The 1911 World Series: “Indian Versus Indian”

John Tortes Meyers (left) of the New York Giants and Charles Albert Bender of the Philadelphia Athletics (right) pose before the first game of the 1911 World Series, deemed the “Indian versus Indian” series by sports writers. Like other Native American players of the era they were given the nickname “Chief.” (Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

 

On October 12, 1911 – Columbus Day – a new reform group, the Society of American Indians (SAI), met for the first time in Columbus, Ohio. The gathering was in response to a call by six Native American activists and intellectuals. In their summons they wrote, “[T]he time has come when the American Indian should take the initiative in the struggle for his race betterment, and to answer in his own way some of the vital questions that confront him.”1

Called “Red Progressives,” SAI members were largely boarding school or university-educated “Indians.” While there were other progressive organizations, like the Indian Rights Association, seeking to work for the betterment of Indians, the SAI was unique as a group led by Indians rather than Whites. While nonnatives could be associate members, only Indians were admitted to full membership.

The two themes put forward by the SAI were pan-Indianism, the belief that Indians should cooperate across tribal boundaries on a common political and social agenda; and assimilation of Indians to the culture and lifestyle of the dominant society while retaining pride in their own Indian identities.2

On October 14, 1911, with the SAI organizational meeting still in session, Charles Albert Bender, known as “Chief,” the nickname given to virtually all Native American ballplayers, took the mound against the New York Giants in the first game of the 1911 World Series. Although Bender would win two decisive victories for the Philadelphia Athletics in the Series and give up only six runs, on that day he lost the game when Giants catcher John Tortes Meyers – also known as “Chief” – scored the winning run. The Athletics-Giants matchup was called in the contemporary press the “Indian versus Indian” series.

Both events represent responses to the profound changes through which Native Americans were passing in the first decades of the twentieth century. According to Philip Deloria, the SAI provided a context in which Indians were able to approach assimilation on their own terms. By contrast, Bender and Meyers and other Indian athletes at the time were expected to display the traits Whites associated with Indians in their “primitive” state before they were affected by their contact with “civilization.”3

However, the distinction should not be overemphasized, especially when considering the perspectives of these two Indian athletes themselves. Despite the racial epithets others used to define them, Bender and Meyers did not see themselves as enacting primitive stereotypes. In their own quite distinct ways, they fought to rise above such expectations.

Charles Albert Bender (1883-1954), a Chippewa Indian,4 grew up on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. His nonnative father was of German ancestry and his mother was Chippewa. Bender graduated from the Carlisle Indian Boarding School and spent time at Dickinson College. A lanky (6-2½), 185-pound right-hander, Bender was signed in 1903 to a contract with the Philadelphia Athletics. Bender spent 12 productive seasons with the A’s, finishing his career with a record of 212 wins and 127 losses, with 1,711 strikeouts and a 2.46 ERA. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1953 by the Veterans Committee.

Bender experienced racial stereotyping throughout his career. For example, Charles Dryden of the Philadelphia North American could not resist racist imagery in describing Bender’s masterful performance in the second game of the 1905 World Series, shutting out the New York Giants 3-0. Dryden wrote that the “dusky child of the forest” “had won a new turkey feather for his head piece,” although but “for a wind-up [he] came within half an inch of letting the champions scalp him.”5

Bender found his own approach to resisting such stereotyping. When asked if his Chippewa background was the reason for his amazing poise on the pitching mound that day, Bender responded, “I want to be known as a pitcher, not an Indian.” However, a cartoon in the Philadelphia Inquirer the next day showed him dressed as a stereotypical Indian warrior using an “Indian sign” to hypnotize Giants batters. Other epithets Bender heard from the stands that day and throughout his career included war whooping and shouts like “Back to the reservation!” and “Giants grab heap big wampum!”6

 

Meyers had a .291 lifetime batting average, highest among all catchers of the Deadball Era and higher than that of most of the catchers in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In a time when catchers were emerging as “field generals,” Meyers was heralded as one of the best strategists and tacticians behind the plate.

Like Bender, Meyers felt the sting of racist taunts throughout his career. As he said to a reporter in 1909, he felt like “a stranger in a strange land.”7

Reflecting the “savage warrior” stereotype, journalists often described Meyers coming to the plate not with a bat, but with a “war club.”8 Meyers was typically greeted when he batted with tomahawk chops and war whoops. In his 80s, Meyers was interviewed by Lawrence Ritter for Ritter’s acclaimed book The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It. Meyers reiterated to Ritter that as an Indian he had always felt resentment for being treated like an outsider, a stranger.9

Meyers and Bender were competitors, but also friends who shared the common experience of being stereotyped because they were Indians. However, the two responded differently to the racism and prejudice they had to endure.

