American History Tellers - The Fight for the First U.S. Olympics | Let the Games Begin | 2
Episode Date: July 28, 2021In 1904, St. Louis was thrust into the national spotlight, as it played host to both the World’s Fair and America’s first Olympic Games. After a bitter fight over which American city woul...d host, Olympic founder Pierre De Coubertin had disavowed the St. Louis games entirely, passing the torch to amateur sports magnate James Sullivan. But Sullivan brought controversial ideas to the Games -- especially in the form of a contest between “uncivilized” peoples called Anthropology Days.Bad weather and a lack of international athletes hampered the Olympics further, and kept attendance low. Still, as the games continued, a handful of star athletes emerged, including a one-legged gymnast and a group of Native American women from Montana, who brought a revolutionary spin to the new sport of basketball.Listen ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early access, and ad free listening. Available in the Wondery App. https://wondery.app.link/historytellersSupport us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Imagine it's fall, 1903. You're a construction worker for the city of St. Louis. For the last
week, you've been tasked with widening the far western end of Manchester Road. It's an
unremarkable stretch of packed dirt, several miles outside of the city limits. There's not much out
here, just a few farmhouses and shanties. The job's been long and arduous, and the rains yesterday
nearly flooded the whole area. But at least it's
quieter than working downtown. You put your shovel down and call out to the rest of the crew.
All right, that's lunch. But before you can sit down to your own lunch, some of your men leap to
their feet, dropping their pails. One of them gestures for you to turn around. You turn to see
an old man holding a shotgun, pointing right at you.
Now, you boys are trespassing. This is my land. You hold your hands up, trying to keep calm. Sir,
we mean no disturbance here. We're from the city. We're widening Manchester Road for the Olympics.
The what? The Olympic Games. First in the country, right here in St. Louis. The old man points his gun east.
Then I think you boys must be lost. St. Louis is that-a-way. This here is private property.
Sir, I don't doubt it's your land, but see, technically this road belongs to the city,
and it's going to be used for the marathon. It's 25 miles long, so I guess they needed
some more running space. The old man ponders this. Running space? I don't give
a darn what you use it for, but if you're going to dig up my fields to widen your road, we should
talk about compensation. Well, I don't know nothing about that. But you like sports? Like running,
track and field? You let us keep digging, and I'll put in a word with my bosses about getting you
some tickets. How's that sound? With a slow
nod, the old man lowers his shotgun. You allow yourself to exhale and extend your hand. Can we
shake on it? Deal? The old man hesitates, then takes your hand in a surprisingly firm grip.
Make sure they're good seats. Oh, don't worry, Huff. I'll try and get you the best seats in the
house. And yeah, think about it.
Next year, your property will have a front row view of the marathon race.
Maybe you can even sell your own tickets.
The old man cocks an eyebrow at this.
Unsatisfied, he shuffles off.
You and your crew go back to your lunches.
You wonder how many more times you'll have this conversation
before you're done widening this lonely stretch of road.
You just hope you can make good on your promise to get that old codger his tickets. Otherwise, when the marathon runners come through here, I'm Sachi Cole.
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As the spring of 1904 approached, the city of St. Louis stepped up its preparations for the World's Fair and the first Olympics ever held on American soil.
The two combined events would bring more people to St. Louis than the city had ever seen, and excitement was reaching a fever pitch.
The St. Louis Olympics would see triumphant performances across several different sporting events,
but the Games would also face problems, including harsh weather, low attendance, and a
lack of international athletes. But for Olympic hopefuls, the Games still represented an opportunity
to excel on the field and maybe even win medals and set records. For some, it would also be their
first chance to get out of their small communities to see a big city. This would be especially true
for a group of Native American women who would put their own spin on the brand new sport of basketball. This is Episode 2, Let the Games Begin.
