drawing
card, generating massive publicity and gate receipts
everywhere they went. And think about the scale
of his tour. He met Pope Pius X in the Vatican.
Wow. He played before a crowd of 20 ,000 in London,
including King George V. He met Abbas II, Hilni
Bey, the Khedive of Egypt. This was not just
a baseball player. He was a global cultural ambassador
for American sports, entirely due to his Olympic
fame. His MLB career spanned six seasons total,
playing for the Giants, the Cincinnati Reds and
the Boston Braves. He accumulated a respectable
.252 batting average over 289 games, playing
sporadically as an outfielder. He continued in
minor league baseball until 1922. And there's
a truly great piece of baseball trivia during
his time with the Reds in 1917. The double no
-hitter. Exactly. He was involved in a game featuring
a rare double no -hitter where both pitchers
held the opposition hitless through nine innings.
The game was scoreless. And it was Jim Sorp in
the 10th inning who drove in the winning run.
A crucial clutch moment delivered by the man
the world knew as the greatest athlete. But while
baseball was a lucrative stop, his true passion
and the sport where he had the most revolutionary
impact was football. No question. In 1915, Thorpe
signed with the Canton Bulldogs. The compensation
he received immediately professionalized the
sport. $250 a game. So we're talking about the
equivalent of about, what, $7 ,800 today? Round
that, yes. An absolutely unprecedented wage for
football at that time. His impact was immediate
and measurable in dollars and cents. It was.
Before he signed, the Bulldogs were averaging
just 1 ,200 fans per game. For Thorpe's debut
against the Massillon Tigers, 8 ,000 fans showed
up. So his presence, his star power, it validated
the concept of paid professional football. He
was the economic engine that proved the model
could work. And he led the Canton Bulldogs to
Ohio League titles in 1916, 1917, and 1919. He
was devastating on the field, a runner, kicker,
defensive back. And the folklore surrounding
his kicking ability is incredible. The 95 -yard
punt. The sources recall that he secured the
1919 championship game by kicking a reported
wind assisted 95 yard punt from his team's own
five yard line. That kind of booming game changing
power was essential in a low scoring era. And
institutionally, his role in the creation of
the NFL is foundational. In 1920, the Bulldogs
were one of 14 teams that formed the American
Professional Football Association. Which officially
became the NFL in 1922. And Thorpe was nominally
the organization's first president from 1920
to 1921. His role was largely symbolic, right?
He spent most of that year actually playing for
Canton. It was. But his presence as the most
famous athlete in the world. gave the new fledgling
league instant credibility and star power, helping
it transition from a regional Ohio league to
a national organization. He continued coaching
and playing, even helping to establish a unique
and fascinating, though complex, team, the Ourang
Indians. This is a deep cut into early NFL history.
From 1921 to 1923, he organized and played for
the Ourang Indians, an entirely all -Natal American
team based in LaRue, Ohio. And the team was funded
by a dog kennel owner. That's right. He used
the team to advertise his famous Airedale dogs,
often featuring dog -related halftime stunts.
It was a different time. So the Orang Indians
represent a complex mix of cultural pride and
exploitation. Very much so. It offered a unique
platform for Native American athletes, but it
was also a blatant marketing gimmick centered
on exoticism. Thorpe was instrumental in organizing
it and keeping it going. And he finally retired
from professional football remarkably late. At
age 41 in 1928, he played 52 games for six different
NFL teams and earned first team All -Pro honors
in 1923. That's a career longevity that's simply
staggering for such a physically brutal sport.
And the professional versatility didn't even
stop there. This brings us to the fourth professional
sport, one that was largely unknown until recently.
His professional basketball career. Exactly.
This detail was missed by many early biographers
and historians until a ticket and some press
clippings documenting his time in professional
basketball were rediscovered around 2005. It's
true. By 1926, Jim Thorpe was the main feature
of the world -famous Indians of LaRue, Ohio.
Not just a football team, but a barnstorming
professional basketball team composed entirely
of American Indians. They toured for at least
two years, from 1927 to 1928, playing exhibition
games across the country. So a four -sport professional
career. Track, football, baseball, and basketball.
And when you consider that he is the best in
the world in two Olympic disciplines and a star
in three major professional team sports, you
realize the greatest athlete title is not an
exaggeration. It's a statement of fact. Yet despite
this massive athletic portfolio, this iconic
status, and his foundational role in three major
American sports, the latter half of his life
tells a story of significant, heartbreaking struggle.
The timing was just cruel. The end of his professional
sports career, which offered him high wages for
the time, coincided directly with the onset of
the Great Depression. So the star power that
had once commanded $250 a game suddenly didn't
translate into stable long -term income. No.
