American Indian Culture and Research Journal

I offer a response rather than a rebuttal to King and Springwood’s critique of my recent article in “The Construction, Negotiation, and Transformation of Racial Identity in American Football,”for I agree with much of what they state in their discussion. They contend that my study, though “useful,” does not “offer a complete interpretation of the significance of playing football for marginalized groups.” No one, limited study can purport to do so and I did not make such a claim. King and Springwood are also correct in calling for greater examination of the symbolic and ritual uses of Indian mascots to elicit a more complete understanding of the dynamics between dominant and subordinate groups. The truth of such matters will be determined by interdisciplinary insights culled from sociology, anthropology, communication theory, and semiotics, in addition to historical studies like mine, which can only be a small piece of the much larger puzzle. My study is admittedly limited in both its scope and research, and the authors of “Playing Indian” find fault with my singular reference to a retaliatory act when the Carlisle Indians shot arrows in the Dickinson team dummy; but neither I, nor any historian, should draw conclusions unsupported by the evidence. To do so is mere speculation. Certainly the accounts of the Indians’ actions in their games against Army, Harvard, and the University of Chicago (pp. 141-142), lend support to an alternative cultural adaptation of football. The more specific study of images and mascots that King and Springwood call for is certainly a worthy one and warranted, but not one that I had enough evidence to conduct beyond what I stated.