“Redskins” The birth of “Indian Football”

The irony of the controversial “Redskins Name” is that it’s origins where a manifestation of reverence to one Sioux Native American man and the style of football he created. William Lone Star Dietz

July 5th 1933, George Preston Marshall of the National Football League’s Boston franchise is quoted as saying that he was changing the team’s name from “Braves” to “Redskins” to avoid confusion with Boston’s baseball Braves. The name change was apparently necessary because Marshall had entered into an agreement for his team to play in Fenway Park in 1933, rather than in Braves Park, as it had done in 1932. 

July 1933, Marshall had decided that he was going to bring “Indian football” back to the National Football League. Indian football was a wide open brand of early twentieth century football, usually played by Native American teams, that featured lots of passing and trick plays. It was most strongly associated with the college teams fielded by the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania between 1893 and 1917, and during the 1920’s with the Haskell Indian Institute teams from Lawrence, Kansas. For two years, 1922 and 1923, the National Football League had also featured the Oorang Indians, an all-Native American team based in Larue, Ohio, that featured player-coach Jim Thorpe.

1933 The Boston “Redskins” name was revealed to the National football league, and their newly minted coach was named William Dietz. Marshall encouraged Dietz to recruit some Indian players for the team. (At least six Native Americans, most of whom had played for Dietz in college, had tryouts with the team, and four made the final roster.)

In marketing the team before the 1933 season, Marshall had Dietz and some of the Indian players photographed in full Native American regalia, and during the first home game of the 1933 season the players, Indian and non-Indian alike, were required to wear war paint on their faces. Dietz stalking the sidelines wearing his Sioux headdress was also a regular sight at the team’s games, and the team’s new playbook had a clear Indian football slant.

“Indian” football was well regarded by the National Football League not unlike Polynesian football. The decision to choose “Redskins” was based on the phonic similarities between “Redskins” and “Red Sox,” the other team using Fenway Park in 1933. Moreover, at that time there was a certain novelty to the name “Redskins.” Although their meaning was different, the two names sounded alike, and it would be easy for fans to link the two names together. Moreover, there was an element of novelty to the name. Although the term “Redskins” was familiar to sports fans–sportswriters had regularly used “Redskins” as a synonym for “Indians” or “Braves” for years when writing about the baseball teams in Cleveland and Boston, or the football team in Cleveland–no team in the NFL had ever been officially called the “Redskins.”

I personally like the name Commanders, and in an ever evolving world it is a justified change. However, I feel it is important to point out that the name was created in reverence to Native Americans contributions to the sport of football and gave the National Football League its first Native American Football Coach.