With the World's Fair and the Olympics quickly approaching, the city of St. Louis hurried to
finish construction in time. David Francis, president of the fair, had already delayed
the fair's opening by a whole year
so it could be held at the same time as the Olympics. But there was still a mountain of
projects left to finish if the city was to be ready for the crowds and athletes. The World's
Fair, by far the more popular event of the two, would open first, followed a month later by the
Olympic Games. Throughout the spring of 1904, new athletic complexes rose around the campus
of Washington University. First was a castle-like building called the Physical Culture Gymnasium,
made of limestone and red granite. Next was Olympic Stadium, a 19,000-seat concrete grandstand
encircling a running track one-third of a mile long. And in addition to the university dorms,
extra accommodations would
need to be constructed to house the athletes. Next door to the university campus, a 1,200-acre
stretch of forest park had been cleared for the fairground site. The River de Pere was rerouted.
New water, gas, and sewer lines were built throughout the park. Construction was completed
on the massive exhibition palaces, all painted white and built only to last the seven-month duration of the fair.
When all was said and done, the work would cost investors over $20 million.
David Francis and exposition officials planned a world's fair with several themes,
but the main ones were westward expansion and American global power.
As a result of the recent Spanish-American War,
the United States had acquired
new lands and protectorates in the Caribbean and Pacific. The fair aimed to showcase these
foreign locales while always keeping American imperial might front and center.
The World's Fair, officially known as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition,
opened its gates on April 30, 1904. The day was bright and cloudless. David Francis stood on a bandstand among senators and
dignitaries. Simultaneously, in Washington, D.C., President Teddy Roosevelt pressed a golden
telegraph key that sent a message to St. Louis to officially set the fair in motion. Attendance,
as expected, was staggering. In the first month, more than a
million people passed through the gates. Once inside, these crowds encountered a vast temporary
city sprawling across the rolling hills of Forest Park. Fairgoers wandered through broad avenues,
past gardens, waterways, and pavilions built by state and foreign governments.
Although the setting was meant to enhance the educational aspect of the fair,
the practical effect was both dazzling and overwhelming.
The fair was so huge that it was estimated a viewer would need
20 separate visits to take in the whole spectacle.
For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries,
world's fairs were popular places to see the newest,
costliest, and most technologically advanced items of the time.
But no one had seen a fair this elaborate.
Crowds gawked at 40 horsepower automobiles,
a new medical device called the X-ray,
and perhaps most astounding of all,
rows and rows of outdoor electric lighting.
But one person who saw none of this
was Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin.
After the contentious transfer of the Olympic Games to St. Louis
from its original site in Chicago,
Coubertin had withdrawn his involvement entirely.
The third Olympics would go ahead without the support of its creator.
With Coubertin out of the picture, the International Olympic Committee passed all organizational control of the Games
to the Amateur Athletic Union, the largest sporting regulatory body in America.
This meant the St. Louis Olympics was
now run by the man who had complained the most bitterly about Coubertin's leadership,
AAU head James Sullivan. Sullivan was a former track and field star before becoming an athletic
promoter, and he made no secret of his dislike for the Games or their founder. But now that the
Games were his to command, he embraced them as an opportunity to promote the AAU and himself.
In a spring 1904 interview, he assured St. Louis newspaper readers,
it is the intention of the World's Fair to make amateur sports a prominent feature of its exposition.
The Olympian Games, of course, will be the principal feature, including teams from many countries.
What Sullivan didn't say to the interviewer was that the list of many countries was dwindling. Just months before the game started, the Russo-Japanese War broke out when Japanese
ships attacked a Russian naval base. Travel through the Pacific Ocean became too dangerous
for passenger vessels. And later, Great Britain announced that in solidarity with Japan, it would
not be sending any athletes. Soon, France and several other European countries followed Britain's lead,
leaving only a handful of countries
fielding Olympic teams.
But for the remaining countries sending athletes,
as the summer drew near,
one by one, participants began to arrive.
Imagine it's May, 1904.
You're a 33-year-old Irish athlete, just off the train.
You've never traveled this far from home before.
Now you've gotten lost in the winding, maze-like streets of the World's Fair.
