on the prairie diamond

One might begin here with a tip of the cap to Louis Francis Sockalexis, acknowledged by history or habit as the first American Indian to play major league ball. More certainly, he was the first Penobscot to play in its leagues. In 1897, his first season with the Cleveland Spiders, Sockalexis batted .338 in the first 66 games of his career, this seven years after Wounded Knee.

Joe Posnanski, among many, has put the lie to the the myth that Cleveland’s current MLB team was named to remember the achievements of Sockalexis. Likely, he was little more than an afterthought at the time, later more a pacific justification. During the early years of its history, Posnanski notes, Cleveland had been known as the Blues, the Broncos, for 11 years as the Naps (nicknamed for star player, Napoleon Lajoie), even most strangely, the Infants. But by 1915, when the team officially changed its name to the Indians, they were a crew desperate to shed the memory of past failure. (Their 1899 season in which they went 20-134 might be forever known as the worst ever. The season before the change, they had lost 102.) Rather than the intense but brief success of Sockalexis, the new name seems more reasonably an attempt to conjure the miracle of a winning season akin to that of the Boston Braves the year before.

His death at 41 was due to heart failure while logging, according to the New York Times. The obituary published on Christmas 1913 describes his grandfather as a past Governor of the Penobscot — note: his grandfather was not referred to as a “chief” — and hints at Sockalexis’s attempts to revive his baseball career after his three season with the Spiders, none of which really took. Two of his last known games were played in May 1907 against players from the Philadelphia Giants of the Negro League. Sockalexis was 35. During a late season Nor’easter, “he pulled down two high [flies] out of the hurricane and the one that he didn’t get was on account of the wind,” wrote the Bangor Daily News at the time. “Old Sock got into the game yesterday with more signs of life than he has shown yet.”

To recognize Louis Sockalexis as the first American Indian to play in the major league is not to leave the impression he was the first American Indian to play the game or the beginning. Far from it. The role of American Indians in baseball begins long before the statistics and mascots of organized ball, as we are about to see.

Related:

The Story of Sockalexis - The Baseball Reliquary
Redeeming Sockalexis - Bangor Metro
Penobscots: Cleveland’s Chief Wahoo Insults Sockalexis - Kennebec Journal
Accounts of the May 1907 games - Bangor Daily News
(Be aware: the descriptions of these games against the Philadelphia Giants, quoted from the paper’s archive, are painfully racist.)

previously :: next

LeAnne Howe will be reading from her new novel, Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story, at two events in Minnesota this week.

Minneapolis, MN
January 23, 7pm
Amazon Bookstore Cooperative
4755 Chicago Ave S

Northfield, MN
January 24, 4pm
Carleton College
Gould Library Athenaeum

more events

Catcher Albert Goingsnake snatches up a ground ball and shoots it to Isom Joel at second, who pivots and fires to Lucius Mummy on first. Everyone watching the team warm up knows they’re about the witness the greatest Indian ball club ever assembled, because once the season ends, the future of the Twin Territories League is uncertain. On November 16, 1907, in less than two months, Indian Territory is being legislated out of existence, along with Oklahoma Territory. A state is being sewn together from two parts. With the creation of Oklahoma, with the privatization of tribal lands, everything changes. Indians will be written out of Oklahoma’s picture. And history.

But Hope Little Leader doesn’t care about this. His only thoughts are about pitching a no-hitter against the Seventh Cavalrymen. Before going out to the mound to start batting practice, he pulls a pock-marked bat out of a potato sack and hands it to Blip Been, player-manager for the Miko Kings. Bleen, the most powerful hitter in the Indian Territory League, has already socked an incredible twenty-seven home runs during an eighty-nine game stretch. An unheard of number considering it’s the era of the dead-ball.

Goingsnake holds his catcher’s mitt, a homemade leather pancake permanently dented from years of abuse. He stands next to Blip. “Don’t need a catcher,” says Blip. “My bat splits tornadoes.”

Goingsnake spits tobacco juice on the ground. “Okay,” he says casually, “but Hope don’t throw no tornadoes.”

“He will today,” says Blip, practicing his swing. “We’re playing against soldiers.”

Hope doesn’t react or abandon his spittle-lubed snarl, not even for Blip. Not today. Rather, he strides out to the mound with five baseballs in the crook of his left arm, he sets them on the red dirt. Taking the first ball in his right hand, he winds up and fires toward home.

Blip belts it into left field, where centerfielder Nolan Berryhill scrambles after it.

The next pitch is high. Blip fouls it.

Hope winds up again, this time throwing a fastball with a twister’s tail that reverses itself as it drops in. Most batters don’t even see a seam. But instead of aiming for the ball, Blip calls it to his bat and slams it into tomorrow. Later, when a spectator asks him what happened to the ball, Blip will say he knocked it into the future.

–LeAnne Howe, Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story

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Learn more about the world of Miko Kings at “On the Prairie Diamond”

Credit: Lori Robins, Chickasaw

The Mill Creek Chiefs is a respected family team from Mill Creek in Chickasaw Country. The team picture was loaned to me when I was doing research for the film I co-produced with James Fortier. Our 30-minute documentary, titled Playing Pastime is a fast-paced look the tribal teams still playing ball in the fields of their ancestors in Native Oklahoma. When we raise additional funds for the 90-minute documentary, the Mill Creek Chiefs are one of the teams we hope to follow in the documentary.