Publisher Description
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. 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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“Interesting story about the origins of college football, through the eyes of the Native Americans brought to the Carlisle School to learn the ways of the white man. Especially of interest is to realize that while the Native Americans of Carlisle were fighting the cadets of West Point on the gridiron in football, it was their fathers who fought in a very different way in the Indian wars of the Plains. The football stories also point out just how unregulated, and just how brutal the game was during those formative years.”
—
Ray (4 out of 5 stars)
