Native Americans Invented Baseball? by Rajesh Barnabas
Thu, Apr 24, 2008  The book club Moving Beyond Racism celebrated its 7th Anniversary with cake and a visit from controversial author LeAnne Howe. The Native American novelist joined the club in their monthly discussion circle on the second floor of Barnes & Noble in Pittsford. Cultural miscues between Natives and Americans provide a reservoir of material for Howe’s historical fiction Miko Kings. The premise for the book remains the hardest hitting: Native Americans invented baseball.
Howe provided a behind the scenes look at writing her novel. Using a first-person narrative technique, the character Lena has many parallels to the author’s own life. Both are Choctaw Indians, both grew up in Ada, Oklahoma – once the queen city of Indian Territory. The setting of her story is 1907, white settlers are making plans to turn the Territory into the state of Oklahoma, but the focus is Henri Day’s all-Indian baseball team, the Miko Kings.
Howe explained that the 7th U.S. Cavalry was stationed in Oklahoma, and the various soldier’s teams would play baseball with the Indian Territory teams. Like her character Lena, the author LeAnne still lives in her grandmother’s house in Ada.
“In its heyday, Ada had its own opera house and a twenty-four hour restaurant,” Howe noted nostalgically. For a small town this was unique. Its location on a major railroad route and in the middle of the Pacific-Atlantic time zones explains its importance. Today Ada remains the headquarters of the Chickasaw Nation Indian tribe. Howe says the candy store, described in the book, really exists. “Their Bedré Chocolates are marketed all over the country.”
One of the difficulties a reader had with the book was it’s flipping in and out of fact and fiction. For other readers it was the two different endings, and non-sequential time structure that frustrated them.
The author admitted that many of her friends were physicists, and she had spoken to them during the process of writing the novel. But beyond that, she explained that her Native culture has a different way of seeing reality. The Alikchi, is an Indian spirit doctor, who can bend time and space. She described the cloud splitting ceremony, where the Alikchi recognizes the sky turning blue-green – a sign of a tornado coming, and can split the cloud and save the community. “It’s called doctoring the tornado,” Howe said.
The duality of time, can also be noticed in baseball, Howe said. Any other game played by Americans, has shot clocks, and time periods and rounds. Baseball is played according to runs and outs, and innings are not bound by time. Another sign that indicates the game was not invented by Europeans nor American settlers says Howe, “the runner moves around the bases counter-clockwise.” She continues, “Yet the scholars and historians look all over the world for the origin of baseball, instead of researching the tons of evidence right here among Native cultures.”
Another issue Howe addressed, separate from her novel, was the persistent use of Indian mascots by schools and sports teams. At the University of Illinois, where Howe is Associate Professor of American Indian Studies, the Chief Illiniwek was recently dropped as the school mascot. Howe was behind the efforts to terminate the Chief’s use, and for doing so, her office received a number of death threats. Even though the Chief was retired last March, the problem is continuing. Howe said that 10,000 students signed a petition recently to try to re-instate the Chief.
“They’ve held demonstrations, in ridiculous costumes and dance outside the stadium,” said Howe. “We are trying to end this racism that continues to make us invisible.” She said that the use of the mascots keeps up inaccurate stereotypes. “People think we look like that. We never did wear feathers. The Choctaw wore early burlap. We were farmers and lived in houses.”
“We had the same issue here in Penfield,” said Patricia Mannix – a member of Moving Beyond Racism. “When they changed their name from Chiefs, you can’t imagine the vitriolic comments community members made.”
Howe agreed, “We have to realize that language is power, which is another message in my book. When they make you think of Iraqi soldiers as “terrorists”, that is the way they can turn the language.”
Howe had discussed earlier how each culture has different speech patterns and verbs, which symbolize sometimes, entirely different ways of seeing the world. Coming full circle, she explained how these inaccurate names and mascot symbols have serious impact.
“It’s all pretty troubling for our youth,” Howe said. “We want to be recognized just as ourselves. We hope they will come to not be so hateful.” Howe then thanked the group for inviting her to join their discussion of Miko Kings.
Pictured on the cake, celebrating Moving Beyond Racism’s anniversary, was the symbol of a broken heart. Co-founder of the group - Bob Cobbett, said the picture was meant to signify that racism is damaging to all of us.
Moving Beyond Racism meets the first Monday of every month at Barnes & Nobles in Pittsford. For more info: http://www.movingbeyondracism.org/
As an aside: Has anyone informed Curt Smith, the conservative-leaning local WXXI radio talk host of Perspectives. He is Rochester’s resident expert on politics and baseball, having been a speechwriter for the former President George Bush in 1989 and written several books on baseball. At no time has he mentioned that the beloved national pastime probably originated with Native Americans.
I tried to reach Curt Smith for comment, and found him ironically quiet on this topic now. He did not respond to phone call or email.
Miko Kings was published by Aunt Lute Books, which is one of only two women-owned publishing companies in the nation.
From the publisher:
“Aunt Lute Books is a multicultural women’s press that has been committed to publishing high quality, culturally diverse literature since 1982. In 1990, the Aunt Lute Foundation was formed as a non-profit corporation to publish and distribute books that reflect the complex truths of women’s lives and to present voices that are underrepresented in mainstream publishing. We seek work that explores the specificities of the very different histories from which we come, and the possibilities for personal and social change.”
Aunt Lute Books
P.O. Box 410687
San Francisco, CA 94141
415.826.1300
www.auntlute.com
email: books@auntlute
.com
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