onetime chairman of the American Indian Movement and member of the Winnebago Nation, said that to be an Indian meant “having every third person you meet tell you about his great-grandmother who was a real Cherokee princess” and “nine out of 10 people tell you how great Jim Thorpe was.” Thorpe, in that sense, was one of the few Native Americans of the 20th century whom people could cite and praise even if they knew little else about the Indigenous experience. From the moment I started telling acquaintances that I was writing a book about Thorpe, the reply was often some variation of “Oh, I read a book about him in fourth grade.” Many of those people were in fourth grade long before there was much effort to diversify school libraries. Thorpe was an archetype, the gifted athlete, and a stereotype, the romanticized noble Indian. He was a foundation story of