Bender sometimes responded overtly to racist taunts. On one occasion, when fans were heckling him with war whoops, the college-educated pitcher walked over to the third-base stands and yelled, “You ill-bred ignorant foreigners; if you don’t like what I’m doing here, why don’t you go back where you came from?”10

However, such outbursts were not typical for Bender. Most often in response to the most vicious heckling, he would “just smile, sometimes tip his cap.” New York Times sports reporter William C. Rhoden compared such accommodating to the “‘tying oneself in knots’ behavior of Jackie Robinson.”11

On the whole, Bender chose denial, withdrawal, and stoic silence as his coping mechanisms. He largely and purposefully immersed himself in White society, both during and after his baseball career. He never returned to the White Earth Reservation or spent time in Indian country, choosing instead to live out his retirement years in Pennsylvania.

Bender and Meyers and other Native American major leaguers during the early history of baseball experienced a catch-22. If they released the tension, frustration, and estrangement, they felt, they risked being labeled “savage warriors.” If they kept it in, it was assumed they were displaying the “naturally impassive and unfeeling” nature of all “primitive people.”12

Although Bender sometimes expressed pride in his Indian identity, he largely kept his hostile feelings at being stereotyped inside. As one of his biographers has observed, Charles Albert Bender “pursued a major league career to distance himself from his Indian heritage. … [I]t was a decision that haunted him the rest of his life.”13

By contrast, John Tortes Meyers chose not to abandon his Cahuilla heritage. He remained connected to his Cahuilla homeland both during and after his baseball career, willingly involving himself in the affairs of his people. He drew for personal strength as a ballplayer on Cahuilla values. Among them was ?iva?a, the Cahuilla belief in a creative force that, if treated respectfully, will be beneficial to the endeavors you are pursuing. In addition, he was influenced by the Cahuilla values of respect for elders and tradition, interconnectedness, industriousness, order, precision, dependability, moderation, dignity, and reserve.14

Perhaps the most effective of the Cahuilla values upon which Meyers drew was ironic humor, used to defuse tense situations and level social distinctions. For example, late in his career a reporter noted that although right-handed, Meyers signed autographs with his left hand. The actual reason was that his right hand was so gnarled as a result of being hit in his throwing hand that he couldn’t write with it. With a twinkle in his eye, Meyers told the reporter, who dutifully reported the insight, that most Indians sign their names left-handed, because “when we were signing treaties with the white man, we had to hold the pen in the left hand and a tomahawk in the right, or they would whack us on the dome in their treacherous pale-faced fashion. With the right hand armed, we were ready to meet their wickedness halfway.”15

In contrast to Bender and other Native American ballplayers, John Tortes Meyers was willing to speak out in defense of the rights of the Cahuilla people and other Indian nations. For example, in 1909, when he was just a rookie, Meyers risked his career by defending a group of Creek Indians in Oklahoma who were trying to retain tribal control over their traditional lands. They were led by Chitto Harjo, called by the White press “Crazy Snake.” Harjo was vilified and charged with threatening to set the Oklahoma frontier ablaze with the “horrors of Indian massacre.”16

When asked by a reporter to comment, Meyers responded by saying that Indians were being treated like “irresponsible children.” They were being driven onto reservations which were then taken over by railroad or land companies, forcing the Indians onto worse reservations. Chitto Harjo was accused of an uprising, and his land was stolen “and he was driven into the cold,” Meyers told the reporter, but “he never stirred a finger.” Meyers emphasized that it was “the white men who are robbing him and other Indians [who] are believed by the public and not the Indian.”17

Before the first game of the 1911 World Series, Charles Albert Bender and John Tortes Meyers posed for a photograph. The horde of reporters covering the game made sure their audiences knew that the two players were the game’s two greatest American Indian ballplayers. As noted, before the first pitch had been thrown it was dubbed the “Indian versus Indian” Series. Commenting on the impact of Indian ballplayers on the sport, one reporter wrote in his preview of the Series, “[W]hen the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock they first fell upon their knees, and then fell upon the aborigines. Things have changed. The aborigines now fall upon the whites and make short work of them.”18

Inspired by the two Indians in the 1911 Series, in its extensive game coverage the New York Times described the scene with a string of “Indian images.” The Times writer could not resist displaying his “knowledge” of various tribal religions. He claimed that Bender was using “the aboriginal sign language of all the separate tribes” to overpower the Giants batters. The signs included “the Apache omen, the Mandan magic, the Sioux sorcery, the Arapahoe evil eye and even the Siwash shibboleth.” Presumably guided by John Tortes Meyers, the Giants batters neutralized Bender’s signs, the Times writer offered, by boiling some snake root and rubbing it in their hair.