The sun is setting, and all the barkers shouting for your attention are starting to wear on you.
You, sir, 40 different brands of ketchup. Care for a sample?
Oh, thanks.
You're also in a serious dilemma.
After a three-day journey, you've arrived
to find there was no room at the hotel where you were scheduled to stay. An athletic club in New
York had promised to make arrangements on your behalf, but didn't follow through. And with fair
visitors filling every other hotel in town, there's no place for you to stay. Quickly now, see him now
before he goes. Beautiful Jim Key, the educated horse. In addition to the barkers,
you wander past hundreds of men reenacting a South African battle, a grand lagoon spotted
with gondolas, and a long snaking line to get a photograph made by a Kodak camera.
Finally, you stop to ask a stranger for directions. He's about your age and appears to be covered in
grime and soot, and on closer closer inspection turns out to be grease paint.
He kindly walks you through how to get back to the Olympic Stadium.
And then you turn right and you're right there.
But hey, what's that accent? Irish, right?
Yeah, yeah, indeed I am, from Tipperary.
I knew it. I know my accents.
I'm an actor, and I play a British guy every day, right over there at the Boer War reenactment.
Well, yes, but there's a big difference between the British and the Irish. Tell me about it. My
wife's Irish. She gave me hell for playing a Brit, but then I told her I was getting $35 a week.
What are you doing here? I'm competing in the all-around, 10 track and field events at once.
Oh my goodness, that's incredible. All I'm good for around here is dying. Three times a
day I charge up that hill, and three times a day I get shot. But winning the gold for your country?
That's something to be proud of. No, it's not my country. At the Olympic registration,
they told me I had to be British or nothing. Ireland doesn't count, apparently, because we're
not an independent country. They should talk to my wife.
She'd have something to say about that.
But hey, yeah, where are you staying?
You should talk to my wife.
She'd love to talk to an Irishman.
Well, I don't know.
The hotel I was supposed to stay at is full up.
Oh, that's terrible.
No, no, you come stay with us.
At least until you find other accommodations. Well, that's very kind. Thank you. No, no, you come stay with us. At least until you find other accommodations.
Well, that's very kind. Thank you. No, you're welcome. And who knows? If it doesn't work out
with the Olympics, maybe you can come get a job with me and get shot at every day.
My shift just ended, so yeah, let's go now. You fall in step behind him. At this moment,
lodgings of any kind would do, but spending dinner with this man and his Irish wife seems like it might lift your spirits. Tomorrow, you'll return to
the stadium and find out where you'll be training to compete for Great Britain.
Irishman Tom Kiley was one of the few foreign athletes to make the journey to St. Louis.
An accomplished track and field champion, he turned down offers to represent the United Kingdom, which his native Ireland was still part
of, because Keeley wanted to compete for Ireland alone. Doing so would mean that he'd have to pay
his own way across the Atlantic, as Ireland didn't field an Olympic team. Upon his arrival in New
York City, Keeley was greeted with newspaper articles lauding his exploits and offers from
half a dozen
American athletic clubs to help pay his expenses. But when he reached St. Louis, he got a cooler
reception. The man who identified himself as Tom Keeley from Ireland and Tipperary was told that
he would have to compete as a British athlete, whether he liked it or not. Keeley was just one
of nearly 700 athletes making the journey to the Olympic competitions. Of that
total, the vast majority didn't travel far. 525 were American and 41 were Canadian. Barely more
than 100 athletes came from other countries. But Olympic hopefuls were only a quarter of the
athletes who converged upon St. Louis that summer. Various non-Olympic contests were hosted by
Sullivan's Amateur Athletic Union, including YMCA and university-level championships in several sports.
According to the International Olympic Committee,
an Olympic event was open only to amateurs and had to include foreign participants.
But since the games were folded into the broader athletic program of the World's Fair,
those rules were often bent or outright broken.
This made little difference to the average spectator,
for whom the distinctions between Olympic contests and an AAU event were nearly invisible.
