Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team

This word was the stated goal of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. The book defines the term as the complete integration of Indigenous people into the larger American economic system. Richard Henry Pratt designed Carlisle’s curriculum with the intention of teaching his students skills that would be valuable to “civilized” white employers. For true assimilation to occur, the parties assimilating must do so willingly, otherwise they do not have their own agency. This was a major obstacle in the method of the assimilating Indigenous people in the US as Pratt and other white leaders envisioned it, which is why so many of Carlisle’s graduates experienced “Soul Wound,” whereby they ended up feeling like they didn’t belong anywhere, even their former homes, because they had been alienated from their ancestral culture and were not allowed entrance into the white American culture for which they had been trained at the school.

As one of the book’s major themes, sportsmanship is defined in various ways and places throughout the text. The term is never defined as a dictionary would define it, but it is evident from the way the text uses the word that Sheinkin wants to perpetuate an idea of “sportsmanship” as a manner of conduct and identity on and off the field of play that treats other athletes (and people at-large) with respect, dignity, and honor.