The Real All Americans
The Real All Americans combines the tales of two merging chapters in American history, a time when football is leaping out of the dirt, and the Western Frontier is disappearing.
The book reads like a “who’s who” of history.
It also introduces us to and establishes Olympian Jim Thorpe, a multi-sport player once considered the world’s greatest athlete, and legendary coach, Glenn “Pop” Warner.
Abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, Indian War Chief Sitting Bull and future president Dwight D. Eisenhower also play significant roles in the book.
Author Sally Jenkins weaves a history lesson together beginning with a bloody massacre in 1866 and bookends the tale with a battle on the football field in 1912, Indians versus the Army.
In 1866, members of the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes lured the U.S. military into a trap. It proved a fierce and violent coup to ward off annexation of their land. Chieftain American Horse slit someone’s throat in the battle, and other natives removed scalps then gallantly rode home to brag of their victory.
The Indians won the battle that day but not the war.
Despite their recalcitrant stance against the expansion of the U.S. Territory, change was coming.
American Horse nearly decapitated a man to display his staunch opposition against being forced into a reservation.
He would later buy a suit from Saks and send nearly a dozen of his offspring to a U.S. government run boarding school.
To demonstrate the transitory times the country faced, Jenkins masterfully walks us through history.
By 1890, the first Transcontinental Railroad is completed. It runs through once serene land the natives called home. The tracks have dissected their frontier, carving out even smaller allotments then what the government issued to the natives.
The infamous “cowboys and Indians” battles have nearly disappeared like the Western frontier.
At this time, football began to take hold of the American psyche. The brutality of the
The book reads like a “who’s who” of history.
It also introduces us to and establishes Olympian Jim Thorpe, a multi-sport player once considered the world’s greatest athlete, and legendary coach, Glenn “Pop” Warner.
Abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, Indian War Chief Sitting Bull and future president Dwight D. Eisenhower also play significant roles in the book.
Author Sally Jenkins weaves a history lesson together beginning with a bloody massacre in 1866 and bookends the tale with a battle on the football field in 1912, Indians versus the Army.
In 1866, members of the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes lured the U.S. military into a trap. It proved a fierce and violent coup to ward off annexation of their land. Chieftain American Horse slit someone’s throat in the battle, and other natives removed scalps then gallantly rode home to brag of their victory.
The Indians won the battle that day but not the war.
Despite their recalcitrant stance against the expansion of the U.S. Territory, change was coming.
American Horse nearly decapitated a man to display his staunch opposition against being forced into a reservation.
He would later buy a suit from Saks and send nearly a dozen of his offspring to a U.S. government run boarding school.
To demonstrate the transitory times the country faced, Jenkins masterfully walks us through history.
By 1890, the first Transcontinental Railroad is completed. It runs through once serene land the natives called home. The tracks have dissected their frontier, carving out even smaller allotments then what the government issued to the natives.
The infamous “cowboys and Indians” battles have nearly disappeared like the Western frontier.
At this time, football began to take hold of the American psyche. The brutality of the