William Louis Veeck Jr. also known as “Sports Shirt”, was an American Franchise owner and promoter. He owned many teams such as the Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns, and the Chicago White Sox.
In the 1930s, Veeck immediatley put the Cleveland games on radio for everyone to listen into the games.
In 1947 Veeck wanted a new logo for the Indians team and ended up hiring 17 year old Walter Goldbach to do it. The logo is that everyone is used to seeing is what he came up with.
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Where did the name “Chief Wahoo” come from?
15 years prior to Goldback making the logo, there was a cartoon being drawn in the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer is a major Newspaper in Cleveland with their first publication coming out in 1842.
Inside this newspaper there were cartoons being created called “The Little Indian” which shared stories about how the baseball games were going and other things that may have been a little racist and went right through Culture Appropriation.
The creator of these cartoon illustrations was Fred George Reinert, Jr. He also helped with many famous illustrations that we all know like Mickey Mouse, Tom & Jerry, and Donald Duck and Winnie the Pooh.
The Little Indian Series was wildly popular at the time among the people of Cleveland that it ran for 30 years.
The Name Chief Wahoo
The Name Chief Wahoo was also very popular at the time in comics that were published in November 23, 1936. People started getting very familiar with the name as it was starting to be associated with the Native American people with the white settlers.
The comic was created Allen Saunders who wrote the stories and the Art by Elmer Woggon. The drawings of Chief Wahoo were very similar and is the way many white people started to draw Native Americans at the time.
Alie Renolds – Muskeegee Creek Nation
Allie Reynolds was an American baseball player that played with the Cleveland Indians and New York Yankees.
He was born February 10th, 1917 and passed away December 26th, 1994. He was
He was a famous pitcher and won 6 World Series championships, they called him the “Super Chief”.
Renolds was a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation located just east of Oklahoma City in Oklahoma. The Nation comes from a large group of the Southeastern Woodlands and recognized by Europeans as one of the Five Civilized Tribes back in the day.
When Renolds was traded to the Yankee’s, he excelled even further. Cleveland sports writers started to write about Renold’s, calling him Chief Wahoo in the headlines.
Cultural Appropriation and The Fight to Get Logo Removed
The Cleveland Indians logo is the only logo in Professional Sports to have a Race as their logo.
Many Native American people started to protest the Logo stating they are People and not mascots.
The Major League started to feel pressure as well and started to work with the Cleveland Indians behind the scenes.
Many fans argued that it wasn’t racist but it shared the brave, pride, and strong, and courageous Indians.
The start of 2019 MLB season was the first season where they dropped the logo and just have the name written on their uniforms now.
There are still that don’t understand why they would drop the logo and don’t understand how it can be wrong.
To get a better understanding, what if the team was called “The Caucasians”
The conversation would be a little different.
The logo is now off of the official stadium where the Indians play and is now located at the Cleveland History Centre.