When Meyers faced Bender for the first time in the 1911 Series it was not the Giants’ power-hitting catcher against the A’s ace, but “Chief Meyers, the Mission Indian,19 fac[ing] Chief Bender, the Chippewa.” Times writer W.J. Lampton drew on General Philip Sheridan’s famous comment, suggesting that “[s]omebody has said that the only good Indian is a dead Indian, but whoever he was, never saw Bender and Meyers play ball.”20

In the seventh inning of the first game of the 1911 World Series, it was once again “Indian versus Indian.” When “Big Chief Meyers” drove a Bender pitch for a double and scored, it was, the Times claimed, the “Witch Doctor” who crossed the plate. The Times further exuded that perhaps “these two Redmen” “wished they had tomahawks in their hands instead of a bat and a baseball.”

In an article ghostwritten for Meyers in the same edition of the Times, the writer called Bender “my redskin friend Albert” and said he was “glad to belong to the same race as that big fellow.”

The Giants’ ace, Christy Mathewson, was the winning pitcher of the first game because, the Times noted, he had his own “Redskin wizardry” that had “set the fans to ghost dancing.”21

The New York Herald praised Mathewson’s performance in the 1911 Series in doggerel that featured a racist reference to Bender:

You punched the Mack men full of holes;
You spiked their biggest gun;
You tore the scalplock off the Chief;
You put ’em on the run.22

After the first game of the 1911 World Series, players on both teams discovered that Giants President John Brush had swindled them out of a portion of their Series shares by undercounting the gate. Meyers was chosen to lead a protest and players from both teams, including Bender, formed a committee to protest Brush’s action. Although the protest was rebuffed, the selection of Meyers to lead the group and Bender to serve on the committee showed how much, despite the racism they endured, both the Giants and A’s players trusted them.

Nevertheless, stereotyping persisted in the other games of the 1911 Series. Bender’s outstanding pitching performance in the third game, a 3-2 A’s victory, was credited by one writer to “the cunning characteristic of his race” that enabled him to see things that “escape the eye of the Caucasian.”23 When Meyers batted in the 11th with a chance to win the game, the New York Times reported, “War whoops, yells, Indian talk, filled the air as [Giants fans] pleaded, begged, yes, implored the Redman to tear the cover off the ball and drive it into the wilderness. …”24

In his 2005 book The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball, Frank DeFord demonstrated that twenty-first-century commentators were still capable of employing stereotypical descriptions of Native American ballplayers. He wrote that the “celebrated medicine man,” Chief Bender, was on the mound in the fourth game of the Series, a 4-2 A’s victory.25

In the sixth and final game of the World Series, Athletics manager Connie Mack surprised observers by tapping Bender for pitching duties after the hurler had only one day of rest. In the New York Times coverage of the game Bender was yet again assigned stereotypes: “the Redman” or the “red boy.”26 Bender and the A’s blasted the Giants, 13-2.

The 1911 World Series marked a turning point in the way World Series were covered. The “media circus” was born: Before each game hundreds of photographers swarmed the field to snap every conceivable shot. The “human interest” angles were played up. As noted, before the first game the press made sure readers knew that this was the “Indian versus Indian” series, with a well-publicized photo of Albert Bender and John Tortes Meyers together, both labeled “Chief.” The Series was covered by a large national, even international, press corps. In the press box was a pantheon of sportswriters, including Damon Runyon, Heywood Broun, Grantland Rice, Sam Crane, Fred Lieb, Bozeman Bulger, Sid Mercer, and Ring Lardner.

Alongside were 50 telegraphers ready to flash the game action, play by play, to sites from Havana to Los Angeles. After each game a summary was sent to Tokyo. Throughout the nation thousands followed the games in real time on various types of public scoreboards, including new electronic versions. The justices of the US Supreme Court had clerks slip them inning-by-inning reports, and the proceedings of the houses of Congress were interrupted when there was a change in the score.27

It was also the first World Series when daily reports, ghostwritten by sportswriters, appeared under the names of ballplayers (including Mathewson and Meyers).28

When the A’s and Giants players learned that rights for showing movies of the 1911 Series in theaters were being sold, they protested. The Giants once again selected Meyers to represent them to petition for the players to receive a share of the $3,500 payment for the rights. The appeal was not successful.29

One feature of the coverage of World Series did not change in 1911, and to a disturbing degree continues today. As demonstrated here, stereotypical imagery dominated the press description of the two Native American ballplayers in the Series, and racist tropes characterized fan responses to them.