Even among the athletes themselves,
it was sometimes unclear which events were and weren't part of the Olympics.
But one thing remained consistent.
Everyone had to pay a $2 general entrance fee to compete,
with additional 50 cents charged per event.
Despite the confusion, the competition still meant something to the athletes and the crowds.
Olympic medals held prestige, and the thrill of competing on a big stage was enticing.
As the first months of summer drew near, more and more athletes assembled in St. Louis,
eager for their chance to enter the record books and compete for the gold.
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On May 14th, 1904, the first American Olympics kicked off with an uncharacteristically cool
afternoon to a crowd of several thousand. Organizers had hoped that President Teddy
Roosevelt would oversee the opening ceremony, but the president had refused the invitation, feeling it improper to attend a
public event of such scale during an election year. As a marching band played, a parade of 75
athletes entered the field and took up positions along the sidelines. Nearby stood Olympics
director James Sullivan, who handed the starting gun to exposition president David Francis.
Francis fired the gun enthusiastically into the air, setting the third Olympic Games in motion.
Actual Olympic events wouldn't start for another month and a half, but many spectators stayed to spend the afternoon watching Missouri high schoolers compete in their district track and
field championships. It was a humble opening ceremony, even by the standards of the time.
But another feature of the St. Louis Olympics would be rather grand.
For the first time, winning athletes would receive a gold medal.
At previous Olympics, only silver and bronze medals had been awarded, if they were medals at all.
Winners had also received olive branches, laurel leaves, cups, and trophies.
So the first opportunity to win a gold medal came in St. Louis
on July 1st with a gymnastics competition. Held in the open air of the Olympic Stadium,
competitions were twofold. The first were artistic gymnastics. Athletes performed three routines on
parallel bars, horizontal bar, and pommel horse. Routines were scored by judges and tallied to
determine the winners. The second portion included three track and field events, long jump, shot put, and 100-yard dash.
St. Louis newspapers speculated that German and Austrian athletes had the greatest advantage in these events
because the German tradition of Turnberein had come to define how modern gymnastics were practiced all over the world.
The newspapers were partly right. 30-year-old Julius Lenhardt was Austrian by birth,
but had been working in a factory in Philadelphia for the past year.
Competing for his local athletic club,
Lenhardt performed well enough on the artistic routines
to overcome his poor showing in the track and field events
and won gymnastics gold.
But it was German-American gymnast George Eiser
who made the biggest impression.
Eiser worked as a bookkeeper for a construction company in St. Louis
and was a member of the local German-speaking athletic club.
A world-class gymnast, he had finished second in the combined exercises
and first in horizontal bars, parallel bars, and the rope climb.
All told, he won six medals, three of them gold.
And he did it all with a wooden, prosthetic left leg.
Grouped with gymnastics, the next competition required endurance as well as speed and strength.
The all-around was ten different events combined, a forerunner of the modern-day decathlon.
The event included a 100-yard dash, shot put, high jump, hurdles, pole vault,
long jump, hammer throw, and a one-mile run. Contestants could medal in each individual event,
but also accrued points toward the all-around medal as they went along. It was expected to
be a battle between the Irish champion Tom Kiley and two U.S. athletes, Ellery Clark and Adam Gunn.
Clark, who had been ill during most of his stay in
St. Louis, fell behind early. It rained continuously, and water had flooded some parts of the track.
After four events, Gunn led the field, and Keeley was in fifth place. But by the eighth round,
Keeley had pulled ahead in the weight throws and held on to win. Still much to Keeley's frustration,
the record keepers refused
to honor him as a representative of Ireland and instead gave his gold medal to Great Britain.
This was despite the fact that officially there was no British Olympic team. In solidarity with
their ally Japan, which sat out the Olympics because of war, Britain refused to send a single
athlete overseas. But even though international travel had proven difficult,
a handful of athletes from Asia would still make their way across the ocean.
Some of them focused only on sports,
but others found that athletics
could be a gateway to other accomplishments.
Imagine it's July 1904,
a hot Sunday afternoon in St. Louis.
