The First Native American to Win Gold for the United States
The unlikely story of James Francis Thorpe and his journey to winning two gold medals for the United States at the 1912 Summer Olympics
The Native American population of North America is often neglected in history. To many, especially those who study history in America, only the surface of their history is explored. For a people with such an impact on American history, I find that this group is criminally underrepresented in media.
Today I wish to shine a bit of light on the original occupiers of the American continent by looking at how they integrated with the population that colonised their lands. We will look more specifically at the case of James Francis Thorpe, the first Native American athlete to compete and win a gold medal for the US in the Olympics.
The Indian Territory of the United States
James Francis Thorpe was born in the Indian Territory of the United States, land now part of modern-day Oklahoma. As with many Native Americans born around this time, no birth certificate was created at their birth thus the exact date of Thorpe’s birth cannot be accurately stated. The universally agreed upon date for most of those who write about him seems…
