Well, the Cleveland Indians have decided to retire their red-faced cartoon mascot, Chief Wahoo.

(image:  http://clipart-library.com/clipart/LcdkrBxc4.htm)

No word on who or what will replace him. Predictably, many local baseball fans are disappointed in the decision, as they see the Chief as a harmless cartoon who is a part of the team’s tradition and whose presence or absence on a baseball uniform won’t make the slightest bit of difference to Native Americans.

We should note that the team is responding in a historically accurate manner, in that they are evicting the Chief but keeping the team name “Indians.”

This, of course, is the pattern that has been followed throughout American history.  American place names are a virtual lexicon of Native American words, while actual Native Americans were long ago hustled off to parts unknown.

In Ohio, the last Native American tribe was forcibly removed in 1842, because white settlers wanted their land, which, of course, had been reserved for the tribe by treaty.  The last remaining Native Americans in Ohio were the Wyandots, and they had actually adopted a European-settler way of life, building tidy wood-frame houses and barns, wearing American-style clothing, worshipping in Christian churches, and sending their children to schools.

They were just like everyone else around them, except that they were a little more prosperous, their farms were a little neater, and their skin was a little redder. Their ancestors had also been here much longer, but that earned them no points.  In the end, that red skin was enough to get them evicted.

(For a detailed look at the removal of Native Americans from Ohio, see The Other Trail of Tears: The Removal of the Ohio Indians, by Mary Stockwell, Westholme Publishing, 2014)

June 25, 2018