Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team

Sheinkin, Steve.  Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team.  2017.  Roaring Brook Press, Holtzbrink Publishing.

I remember hearing about Jim Thorpe when I was a kid.  I've always heard about Pop Warner, but I'd never put the two together, and I never really understood the impact that the two had on the sport that we call American Football.

Back in the late 1800's, after the Indian Wars in the American West that resulted in the Native Americans being forcibly moved to reservations in Indian Territory, somebody had the idea to remove the children from their families, send them off to boarding schools, and forcibly remove all traces of their heritage and make them into white people.  Jim Thorpe was sent to these boarding schools as a child, and he hated the environment so much that he would run away and come home, only to be drug back to the school by his father who was convinced that this was the only way Jim would ever be able to support himself in a White Man's World.



Pop Warner had been a football player with Cornell University.  After he graduated, he began coaching football.  Football at that time was a very different game than it is now, more closely resembling Rugby than the game we know.  Pop enjoyed the game, and loved the strategy that went into playing the game.



The Carlisle Indian School, located in Carlisle Pennsylvania, was the home of many Native American children who were far from home, in a strange environment, and team sports was the one way they had to feel like they were part of a family and away from the realities of life at the Indian School.

Their paths became intertwined when Pop Warner approached the Carlisle Indian School about starting a football team.  Jim, a headstrong young man who couldn't find any focus in his life, was sent to the Carlisle Indian School.



Find out the true story behind the development of Modern American Football - and the major impact that the Carlisle Indian School Football team had on the development of the game.  Learn more about Pop Warner and his innovative approach to football strategy.

Find out how Jim Thorpe came to dominate the sport, and how he dominated in the Olympics.
What exactly was the controversy surrounding his Olympic win?


Find this book in your local library: https://www.worldcat.org/title/undefeated-jim-thorpe-and-the-carlisle-indian-school-football-team/oclc/1077711954&referer=brief_results