Biographer discredits idea that Indians' nickname honors Louis Sockalexis

In 1915, Charles Somers, owner of Cleveland's professional baseball team, faced the same conundrum the franchise is wrestling with 105 years later: What should the team be called? The Cleveland Naps, as they were then known, needed a name change. Player-manager Napoleon Lajoie, after whom the fans had voted to name the team in 1903, had just been traded to the Philadelphia Athletics. Since joining the American League in 1901, Cleveland had adopted several nicknames: the Blues, the Broncos, the Naps — even the Molly McGuires. Somers wanted a name that would stick. After consulting with leadership at all four of Cleveland's newspapers, Somers chose the Indians. None of the news stories written about the name change mentioned Louis Sockalexis, the former Cleveland Spiders outfielder who is widely considered the first person with Native American heritage to play professional baseball. An unsigned editorial in The Plain Dealer did mention Sockalexis. Ed Rice detailed Sockalexis' rise from a Penobscot tribe near Old Town, Maine, to the National League in his 2003 biography, "Baseball's First Indian." And over the years, Rice has heard many justifications of Cleveland's baseball nickname that centered on honoring Sockalexis. They probably sounded like some of this week's responses to a newspaper poll asking whether the team should change the name. John Guzik of Avon Lake called the name an "homage" to Sockalexis that "wears on as a lasting legacy and tribute." Gary Holland of Norwalk said that, while a name change wouldn't bother him, he disagreed with people's assumption that the name was racist. "If the naming of the team was truly done so to honor a Native American player and if he was OK with that, then who are we to say?" Holland asked. The answers to such questions are complicated. Sockalexis died in 1913, two years before the name change, so nobody knows how he would've felt about the change. But by digging into Sockalexis' history with Cleveland like Rice did, you can better understand the history of the name "Indians." In Rice's estimation, there's no question Sockalexis "inspired" the nickname. Whether the name was meant to honor him, though, is another matter. When Sockalexis signed with the Spiders in 1897, he caused great excitement among local media. He inspired local sportswriters to call the Spiders the Indians, or "Tebeau's Indians" in reference to manager Patsy Tebeau. "It wasn't meant to honor Sockalexis," Rice said of the newspaper nickname. "Indeed, it was more to make a big fuss of the sensation he was causing by playing professional baseball." Meanwhile, Rice said Sockalexis faced a "Jackie Robinson experience" on the field. Fans could be heard yelling 'Scalp 'em!' or performing rain dances in the stands. Even Spiders' outfielder Harry Blake, whom Sockalexis replaced in the starting lineup, thought the abuse went too far. "The stuff he has to put up with is horrible," Blake said at the time. Rice said the Cleveland newspapers offered sparse record of the strife Sockalexis faced during his three-year career. In fact, they sometimes contributed to it. After Sockalexis made several errors in a loss to the Boston Beaneaters in 1897, the Plain Dealer headlined the next day's game recap "The Wooden Indian." Rice attributes the disrespect Sockalexis faced to the era in which he lived. In 1897, racism against Native Americans was, according to Rice, "rampant and acceptable." They rarely branched out beyond their reservations because "that was the only place (they) were safe." A lot has changed in the 100 years since Sockalexis played in Cleveland. The Indian Civil Rights Act (IRCA) of 1968 guaranteed Native Americans basic rights. According to a 2017 Guardian story, more Native Americans live in cities than on reservations. Cleveland's baseball nickname, on the other hand, has not changed. And Rice fears that attitudes toward Native Americans haven't, either. "The problem is, we're all victims of what my friends and I refer to as 'acceptable' institutional racism," Rice said. "It's always been this way, so it must be OK. Nobody was offended by this in 1940, 1950. Why is it offensive now?" The same question has been posed by fans who oppose Cleveland renaming its baseball team. And as evidenced by the newspaper's survey of fans, some fans still believe the name is honoring Sockalexis. Rice believes differently. In 2014, he visited Progressive Field to protest the Indians' Chief Wahoo logo on opening day. That same day, he visited the team shop and asked an employee if they sold any Sockalexis merchandise. "He was almost embarrassed," Rice said. "He knew the name. They had nothing in that store. You could find Chief Wahoo from ceiling to floor in that store, but there wasn't a single thing related to Louis Sockalexis." The Indians removed their Chief Wahoo logo in 2019, and Rice said they've also donated $10,000 to his Sockalexis monument fund. Rice wants to build a statue of Sockalexis on either a Penobscot reserve in Maine or on the state's capital grounds. The sculptors he's considering have Native American heritage. But Rice wonders why the Indians haven't invested resources into a Sockalexis memorial of their own. Progressive field features statues of Bob Feller, Jim Thome, Larry Doby, and Lou Boudreau. If the team is named after Sockalexis, Rice wonders, why not memorialize him like the team has its other legends? "The problem is, they know it's wrong," Rice said. "They know it. If you're telling me you're honoring this man who played professional baseball, this man who you are using as a nickname, where's the honor?"