Time for the Indians to boot ‘Chief Wahoo’
Chances are you’ve never heard of Louis Sockalexis. He played only 94 major league games over a three-year span and yet he left a legacy that is still very visible today — a legacy that brought a number of nervous white-knuckled baseball executives to the edge of their seats this past Monday.
Sockalexis played right field for the National League Cleveland Spiders from 1897 to 1899. He was popular, partly because he could hit (his lifetime average was .313) and partly because he could throw (he averaged more than one assist per 10 games).
Mostly, however, he was popular because he was a Native American. Of course, in the 19th Century no one was ever called a “Native American.” Sockalexis was wellknown as “the Indian.” On the road he was the target of merciless racial taunts, but not at home. Spiders fans loved their Indian. He was clearly the most popular player on the team.
The Spiders, however, folded after the 1899 season. Two years later Cleveland got a new team — one of eight franchises in the newly formed American League. The team was first called the Blues and then the Bronchos. By 1903 it became the Naps, a reference to player-manager Napoleon Lajoie.
In 1915 when Lajoie, then 40, was sold to the Philadelphia Athletics the owners wanted a new nickname and asked local sportswriters for ideas. One writer, recalling the popularity of Sockalexis, thought it would be appropriate to call the team the Cleveland Indians in his honor. The idea stuck, and so did the name.
The name was chosen respectfully, but the respect didn’t last. The motion picture industry subsequently painted Native Americans as bellicose savages and so did a surprising number of school textbooks. A terrible stereotype emerged and Cleveland newspapers reinforced that stereotype when reporting on the team. They liked to publish unflattering cartoons on “the Indian” — smiling after a victory or nursing a black eye after a defeat.
In 1951 the team, itself, adopted a smiling version of that cartoon as its official logo and gave him palpably red skin. This depiction was emblazoned on pennants, t-shirts and other team souvenirs and eventually found its way onto the uniforms. Sportswriters named the cartoon “Chief Wahoo.”
Chief Wahoo was clearly insulting to Native Americans the day he was created, yet somehow he survives even to this day. Only two years ago the Indians replaced him as the official team logo, but his likeness, shockingly, still adorns one of the two caps regularly worn by the club.
Apparently that was too much for Douglas Cardinal, a Native American in Ontario, Canada. Hours before the Indians were scheduled to play the Toronto Blue Jays Monday night in Game Three of the American League Championship Series, Cardinal initiated a lawsuit. Claiming that the team name and the logo violate Ontario’s discrimination laws, he demanded that both be removed from the team’s uniforms immediately.
More than two dozen lawyers, some representing the Indians and some representing Major League Baseball, flocked to the courtroom. A ruling in the plaintiff’s favor would have forced them to alter or replace the uniforms on very short notice. If that were not possible, the game, itself, might have been postponed.
It was late in the afternoon before baseball people gave a collective exhale. The judge ruled against Cardinal. He said will give his reasons later so we can only guess what they were.
I suspect he recognized that the lawsuit was clearly timed to produce the maximum amount of publicity for the cause and the maximum amount of inconvenience for the defendants. After all, the Indians have been playing games in Ontario for the past 40 years and Chief Wahoo has been part of the uniform all that time. How could it be justice to suddenly outlaw the name and the uniform without any warning?
It wouldn’t be and because of that I believe the judge made the right decision. But that doesn’t change the deeper issues — the team’s name and its logo. Even those, I believe, are very separate issues.
I consider the logo to be nothing short of disgusting. Major League Baseball should hang its collective head in shame that this disgraceful cartoon is still in use. All traces of Chief Wahoo should be removed from the uniform and all official souvenirs beginning next year.
It is less clear to me that calling a team the Indians is offensive. Canada has professional sports teams called the Canucks and the Eskimos and neither of those names are considered offensive. In the United States we have a very popular college team called The Fighting Irish.
It is true that every American college that once called itself the Indians have changed its nickname, but we still have Seminoles, Aztecs and Utes that honor specific Native American peoples.
We also have the “Cleveland Indians,” a name that was intended to honor one specific man. What’s wrong with keeping it that way?