Thorpe struggled severely to earn a consistent
living. This contrast is perhaps the most painful
part of his biography. The man crowned by a king
as the greatest athlete in the world was forced
into a series of incredibly humbling and heartbreaking
odd jobs just to survive. Our sources list the
jobs he took on during that time. Construction
worker, doorman or bouncer, security guard, ditch
digger. He even briefly joined the U .S. Merchant
Marine in 1945 during World War II. It illustrates
a complete societal failure to support or integrate
a figure of his magnitude once his utility as
a star attraction had faded. And that was exacerbated
by the racial barriers that prevented him from
leveraging his name into traditional business
success or endorsements. And compounding his
financial struggles, he suffered from chronic
alcoholism in his later years, which further
impacted his health and stability. He attempted
to leverage his iconic name in Hollywood, appearing
in over 70 films. But he was largely typecast.
He appeared mostly as an extra, playing generic
American Indian roles in westerns. Things like
the 1931 serial Battling with Buffalo Bill and
later in films such as Wagon Master in 1950.
And even his film opportunities reveal the exploitation
he faced. In 1931, Eating cash desperately during
the Depression, he sold the film rights to his
life story to MGM. For how much? A mere $1 ,500.
Which, adjusting for inflation, that's only about
$31 ,000 today. A pittance for the rights to
one of the greatest life stories of the century.
Warner Bros. eventually acquired those rights
and produced the successful 1951 film Jim Thorpe
All -America. starring Burt Lancaster. And while
rumors persisted that he received no money from
that, our sources clarified that he was paid
$15 ,000 plus a $2 ,500 annuity donation from
the studio's head of publicity. But the most
poignant detail, he only appeared briefly in
one scene. Fittingly, as a coaching assistant
on the sidelines, observing his own story from
the periphery. By the early 1950s, the money
had run out entirely. When he was hospitalized
for lip cancer in 1950, He was admitted as a
charity case. A charity case. The man who was
voted the greatest athlete of the entire 20th
century. The public outcry was led by his third
wife, Patricia. She publicly addressed the press,
weeping and pleading for financial assistance.
And she stated the grim reality. We're broke.
Jim has nothing but his name and his memories.
He has often been exploited. He died three years
later from heart failure on March 28, 1953, at
the age of 65 in Lomita, California. His life
trajectory from global pinnacle to hospitalized
charity case stands as a powerful condemnation
of how the sporting and public systems abandoned
him. And this tragic trajectory brings us to
the final and perhaps most complex part of our
deep dive. The decades -long, meticulous fight
for justice. Which covers both the restoration
of his medals and the fight over his physical
remains. It's impossible to separate the amateurism
controversy from the issue of race. Not at all.
It has been widely suggested and reflected in
public comments at the time that the Zealous
stripping of his status was fueled by systemic
prejudice against Native Americans. Enforcing
a definition of amateurism designed by white
economic elites. Exactly. And the paradox of
the Carlyle School highlights this. The institution
itself marketed his success. Using headlines
like Indian Thorpe and Olympiad, Redskin from
Carlisle will strive for place on American team.
So they celebrated his athletic genius while
simultaneously framing the competition in racial
terms, Indians against whites, to attract interest.
And yet, the moment a minor technicality arose,
the white establishment used it to disqualify
him entirely. The fight for Olympic reinstatement
was long, arduous, and repeatedly rebuffed. And
American Olympic officials, including his former
teammate and later IOC president, Avery Brundage,
were his biggest opponents. Brundage was famously
inflexible, dismissing all appeals with the curt
statement, ignorance is no excuse. This stance,
particularly from Brundage, represents the institutional
rigidity that poisoned the amateur ideal. Brundage
ignored the fact that Thorke's violation was
minimal, common practice, and occurred when he
was a minor. Not to mention that the IOC itself
violated its own rules to punish him. The breakthrough
finally came in 1982. Thanks to dedicated civilian
supporters, led by author Robert Wheeler and
his wife Florence Ridland, who established the
Jim Thorpe Foundation. Their work was not based
on sentiment. It was based on legal evidence.
They proved definitively that the IOC had violated
its own rulebook by not processing the protest
within the mandated 30 -day window after the
games. With this overwhelming evidence and congressional
pressure, the IOC executive committee approved
his reinstatement in October 1982. However, the
initial victory was only partial. In 1983, the
IOC offered a compromise that was, frankly, unsatisfactory.
They declared him only the co -champion with
Ferdinand Bayh of Norway and Hugo Weislander
of Sweden. It was a half -justice, despite the
fact that both Bee and Weislander had always
maintained that Thorpe was the true and only
champion. They felt that granting him co -champion
status was a way for the IOC to save face. While
refusing to fully admit the severity of their
error. And tragically... Because his original
medals had been stolen from museums where they
were displayed after the stripping of his titles,
his children only received replicas in 1983.
But the fight for full honor for sole champion
status was far from over. It took nearly 40 more
years of pressure. In 2020, a major petition,
Bright Path Strong, circulated, backed by other
Olympic athletes and the SAC and Fox Nation.