You're an athletics trainer and assistant coach
from the University of Pennsylvania. Standing in the shade of the gymnasium wall near Olympic
Stadium, your focus is on a young man finishing the last of his set on the dirt tennis courts.
He's getting ready for his Olympic event later this summer. He's a 21-year-old from Japan named
Shunzo Takaki. He's quick with his feet and wooden racket. You've
watched him play two opponents today, and he's made mincemeat out of both of them. You're here
from Pennsylvania to scout promising young athletes for the university, and you've had an
eye out for Takaki even before you made the journey west. As he's coming off the court,
you invite him over to talk in the shade. Hello. That was quite a set you just played.
Thank you. It would have been better if I hadn't let it go to deuce just then.
You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. Your one-handed backhand is remarkable.
The young man shrugs as he wipes the sweat off his face with a towel.
It's just how I learned how to play. I didn't realize there was anything unique about it until I arrived here in St. Louis.
Well, now that you are in St. Louis, what's next for you?
U.S. National Championships? Wimbledon?
Takaki simply shakes his head.
I just need to think about the next match.
Not anyone's after.
Ah, that's probably good.
But I like to think about the future myself.
And on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania,
I'd like you to think about your future, with a place on our tennis team. This doesn't include tuition,
but I can assure you that you'll get a first-class American education, the kind that opens doors and
helps you climb the ladder in American society. Shunzo cocks his head and smiles. That's the
purpose of a university education in this country, isn't it?
Improving one station in life.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And nothing will improve your station more than a degree from Penn, believe me.
Well, good. I want a job, steady income.
More than I can make playing tennis or baseball.
Wait, you play baseball, too?
You didn't know that? You don't have that written down in your scouting report?
Yeah, you gotta forgive me, but I didn't even know you had baseball in Japan.
Yes, we have baseball. I play second base and outfield. I also play football.
Maybe I can play those sports at Penn too.
Maybe, yeah, but I'd have to see you in action first.
But if you're as good with a bat and a pigskin as you are with a racket, I'm sure we can arrange something.
The young man extends his hand.
All I want is a good education and to stay here in America.
If your university can give me that, I'll play all the sports you want.
You smile and shake on it.
He's got a strong grip, not that you'd expect anything less.
You try to hide your surprise as the two of you make your way inside the gym.
You've met plenty of American athletes who, like Shunzo, will say that they can't see further than the next tournament. And it's been your experience that they can't. But this Takaki fellow clearly
has a plan for where he wants to go in life. You hope you'll be able to help him turn his
athletic ability into a new life for him here in America.
Japan began adopting European and American-style sports after opening to the West in 1853.
At 21 years old, Shunzo Tataki was already playing
championship-level tennis in Japan,
but he also excelled at baseball, gymnastics, and American football.
He came to America to try out for the Olympics
just before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War. And after playing in some exhibition tennis matches in St.
Louis, Takaki enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania and went on to set records in
several sports while earning his degree in economics. His tennis matches, specifically
against arch-rival Harvard, would generate headlines while he continued to excel at baseball
and football.
Takaki eventually left sports behind for a career as a silk importer. Gregarious and always good for a quote, he continued to appear in society pages well into the 1930s. But for unknown reasons,
Takaki didn't compete in any official Olympic tennis matches. Instead, the gold medal was
taken home by Beals Wright, a 23-year-old Harvard grad.
Dwight Davis, Wright's fellow Harvard student and sometimes double partner,
was an even bigger tennis star. He already had the first international American tennis
competition named after him, the Davis Cup. But 1904 wasn't Davis's year. The 24-year-old
was knocked out of the Olympic singles competition in the second round.
