CANCEL CULTURE Removes Teams Nicknames

CLEVELAND INDIANSShow more

Chances are, you think you know the full story: On the suggestion of fans, the club chose the name in honor of Louis Francis Sockalexis, a Cleveland professional ballplayer who was one of the first Native Americans in the game's history. The team's official media guide carried this claim as recently as this decade, and a plaque honoring Sockalexis even resides at Progressive Field's Heritage Park.

Historians seem to agree Somers and the writers saw this as a dream brand opportunity, and it's quite possible at least some actively remembered the Sockalexis era with the Spiders. Obviously, an exact ripoff of the Braves would've been impossible, so the group went with what they saw at the next-best thing: "The Cleveland Indians."

As Pluto recounts, The Plain Dealer and The Sporting News correctly mentioned that the new moniker was one carried by the Spiders for a time, while The Cleveland News even directly mentioned the Braves in hoping Cleveland's hapless team could "show just as much reversal of form" as the unlikely champs. Yet when the announcement of the change was made, none of the papers mentioned Sockalexis until The Plain Dealer did so in a small January 1915 write up, after the fact.

https://www.wkyc.com/mobile/article/sports/mlb/indians/how-did-clevelands-baseball-team-end-up-with-the-name-indians-its-more-complicated-than-you-think/95-ccb53501-3e6c-4aa7-9b05-a08447e1b0ec

Washington Redskins

English conquerors referred to all Native Americans as 'redskins' to separate them from whites and blacks, and while there's some evidence that Pre-Columbian tribes used a similar term to describe themselves, it became offensive as years went by and those communities were forced to relocate.

Ironically, the team's logo was designed by Walter “Blackie” Wetzel, the chairman of Blackfeet Nation and president of the National Congress of American Indians.

He was reportedly very proud of the fact that an Indian Chief was on the team's helmet

The team was originally named Boston Braves because they played on Braves Field. They later changed to Redskins in an attempt to win more fans when they moved to Fenway Park, but the city wasn't that into football at the time, so they had to relocate.

https://bolavip.com/en/nfl/The-history-and-origins-of-the-Washington-Redskins-name-20200713-0004.html

Smallpox Blankets 1760s
https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets

1836-37
The sole documented instance of smallpox in the blankets was approved by an Englishman and instigated by a brace of Swiss mercenaries. White American settlers and soldiers had murdered large groups of Indians, including women and children, from the 17th century to the end of the 19th century with guns, poison and clubs—but they didn’t use smallpox.

American Indians were notoriously vulnerable to contagious diseases. Scientists have theorized that the Asians who migrated over the Bering land bridge millennia ago were exposed to such intense cold that the diseased among them died en route. Isolation from Eurasia and Africa insulated North and South America from such contagious killers as bubonic and pneumonic plague, smallpox and tuberculosis. Archaeologists who have examined natural or manmade Indian mummies have discovered that Indians were susceptible to cancer, arthritis and, rarely, tooth decay but not much else. Syphilis appears to have existed in both hemispheres but wasn’t virulent in the Western Hemisphere as it became in Europe after 1494. Those Paleo-Indians not killed in battle or accident or by starvation died of “old age.”

https://www.historynet.com/smallpox-in-the-blankets.htm

Sioux, broad alliance of North American Indian peoples who spoke three related languages within the Siouan language family. The name Sioux is an abbreviation of Nadouessioux (“Adders”; i.e., enemies), a name originally applied to them by the Ojibwa (Chippewas).
Prolonged and continual warfare with the Ojibwa to their east drove the Santee into what is now southern and western Minnesota, at that time the territory of the agricultural Teton and Yankton. In turn, the Santee forced these two groups from Minnesota into what are now North and South Dakota.

Traditionally the Teton and Yankton shared many cultural characteristics with other nomadic Plains Indian societies. They lived in tepees, wore clothing made from leather, suede, or fur, and traded buffalo products for corn (maize) produced by the farming tribes of the Plains. The Sioux also raided those tribes frequently, particularly the Mandan, Arikara, Hidatsa, and Pawnee, actions that eventually drove the agriculturists to ally themselves with the U.S. military against the Sioux tribes.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sioux