Despite requests by Native American major leaguers, including Ryan Helsley of the St. Louis Cardinals, a member of the Cherokee nation, that Atlanta Braves fans discontinue the frequent tomahawk chops and “war whooping,” they persisted in 2022.30 While Cleveland’s major-league team responded to complaints from Native Americans by dropping its racist Chief Wahoo logo and changing its name from the Indians to the Guardians, Cleveland’s fans continue to purchase and display the imagery.

Although the Society of American Indians was dissolved in 1923, its advocacy of citizenship for Native Americans was instrumental in the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, signed into law on June 2, 1924. Furthermore, the positive influence of the SAI lives on in progressive organizations like the National Congress of American Indians and the American Indian Legal Defense Fund.

WILLIAM A. YOUNG is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri. The books he has written on baseball include John Tortes Meyers: A Baseball Biography and J. L. Wilkinson and the Kansas City Monarchs Trailblazers in Black Baseball. For the latter book, he received a SABR Research Award. He also contributed essays to the SABR volumes on Jackie Robinson and the Kansas City Monarchs. He is the author of Quest for Harmony: Native American Spiritual Traditions and several other books on religion. Young is a lifelong St. Louis Cardinals fan. He and his wife, Sue, also a retired educator and Cardinals fan, reside in Columbia, Missouri.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An earlier version of this essay appeared in William A. Young, John Tortes “Chief” Meyers: A Baseball Biography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2012).

 

NOTES

1 Lucy Maddox, Citizen Indians: Native American Intellectuals, Race and Reform (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2005), 9.

2 Donald Fixico, Daily Life of Native Americans in the Twentieth Century (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2006), 77.

3 Philip Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 227-8, 234.

4 Today many Chippewa, also called Ojibwe, prefer to be known as the Anishinaabeg (singular, Anishinaabe), a self-designation in their own language that means “original people.”

5 Cited in Robert Peyton Wiggins, Chief Bender: A Baseball Biography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co. 2010), 59-60.

6 William C. Kashatus, Money Pitcher: Chief Bender and the Tragedy of Indian Assimilation (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), ix-x.

7 “Chielf [sic] Myers [sic] Sole Ambition to ‘Make Good’ in New York Team,” Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln), May 2, 1909: C7.

8 “Cubs Take Giants into Camp Again,” New York Times, July 28, 1912.

9 Lawrence Ritter, “Chief Meyers,” in The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It, Enlarged Edition (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 183.

10 Norman Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 314.

11 Cited in Kate Buford, Native Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 173.

12 Jeffrey P. Beck, The American Indian Integration of Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), 75-76.

13 Kashatus, Money Pitcher, xiii.

14 William A. Young, John Tortes “Chief” Meyers: A Baseball Biography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2012), 25-27.

15 “Clippings and Cartoons,” Baseball Magazine, August 1917, 451.

16 For a full account, see Mel H. Bolster, Crazy Snake and the Smoked Meat Rebellion (Boston: Brandon Press, 1976).

17 J.W. McConaughy, “Indian Most Remarkable Player in Game: M’Graw Picks Meyers for Chief Catcher,” August 5, 1909 (National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York); cited in Beck, The American Indian Integration of Baseball, 78.

18 (Rochester) Union and Advertiser, as reprinted in The Arrow, December 1, 1911; cited by Buford in Native Son, 105.

19 The Cahuilla were often grouped with other Southern California tribes and labeled “Mission Indians.” It was a misnomer that continues to plague the Cahuilla to this day. As Meyers’ grandniece Shanna Meyers told the author, “We are not ‘Mission Indians.’ The missions were on the coast and we’re not there. We’re still having trouble getting [the Bureau of Indian Affairs] to remove ‘Mission’ from our name.” (personal Interview with Shanna Meyers, September 29, 2008).

20 W.J. Lampton, “Hits and Misses,” New York Times, October 15, 1911.

21 Rex Beach, “Giants Take the First Game, Score, 2-1,” New York Times, October 15, 1911.

22 Cited in Frank DeFord, The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006), 163.

23 Tom Swift, Chief Bender’s Burden: The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), 187-88, 190.

24 “Giants Lose Again, 3-2,” New York Times, October 18, 1911.

25 DeFord, The Old Ball Game, 167.

26 “How the Giants Lost,” New York Times, October 27, 1911.

27 Young, John Tortes “Chief” Meyers, 93.

28 Young, John Tortes “Chief” Meyers, 93.

29 Macht, Connie Mack, 518.

30 Mark Saxon, “Cardinals’ Ryan Helsley, of Cherokee Descent, Expresses Disappointment over Braves’ use of Tomahawk Chop,” The Athletic, October 4, 2019.