American Indian Sports Heritage

By Joseph B. Oxendine

Book Overview

"Neither the highly commercialized nature of professional sports today nor the more casual attitude prevailing in amateur activities captures the essence of Indian sport," writes Joseph B. Oxendine. Through sport, Indians sought blessings from a higher spirit. Sport that evolved from religious rites retained a spiritual dimension, as seen in the attitude and manner of preparing and participating. In American Indian Sports Heritage , Oxendine discusses the history and importance in everyday life of ball games (especially lacrosse), running, archery, swimming, snow snake, hoop-and-pole, and games of chance. Indians gained nationwide visibility as athletes in baseball and football; the teams at boarding schools such as the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania and the Haskell Institute in Kansas were especially famous. Oxendine describes the apex of Indian sports during the first three decades of the twentieth century and chronicles the decline since. He looks at the career of the legendary Jim Thorpe and provides brief biographies of other Indian athletes before and after 1930.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803286090
• ISBN13: 9780803286092
• Release Date: September 1995
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 334 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Excellent History Book!

Joseph Oxendine provides important history that had previously gone undocumented and consequently unnoticed. Being a track fan, I found interesting the young man who ran the first sub-4 minute mile many decades before those hailed today. Further, the games people played were on a field miles in length. Yes - miles in length! I refer to this book in many of my research papers.