A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States in the Olympics.
His full name is James Francis Thorpe and was better known as an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist.
What tribe did Jim Thorpe belong to?
Jim Thorpe was an enrolled as a member of the Sac and Fox, his father’s tribe, and in the Citizen Band Potawatomi, his mother’s tribe. His mother landed in the Citizen Band and Sac and Fox nations.
Thorpe was born into a mixed tribe because his parents were both of mixed-race ancestry. His father, Hiram Thorpe, had an Irish father and a Sac and Fox Indian mother.
His mother, Charlotte Vieux, had a French father and a Potawatomi mother, a descendant of Chief Louis Vieux. He was raised as a Sac and Fox, and his native name, Wa-Tho-Huk, is translated as “path lit by a great flash of lightning” or, more simply, “Bright Path”
Thorpe studied the Sac and Fox Indian Agency school in Stroud, with his twin brother, Charlie. Charlie helped him through school until he died of pneumonia when they were nine. Thorpe ran away from school several times.
His father sent him to the Haskell Institute, an Indian boarding school in Lawrence, Kansas, so he would not run away again.
At the age of 16 when his mother died, he stayed with his father and decided to attend Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. There his athletic ability was recognized and he was coached by Glenn Scobey “Pop” Warner, one of the most influential coaches of early American football history.
Later that year the youth was orphaned after his father Hiram Thorpe died from gangrene poisoning after being wounded in a hunting accident.
The young Thorpe again dropped out of school. He resumed farm work for a few years before returning to Carlisle School.
Source: nflfaqs.com
