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Jan 14, 2022 · Hats off to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, which put together a fun rabbit-hole of a story about place names in the Bay Area. So, how did they get their monikers? "Lafayette went through quite a ...
- Overview
- Breaking barriers
Cleveland's major-league baseball team announced Monday that it will drop its "Indians" nickname — in place for more than a century — to "unify our community," a decision quickly praised by Native American groups, including some members of a Maine tribe with a historic connection to the team.
"To see this happen and to know that friends of mine have stood outside the stadium doors and had beer cans thrown at them and been called names just because they're asking for sensitivity about the issue, now we won't have that pain anymore," said John Bear Mitchell, a citizen of the Penobscot Nation in Maine. Mitchell is a student development coordinator for the University of Maine System's Native American waiver and educational program.
Such sentiment follows decades of protests over the team's name and its longtime mascot, known as Chief Wahoo.
Team owner Paul Dolan told The Associated Press that Cleveland will temporarily remain the Indians through the 2021 season. Dolan said in a statement Monday that the team will consider a non-Native American name after engaging with tribal communities and civic leaders about the "negative impact" the moniker has had.
"It's a difficult and complex process to identify a new name and do all the things you do around activating that name," Dolan said. "We are going to work at as quick a pace as we can while doing it right.
"But we're not going to do something just for the sake of doing it," he added. "We're going to take the time we need to do it right."
Sockalexis first came to Ohio in 1897, signed to what was then known as the Cleveland Spiders.
People would informally call the team the Indians because of Sockalexis, said journalist Ed Rice, author of "Baseball's First Indian: The Story of Penobscot Legend Louis Sockalexis" and director of a monument fund hoping to honor him.
"It wasn't meant to be complimentary," Rice said. "It was meant as if the P.T. Barnum circus had come to Cleveland."
At 5-feet-11, Sockalexis, a top collegiate ballplayer, wowed the fans as an outfielder for the Spiders, making his mark with long, powerful throws. Penobscot tribal members to this day recall stories passed down through generations of how he could "throw a strike across the river."
Media reports at the time noted how Sockalexis was "sensational" during games, according to the Society for American Baseball Research — "for the first two and one-half months of the season his name was in the headlines on a daily basis for his spectacular hitting and fielding, and he became the hottest gate attraction in baseball."
Jackie Robinson is credited with breaking baseball's color barrier in the 1940s, but Sockalexis effectively paved the way for nonwhite players. Rice said that although there may have been other players with Native American ancestry, Sockalexis, given his appearance, couldn't hide who he was — and he didn't shy away from it.
- Staff Writer
Jul 8, 2011 · Recent name studies indicate that names from nature are making a comeback in the United Kingdom with names like Olivia, Ruby, and Lily. The same trend is also occurring in the U.S. with names like ...
Jul 2, 2020 · The Prairie State gets its official name from Native Americans. Illinois comes from "Illiniwek," which is what the Illini people were called. The name means "best people." Illinois is the spelling ...
Jul 16, 2020 · This series of treaties led to the Ohio Removal between ca. 1840-1845. But while most history books stop here, the true story is a bit more complicated. “A tremendous number of Indigenous people remained in Ohio after Removal. Another thing little known by the general public is that people flatly refused to go west,” Dr. Mann said.
- Jessie Walton
The other Indian nations in Ohio Country were the Delaware and the Shawnee. The Five Nations were comprised of the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas and the Senecas. In 1712, the Tuscaroras were admitted to the tribal union, and henceforth the confederacy of the Iroquois has been known as the Six Nations.
Jul 24, 2021 · Dropping the Indians name was painful, but it was even more challenging to find a suitable replacement. The team was weary of the cultural wars. The Tribe was like a second nickname, but it ...