Bicycling was one of the most popular recreational sports of the day,
and competitive cycling featured seven different events. American Marcus Hurley seemed the odds-on
favorite to scoop up most of the medals. Still, the 20-year-old cyclist had his doubts when he
discovered the conditions of the stadium's racing track. The weather had been scorching hot, and he would later describe the
course as a track of cinders, dry and very dusty. During the five-mile event, Hurley was knocked out
of the competition by the recklessly riding Nash McCree. Named Crash McCree in the sporting press,
the 17-year-old American cyclist was known less for his victories and more for the terrible accidents he would cause on the racetrack. An article from Bicycling World
suggested that McCree does not seem to be a vicious rider, but simply rides all over the track.
Hurley went on to win gold in four other events, a record that stood for nearly 80 years.
The New York cyclist's performance would be even more remarkable in hindsight,
as there was very little rest for riders between each event.
Throughout all Olympic competitions, if a spectator happened to glance away from the
playing fields, he might have seen a determined young woman on the sidelines, wearing a large
hat and carrying an enormous wooden tripod. Her name was Jessie Tarbox Beals. She had picked up
photography as a teenage hobby after she won a camera in a contest for selling magazine
subscriptions. At the age of 30, she walked away from a career as a teacher in Buffalo, New York,
to focus on photography full-time. It was a Buffalo daily newspaper that assigned Beals
to cover the World's Fair and the Olympics. Carrying a 50-pound camera
that shot 8 by 10-inch plates, she took pride in her physical strength as well as her ability to
sweet-talk just about anyone into posing for a photo. Taking notes as she shot, Beals would take
photographs and reporters would follow up with her subjects later for interviews. These stories
and Beals' unique photos ran simultaneously in the newspapers of multiple cities for the entire seven-month run of the fair.
Beals surely noticed that she was one of very few women to take the field in any capacity during the Olympics.
But in a short time, Beals and many others would come to know about a team of high school girls who'd traveled from far across the country to compete.
Hailing from a Native American boarding school in western Montana,
they would make a splash at the World's Fair with a brand-new American sport called basketball. the country to compete. Hailing from a Native American boarding school in western Montana,
they would make a splash at the World's Fair with a brand new American sport called basketball.
But off the court, they would face their toughest opponent, racism.
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Just over a decade before the St. Louis Olympic Games,
a physical education instructor at a Springfield, Massachusetts YMCA
invented the game of basketball.
James Naismith developed a game involving a soccer ball and two peach baskets
to keep his students occupied indoors during the long winter.
Promoted by YMCAs across the country, the game spread like wildfire.
As the men's game expanded, a woman's version of the game emerged, featuring modified rules
to discourage roughness. In Montana, women's basketball caught the attention of Josephine
Langley, a member of the Blackfeet tribe and an assistant instructor at the Fort Shaw Indian
Boarding School. Fort Shaw was part of a government program of
off-reservation boarding schools that forcibly assimilated Native children into white culture.
These schools were designed to educate and improve Indian children, but also stripped
them of their language and customs. They were taught English and a variety of vocational
subjects intended to make them contributing members of white Western society. But many
students at these schools clung to their native traditions however they could,
often at risk of severe punishment.
For Langley, a former Fort Shaw student herself, who started teaching there upon graduation,
the game of basketball offered a way to harken back to tribal traditions
in a way that would escape the notice of Fort Shaw's white schoolmasters.
Basketball's style of play reminded her of a
Blackfoot game her grandmother had played, called double ball. Since she and her students weren't
allowed to play double ball, basketball presented itself as the next best thing.
So Langley formed a team and found no shortage of interested players. For many of them, as for her,
basketball came naturally. Girls from many different tribal backgrounds joined the team and practiced as often as they could, refining their shooting, passing, and dribbling.
And after finding the women's rules too slow and dull, Langley started coaching them in the men's rules instead.
They were dedicated and played hard.
A new school superintendent, Fred Campbell, immediately saw the girls' team as an opportunity to build a unique
kind of athletics program, one that could give them an opportunity to compete against other schools
and introduce the girls to a wider world.
Imagine it's October 1902. Outside, the Montana fall has brought a freezing chill to the whole
town. But here inside the gymnasium, you're sweating.
