Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team

When Jim and Charlie Thorpe are eight years old, measles and typhoid fever are rampant in the Sac and Fox Agency School in Oklahoma. Jim doesn’t get sick, but Charlie gets a bad case of pneumonia at which point their teacher Harriet Patrick calls for Charlotte and Hiram. Charlie passes away in the night. Everyone is devastated, but Jim takes it the hardest. Sheinkin notes that years later, Jack Thorpe, Jim’s son, asks his father where he got all his strength. Jim tells Jack that “he inherited [his strength] from his brother” (61). After Charlie’s death, Jim lives for a time in the woods and sells pelts he hunts to make money. Eventually his parents send him back to school, and he runs away twice. The second time, he‘s so fast, he beats his father home, at which point Hiram tells Jim, “now I’m going to send you so far away from home you’ll never find your way back” (61).

Two dire situations are laid out. On one hand, the Carlisle School is working harder than ever to remove “the Indian” from its students. Several stories from different students recount “how thoroughly Pratt seemed to be intimidating and controlling his students,” but the students don’t completely surrender themselves (63).