As some of you may know, I was raised in Carlisle, Pennsylvania: a small town rich with history that dates back to colonial times. One of our notable, yet somewhat shameful, claims to fame is the Carlisle Indian School. On land which is now the US Army War College, the school was the most prominent example of the nation’s failed attempt to assimilate Native Americans into “white man’s” culture.

Ethics aside, the school’s history has always intrigued me. Recently, my dad sent me an article from the Washington Post about the school’s football team. Most of us have heard about the superhuman athletic prowess of Jim Thorpe, but I had no idea that the rest of the team had such an impact on the development of American football. They took the passing game to a completely new level, and used it to dominate the nation’s greatest teams at the time.

The article is worth the read. Here’s a quick excerpt:

“On Oct. 26, [the Carlisle Indian School football team] went to Philadelphia to face unbeaten Pennsylvania, ranked fourth in the nation, at Franklin Field before a crowd of 22,800. No team all season had crossed Penn’s goal line. On just the second play of the game, Hauser whipped a 40-yard forward pass over the middle that Gardner caught on a dead run. There are three or four signal moments in the evolution of football, and this was one of them.”