In Doctors, Lawyers, Indian Chiefs, Tom Benjey expanded the scope of his previous work, Keep A-Goin': The Life of Lone Star Dietz, to explore the lives of not just one of the Carlisle Indian School football immortals but the core group of men -- more than 50 all told -- who helped create the sport, both amateur and professional, we enjoy today. The issue for the Carlisle students of the competing visions of mainstreaming versus cultural retention for Native Americans in this country is one that Dr. Benjey explores in detail, the validities of which are still debated a century later. During...

Other than for Jim Thorpe and Pop Warner, the Carlisle Indian School football teams are largely forgotten. Although these teams were legendary in their own time, they are now virtually unknown except to the most ardent football historians. The Indians' contributions to the game were substantial and deserve to be remembered today. Six Carlisle Indians have been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame (not bad for a program that played its last game in 1917) and helped get Pop Warner, their coach, inducted as a charter member alongside Jim Thorpe.