The Day Indians Discovered Rockne
He was a 5-year-old boy fresh off the boat with his Norwegian-immigrant family and didn’t know one word of English.
Suddenly, young Knute Rockne found himself lost in the massive crowd of the Chicago Exposition celebration.
“When my dad was elated by an award for his carriage at the Chicago Exposition in 1893, he failed to check my curiosity,” Rockne recalled of the experience depicted in “Rockne of Ages.” “I wound up in the midst of a sort of miniature Indian reservation.”
The day was three years removed from the Wounded Knee massacre and the height of the government’s forced relocation of Native Americans onto reservations. If any group had a reason to ignore a little lost tow-headed boy, it may as well have been the American Indian of 1893.
Rockne, however, learned early-on that American Indians could be the first to offer welcoming comforts to lost immigrants in spite of the atrocities they endured on their own land.
“The contrast – between me, a white-haired Nordic fresh from the homeland and the jet-haired Indian papooses – must have struck some Indian chief as odd,” Rockne wrote. “A weary policeman passing by the make-believe reservation beheld a blonde-head ringed in feathers bobbing through a noisy mob of Indian kids wielding a wooden tomahawk and yelling for scalps.”
Rockne dressed as a Native American for a theater production at Notre Dame
The cop gathered young Rockne and returned him to his “puzzled parents.” What could have been a tragically frightful experience for a young boy left an indelible impression the legendary coach carried with him for the rest of his life.
“I’ve held Indians in affection and high esteem ever since that childhood adventure,” Rockne maintained.
One would stand above all as the greatest football player Rockne ever witnessed.
“In a review of my playing career, one hard day stands out above all others,” Rockne admitted, “the day I was playing professional football and tried to stop Jim Thorpe.
“My job was to tackle him, which I did two times successfully, but with much suffering. After the second time, Thorpe smiled genially at me. ‘Be a good boy,’ he said. ‘Let Jim run.’”