Philip J. “Woodchuck” Welmas (February 26, 1891 – November 15, 1968) was a Native American professional football player in the early National Football League.
Native American Athletes
Native American athletes and sports heroes include baseball players Louis Sockalexis and John “Chief Meyers, Billy Mays, Olympic Gold Medalist, all round athlete Jim Thorpe, who excelled in 11 sports, and many more. Profiles of native American sports heroes.
Mose J. Yellowhorse from the Pawnee tribe is considered to be the first full-blooded American Indian to play in baseball’s big leagues.
“Chief” John Meyers, a Cahuilla native American, was one of the most famous baseball players of all times. He was a catcher for both the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers.
If you were to drive down dusty State Route 37 in Ohio, past grain elevators and feed stores, to a broken sidewalk in the town of LaRue, you would find one of those blue steel historical markers that rise from obscure landscapes around America. This one says: Home of the Oorang Indians, NFL’s Most Colorful Franchise
A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled Friday that proceedings should begin to return the body of Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe to Oklahoma, a major step in a decades-long battle that Thorpe’s sons and the Sac and Fox tribe have waged to return his body to the place where he grew up.
Although it was discovered in the 1960s that the first Native American in the major leagues was James Madison Toy, who played in the American Association in 1887 and 1890, the first man known and treated as an American Indian was Louis Sockalexis, a member of the Penobscot tribe.Born on October 24, 1871 on the Penobscot Indian reservation outside of Old Town, Maine, Sockalexis displayed incredible athletic talent in his youth.
Jim Thorpe
24 ViewsJim Thorpe was an all round athlete who excelled at 11 different sports and the first native American to win the gold at the Olympics.