You're 16 years old, a member of the Shoshone tribe,
and a student at the Fort Shaw Indian School.
Classes have finished for the day,
so now you and your teammates have gathered here for basketball practice.
Ms. Langley, a teacher at the school,
claps her hands and runs everyone through a series of drills.
Keep the passes coming. Keep them coming. Keep them.
That's good. That's good.
The game of basketball is still pretty new to you, as is having a female coach.
What isn't new to you is that your tribe has played these kinds of cooperative games for a long time.
You take a shot, but it ricochets off the side of the basket. That was a good shot, but keep your knees bent. It'll help. I'm keeping them bent. It's a basket that's not cooperating.
Even though you haven't been playing long, you rarely miss a shot like that.
You have an innate talent for the game.
Miss Langley says that's why she always pushes you a little harder than the others.
Just see the ball into the air, and then right down into the basket.
Visualize it.
See it.
An easy arc.
You try to do as your coach says.
And this time, the ball rattles into the basket.
You hustle over to the pulley that drops the bottom out, catching the ball in midair.
Just then, your teammate Emma dashes up beside you.
She's from the Chippewa Cree tribe, a year older than you.
Hey! Hey, have you heard? We just got invited to play a game in Butte.
Butte? It's a hundred miles away. I know, but call it a travel game. And if we win,
we get to play more at other schools. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Miss Langley
approaching. She has a strict rule against talking on the court, so you quickly turn away from Emma
and let loose with a one-handed shot. The ball lands squarely in the basket.
That was a good shot, but I think you two were talking.
It's okay.
Did Emma tell you the news?
Yes, ma'am.
But why are we playing a game so far away?
Because we want people to see how good you are.
We're going to be playing a lot of travel games from now on.
Now get back to center court.
As you practice your dribbling, your breath is quick.
Your shoulders heave from the exertling, your breath is quick.
Your shoulders heave from the exertion, but you feel great.
You can't wait to play basketball against other schools.
More importantly, you can't wait to beat them.
The Fort Shaw girls' team had no shortage of talent,
but Minnie Burton quickly became their star player.
She was from an Idaho Shoshone tribe, and at first declined to join the team, wanting to focus on her studies. But after some encouragement
from Coach Langley, the tall, agile teenager was soon at every practice. There were no other teams
nearby, so the Fort Shaw girls started to travel, playing out-of-town games against schools in Butte,
Missoula, and Bozeman. Everywhere they went, they made short work of the competition.
They became so popular during the 1903 school year
that their home games were held in the nearby town of Great Falls,
which had the area's only gymnasium big enough to hold over 200 fans.
And after the 1903 season came to an end,
Superintendent Campbell told the girls that next summer,
the Fort Shaw team would be
traveling to St. Louis. They had been invited to live at the Model Indian School on the grounds
of the World's Fair. The school would be a living exhibition of its own, where different tribal
schoolchildren would go to class in the mornings and perform demonstrations in the afternoon.
These would include weaving, poetry, music recitals, and basketball. If all went well, Superintendent Campbell would push for the team's inclusion
in a women's basketball championship.
The young players were thrilled at the prospect of traveling to St. Louis
and attending the World's Fair,
but many bristled at the idea of being put on display for white viewers.
Still, the opportunity to play basketball on such a big stage was too good to pass up.
In June of 1904, the team boarded a train for St. Louis.
The model Indian school where the Fort Shaw girls would live
was just one exhibition of its kind dotting the world's fairgrounds.
Some 1,400 native and indigenous people from around the world
were put on display at what the fair billed as living exhibitions, nothing more than human zoos, which made spectacle and
entertainment of non-white so-called primitive cultures and their customs, cuisine, dress,
and religion. White viewers paid to gawk at the Inu people of Japan or the Tewelche from South
America. The conquest of indigenous people was a theme baked into the fair itself.
Officially called the Louisiana Purchase Exposition,
the entire event served as a centennial commemoration of the massive land deal with France,
which paved the way for American expansion.
