Redskins then, Redskins now, Redskins Forever?

Redskins then, Redskins now, Redskins forever...the Sports Pages of major Washington D.C. papers, proclaim once again that Native American mascots are not an affront to Native Americans, and are harmless.   In fact, the Seminoles of Florida State, and other mascots names are in fact testimonials to the traditions and history of indigenous Americans, and should remain according to conservative viewpoints.  

We always stood in the tunnel before the games.  The Band had a cannon that boomed when we stormed on the field.  Leading us was "Prince Lightfoot" a Native American Chief from what was left of the California tribe that once inhabited San Francisco.  

The Prince wore a full headdress, and was dressed in Sioux war dress, with face paint to match.  Never mind that California Native Americans never dressed like that, he was Stanford's mascot.  We stormed out of the tunnel, following Prince Lightfoot, through the smoke of a 19th century cannon.  In fact, the cannon was a replica of cavalry cannons, used to rid the Great Plains of Redskins.   Prince Lightfoot always stormed through its smoke, emerging triumphant on the other side.

History proved otherwise.  

Pretty thrilling stuff for a young sophomore from Redding, California.  We even had, my sophomore year, a real  Indian as quarterback, Dave Lewis.  I remember he posed for publicity pictures with a war bonnet on.  Dave was good natured about it all, after all he was playing for the Indians!   

We were colorful for sure.  Our "Song Dollies" wore Indian Dress, with feathers of course, and much of the Band's music had a tom tom sound to it.  We even had a cheer, that I can still hear, starting with "Give them the Axe...right in the neck" and so on, coupled with the tom tom drumming.

I must say, it was thrilling.  It certainly got the blood flowing, as we stormed on the field, to do battle with the Ducks, the Trojans, the Beavers; etc.  You got axes for your helmet for good plays to go along with stars and such.  

We were the Indians.

In the mid-70s, Stanford stopped being the Indians.  The political correctness of "Wounded Knee" and various Native American protests, forced Stanford to reconsider their mascot, and typical of a liberal college (according to conservatives) Stanford reverted to its original mascot, the color Cardinal, with a Tree of all things as its mascot.  My conservative friends still introduce this topic with, "That was the worst thing Stanford ever did, stop being the Indians".  I usually remain silent.  

The team still storms out on the field, but are led by large Stanford flags, no cannon, no Prince Lightfoot.  The Prince himself, actually considered suing Stanford when he lost his position, but nothing came of it.  He wanted the Indian to remain as the mascot.  Many Native Americans did not.  Stanford, to its credit, listened to them.  

The screams cut through the cold darkness of that Texas night.  The screams were of a woman and her young child.

My great grandmother had been snatched from her bed.  She was seven years old.  She was thrown into a wagon with her mother, and rode about three miles to the hanging tree.

The screams started when she and her mother recognized who was sitting on the horse, with a hanging noose draped around his neck.  

It was her father, the Redskin Cherokee, William Pitman.  He looked at the two of them, with pleading yet stoic eyes.  He knew he was going to die, but he didn't want them to see.

He spoke to the vigilantes around him, all with hoods over their head.  He cried, "Please not my children, not my wife, send them away".  One of the vigilantes reached over and smacked him along the side of his face, and shouted, "Shut up Redskin, you are a horse thief, you will die".

The same man then turned to the woman and small child, and smirked, "And they will watch you hang.  Your white whore, and your half breed bitch need to see what we do to Redskins that steal horses".

My great grandmother screamed at him,"He is no horse thief, he is a blacksmith, he had a shod horse because he is a blacksmith for God's sake".

"Shut up whore", one of the vigilantes shouted, and walked up to the woman and slapped her flush in the face.  She fell to the ground, being a very small woman, with blood sprouting from the nose.  The little girl screamed in fear, and held tight to her mother.

They were alone with the vigilantes and her father.  There was nothing or no one to help them.  They were at the white Texans' mercy.  

And the vigilantes made sure they knew this.  They repeated many times, to no one in particular, that the law demanded they hang this Redskin, for the law in Texas held that a Redskin with a shod horse, was guilty of a capital offense, and could be hanged without trial.

They had blood in their eyes, and vengeance in their hearts.  Some of them had lost friends and family to the Comanches, who were terrorizing that part of Texas in 1859.  Some of them wore the confederate flag even then, with the Civil War scarcely a year away.  Racism dripped from their lips.  

The law was what they said it was, and "the only good Indian (Redskin), was a dead Indian.

The leader spoke next.  He read from a handwritten letter, that William  Pitman was guilty as a horse thief, was a Cherokee Indian caught with a shod horse, and deserved to be hanged by his neck until he died.  "The Redskin and his whore should both go also", one of the men shouted.  

The leader hesitated, looked at the woman, and said,  "No let her and her vermin live, so they can warn other half-breeds that we will not tolerate this.    A woman marries a nigger or a Redskin, they deserve this."  

And with that, he slapped the rump of the horse, and William Pitman swung suddenly in the darkness.  

The light of the torches illuminated his struggle.  It was quickly obvious that his neck had not broken.  He was struggling for air, and the weight of his body slowly suffocated him.  He gurgled and even mumbled, "Help me", as  he dangled back and forth.

The woman screamed again as did her daughter.  They attempted to turn away, as William messed his pants, and continued to twitch and swing to and fro.  The men grabbed their heads and forced them to face the horror, even forcing their eyes open.  The little girl was now crying uncontrollably, shouting "Daddy, Daddy", as her daddy slowly died.