All arguing for his rightful place as the sole
winner. The key finally came when the National
Olympic Committees of Norway and Sweden, representing
Baye and Weislander, formally gave their approval
to remove their athletes as co -champions. Stating
they had always considered Thorpe the rightful
winner. And so finally, on July 14, 2022, 110
years after the achievement, the IOC voted to
reinstate Jim Thorpe as the sole winner of both
the pentathlon and the decathlon. a monumentally
slow correction of a historical institutional
error. Yet while the fight for his records was
won, the fight for his physical body has proven
even more protracted and complex, raising profound
questions about cultural ownership. This chapter
is truly the strangest, most painful coda to
his life. Immediately after his death in California,
his third wife, Patricia, intervened. She interrupted
a traditional Sac and Fox Thunder clan burial
ceremony that was already underway in Oklahoma.
And she subsequently took his body to Pennsylvania.
Why Pennsylvania? She had heard that two struggling
small towns, Mochchunk and East Mochchunk, were
seeking ways to attract business and tourism.
So the towns made a cynical yet effective business
deal. They bought Thorke's remains. merged the
two towns, and renamed the entire United Borough
Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. A place, astoundingly,
that Thorpe had never visited in his life. His
remains were interred there in 1957, resting
on mounds of soil collected from his native Oklahoma
and from the Stockholm Stadium. This commercialization
of his body immediately caused deep conflict
with his family and the Sac and Fox Nation. They
felt his remains should rest in his tribal homeland.
In 2010, Thorpe's son, Jack, filed a federal
lawsuit seeking the return of his father's remains
to Oklahoma. And the family based their case
on the Native American Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act, or NAGI -PRA? Right. This act
provides a legal mechanism for Native American
remains and cultural items to be returned to
lineal descendants or tribes from federally funded
museums and institutions. And the initial legal
victory was significant for the family. In 2013,
a U .S. district judge initially ruled in their
favor. The judge stated that the borough of Jim
Thorpe, PA, qualified as a museum under the terms
of NAGY -PA because the burial site functioned
as a repository for cultural artifacts and attracted
tourism based on those items. However, that ruling
was reversed in 2014 by the Third Circuit Court
of Appeals. The appeals court meticulously determined
that the borough was not a museum under the specific
narrow statutory definition of now GPR. And that
removed the federal law's jurisdiction over the
remains. The court noted that the family's only
remaining legal path was through Pennsylvania
state law, which required clear and compelling
reasons to move an interred body, a threshold
that is extremely difficult to meet. The federal
legal saga under NHPRA effectively ended there.
And the final federal blow came in 2015 when
the Supreme Court refused to hear the matter,
ensuring that Jim Thorpe's remains would stay
in the town that had successfully exploited his
name and legacy for economic revitalization.
Overriding his family's wishes. Despite the ongoing
pain and controversy surrounding his final resting
place, Jim Thorpe has accumulated immense final
honors. The SAC and Fox Nation added Olympic
rings to their official flag in his honor. The
Jim Thorpe Award is given annually to the best
defensive back in college football. He's been
commemorated on a 32 -terra stamp in 1998, on
the Native American dollar coin in 2018, and
most recently received the Presidential Medal
of Freedom in 2024. It's a powerful, sweeping
legacy, defined simultaneously by unparalleled
talent and systemic turmoil. So what does this
all mean? We've looked at a man whose genius
was instantaneous and multilayered, yet whose
life was systematically penalized by the very
institutions meant to celebrate him. The story
of Jim Thorpe is the definitive case study in
the fight for athletic equity. His path illustrates
the deep consequences of adhering to rigid, socially
biased bureaucratic rules, the amateurism ideal,
which actively punish the poor and marginalized.
We see that natural greatness simply cannot be
contained or erased by flawed rules. But the
process of correcting those historical wrongs
is excruciatingly slow. taking over a century
for his full Olympic honor to be legally restored.
His life also sharply illustrates the immense
challenges faced by Native Americans seeking
success in a system often designed to suppress
them. The institutional control started at Carlisle,
continued with the Olympic stripping of his medals,
and culminated in the economic abandonment and
control over his physical remains. All these
struggles are facets of the same theme, ownership
and narrative control over an iconic Native American
figure. His career represents a beautiful, explosive
moment of human potential. While his later life
is a tragedy that spotlights institutional prejudice,
he transcended race, sport, and era, yet was
constantly contained and defined by those same
forces. Which leaves us with this final provocative
thought to consider. The enduring battle over
Jim Thorpe's legacy, specifically the stripping
of his titles and the legal fight over his burial,
are both rooted in the desire of outside entities
to claim ownership of his identity. His medals
are finally his alone, restored by the IOC. But
the question remains, even today, can a town
truly own a man's legacy, using his name for
tourism and economic benefit, or does the bright
path ultimately belong to the people and land
he came from? This is something worth mulling
over.