That expansion, though, had come at the expense of the Native American nations of western North America, who spent much of the 19th century battling the U.S. military and being forced onto reservations.
Now, as part of the World's Fair, hundreds of members of those tribes were performing in Wild West shows,
working concessions, or reenacting battles with U.S. soldiers.
For five cents, fair spectators could even have their picture taken with the famous Apache chief Geronimo.
Olympic coordinator James Sullivan had also come up with his own way to exploit Native peoples for entertainment purposes.
He put together a two-day Olympic exhibition called Anthropology Days,
which sought to combine the scientific discipline of anthropology with sporting entertainment.
But Anthropology Days were neither entertaining nor scientific.
Held over two days in August, Indigenous people drawn from the living exhibitions,
given no training and few instructions, competed against each other in both European-style sports and so-called
savage-friendly games that were in many cases figments of Sullivan's racist imagination.
Participants were asked to perform feats like tree climbing and mud throwing. And in the more
traditional Olympic events like the high jump, shot put, and 100-yard dash, many of the native
athletes either didn't understand the rules or refused to follow them. Runners in the 100-yard
dash stopped just short of the finish line to wait for their teammates or ducked under the tape
rather than breaking it. Sullivan had presumed that all native peoples used speeders, so he was
perplexed when many of them performed poorly in the javelin toss. Other native contestants,
offended by being
made a spectacle, simply refused to participate at all. And as for the anthropology part of the
events, the collision of cultures only served to support Sullivan's notion of white European
superiority. He wrote testily in his final report that his Native subjects failed in teamwork and
cooperation because they simply weren't smart enough to perform. There were other problems with Sullivan's Olympics. Over the course of the summer,
scorching heat and heavy rains tested athletes and drove away spectators. Attendance plummeted.
But Sullivan hoped that one upcoming event might redeem his troubled Olympics,
the marathon. A track and field man himself, Sullivan had hyped the marathon as the ultimate
test of athletic endurance.
And after the failure of his Anthropology Days exhibit,
he also hoped the marathon would be another chance to conduct yet more physical experiments on athletes of all races.
Meanwhile, though not officially part of the Olympics,
the Fort Shaw girls performed like Olympians at outdoor and indoor basketball exhibitions,
defeating every team that challenged them.
And as the basketball championships approached,
Minnie Burton and her teammates knew they had what it took to win it all.
The only question was whether a team of Native American girls from a remote corner of Montana
would be given a fair chance to compete.
On the next episode of American History Tellers,
the Fort Shaw basketball team takes the world's fair by storm,
American athletes continue to distinguish themselves in the Olympic Games,
and the marathon proves to be a bizarre, one-of-a-kind sporting event
full of twists and turns.
From Wondery, this is Episode 2 of the St. Louis Olympics for American History Tellers.
I also have two other podcasts you might like,
American Scandal and Business Movers. For more information on the early Olympics,
we recommend America's First Olympics by George R. Matthews.
If you like American history tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now
by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free
on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about
yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. American History Tellers
is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship. Audio editing by Molly Bach.
Sound design by Derek Behrens. Music by Lindsey Graham. This episode is written by George Ducker,
edited by Dorian Marina. Our senior producer is Andy Herman. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marshall Louis for Wondery.
Dracula, the ancient vampire who terrorizes Victorian London.
Blood and garlic, bats and crucifixes.
Even if you haven't read the book, you think you know the story.
One of the incredible things about Dracula is that not only is it this
wonderful snapshot of the 19th century, but it also has so much resonance today.
The vampire doesn't cast a reflection in the mirror. So when we look in the mirror,
the only thing we see is our own monstrous abilities.
From the host and producer of American History Tellers and History Daily
comes the new podcast, The Real History of Dracula.
We'll reveal how author Bram Stoker raided ancient folklore,
exploited Victorian fears around sex, science, and religion,
and how even today we remain enthralled to his strange creatures of the night.
You can binge all episodes of The Real History of Dracula exclusively with Wondery Plus.
Join Wondery Plus and The Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.