After about five minutes, that seemed like an hour, William Pitman's face turned blue, his eyes began to fix, the twitching slowed, as the rope swung methodically back and forth, slowing as his struggle ended.  

Finally, after about twenty minutes, they cut him down.  

Then, they took his body to the bonfire that had illuminated the horror, and threw him into it.  The fire crackled and sizzled, and William  Pitman (my great great grandfather) cooked in the Texas darkness.

The mother and her daughter could stand it now longer, and passed out.  They were left where they fell, and, after quite an argument that they should also be hanged, were left alone, next to the fire, to shift for themselves.  It was a long way back to town, the wolves or Comanches probably would get them, the vigilantes hoped.

But they did not die that night.  In fact my great great grandmother lived into the twentieth century, and her daughter lived to give birth to my grandfather, Charlie Beale.    

Charlie Beale was a drunk.  He had a weakness for alcohol.  His father was an Indian Agent, worked at Fort Sill, where my grandfather actually saw Geronimo, who was imprisoned there after he ran the United States Cavalry ragged for months in the southwest.

I do remember my grandfather telling me about Geronimo's eyes.  "They went right through you", he said.  "When he moved around outside his cell, they had twenty men around him, so much did they respect and fear his fighting spirit".  

"But he was a dirty Indian to everyone else, a  worthless Redskin", that deserved nothing."  

This was coming from my grandfather, who as it works out, was 1/4 Cherokee.

I knew I had "Indian blood" when I was at Stanford.  I never really gave it much thought.    

At the time, there were cowboys and there were Indians.  The cowboys were the good guys, the Indians were bad.  In our  hometown, Redding, my dad used to tell me how he would go out into the back alley behind the shop where he worked, and see the sheriff's deputies beat the drunken Indians by handcuffing their hands behind their backs, then knock them over forewards, smashing their faces into the pavement.  

"Not so funny now, you fucking Redskin", the deputies would yell, and the blood flew, and pieces of broken bone would fly from their noses into the mud and grease on the alley floor.  Many of the Indians bore old scars from previous beatings, because like my grandfather, they were drunks, this wasn't the first time in the alley for them.  

But Charlie Beale was much more than a drunk.  He stopped drinking when I was about two, because my mother told him he couldn't be around me anymore if he was drunk.  He almost dropped me once when he was drunk, and that did it for my mother.  And he stopped  drinking, cold.

He died young, from a cancer that was directly tied to his job; railroad conductor.  Many Southern Pacific railroad workers died of cancer, because they breathed decades of fumes from the engines, with no pollution standards. 

Charlie Beale was one of the funniest men, I have ever known.  He died when I was twelve, but I still remember that he could entertain for hours, with joke after joke.  He reduced our dinners at grandpa's to laughter every time, with his abundant sense of humor.  I loved my grandpa Beale, I did not know of his drinking problem until much later.  He always loved me back.

But something else has always bothered me.  

There is a darkness to our family.  My grandmother, not of Native American background, was a neurotic person, depressed and moody.  Apparently her mother committed suicide.  I loved my grandmother too, but she was a very negative person, even to a child's perspective.

My father, about ten years ago, told me the whole story.  He told me about William Pitman, he told me about the hanging.  

He told me about my great grandmother, going up the steps of the courthouse in Oklahoma City, intent on registering her children under the Dawes Act, as half breed Cherokees, and stopping, turning around and saying, "I would rather you be called niggers that Redskins".  She walked down the steps.  

With that decision, my great grandmother ended any legal rights my family would ever have to "Indian Rights".  

But that's alright as far as I am concerned. Since I never knew I might qualify, I never thought about it, even though I was a Stanford Indian, lettered in football as an Indian and represented the University as a "Redskin" for four years.

But the darkness bothers me.  Again, I am not sure how much comes from my grandmother, who was not Native American, or from my grandfather, who most assuredly was.

My father tells me his grandmother (the little girl who watched William Pitman hang), never got over it.  She would not talk about it much, but toward the end of her life, she did open up about that horrible night in Texas.  She was deeply hateful and resentful all of her life.  She had an  aura about her, according to my father.  "You just didn't mess with her", he tells me.  She would go after you, all 100 pounds of her, if you crossed her.  

My aunt  was depressed most of her life.  Her three daughters all married men of color; I never could understand that then, I do now.  

When my great grandmother  died, my father remembers they took all of her pictures, notes, and personal belongings out to the front yard in Chico, California, and burned them.  

As a historian, that kills me!   All of the history, save a few pictures that survived,  was burned.  

Apparently, that is a Cherokee tradition, burning the dead's records, so the spirit can go free.  

Regardless, much of the written record of that horrible night is gone, save the oral history that I include here.

Redskins then, Redskins now, Redskins forever.  That haunts me now.

Now that I know.  Now that part of me is a partner in tragedy with African Americans who were savaged by slavery and lynchings, the Redskin "controversy" is in a totally different light.    

Lynching does lasting damage to families and to traditions.  It truly sears generational souls.  It won't leave your subconscious, always lurking in the background as a personal injustice.  Families who have lost loved ones to racial injustice, are like holocaust survivors; they never never forget!  

It happened to my great great grandfather; its personal.  

It leaves me, in the latter part of my life, wondering if I have done enough to stop injustice; if  we as a nation are trying enough, if  we leave the Washington Redskins to keep their mascot,  with a name that was used as a racial and murderous epitaph in the not so distant past.

And sometimes in the dead of night, in its creepy stillness, I hear a little girl screaming in the Texas wilderness, as her Daddy swings at the end of a rope...