Category: Running

Hopi Runners: Crossing the Terrain between Indian and American

On By Matthew Sakiestewa GilbertIn American Indian Studies, Hopi, Hopi authors, Hopi history, Hopi Runners, Hopi Running, Indian boarding school, Louis Tewanima, Native runners, Running7 Comments

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Today the University Press of Kansas officially launched my book Hopi Runners: Crossing the Terrain between Indian and American (CultureAmerica series).  

I am grateful for the support of so many people over the years who have encouraged me as I completed this project. I thank my family and friends, past and current students, colleagues at the University of Illinois, and numerous scholars here in the United States and abroad. I also thank the wonderful staff at the press, and of course, readers of this blog!

Last week, Craig Chamberlin of the University of Illinois News Bureau published a story about the book. You can access the story here. If you are interested in purchasing a copy of Hopi Runners, you can do so through Amazon or the publisher’s website.

Below is an excerpt from the book’s Introduction titled “To the Fence and Back.” The excerpt comes from a section of the Introduction where I describe Hopi runners who competed at federal off-reservation Indian boarding schools:

While Hopis participated in several sports, including basketball, football, and even boxing, their greatest success came as members of track and cross-country teams. Sports at off-reservation schools provided Native athletes opportunities that did not exist  for them on their reservations. When Hopis joined cross-country teams at Sherman Institute, or the Indian school at Carlisle, they experienced for the first time different regions of the country, life in modern cities, and a new way of running footraces. And Hopis used these opportunities to learn and interact with people from other parts of the United States and the world. While competing in marathons, Hopis ran with runners from Ireland, Germany, Sweden, and Japan, and although from vastly different cultures, they spoke a common – and perhaps universal – language of competitive running.

Having come from a society that valued long-distance running for ceremonial and practical purposes, Hopi youth transferred this cultural mindset with with them when they entered these faraway schools. Hopi runners who competed at Indian schools had come from a tribe of racers. While none of these athletes needed to be taught the essence of long-distance running, coaches nevertheless trained them in modern running techniques and rules to compete effectively in American track and cross-country events. The dirt trails on the reservation did not resemble the paved roads or clay tracks used in many American running competitions. And so, in their first year on a school’s cross-country team, Hopis learned about running in different locations, climates, and elevations. And they had to develop mental and physical strategies for running in cities, on mountain roads, or in front of thousands of cheering spectators in a stadium.

When Hopis ran on trails back home, they did so in a relatively quiet and peaceful environment, far from the sounds of locomotives arriving and departing towns such as Winslow. Running on or near the mesas, Hopis became attuned with their bodies and surroundings, becoming one with their environment. They listened to their own breathing, the sound of their feet tapping the trail as they danced on Mother Earth. They felt the rhythmic pounding of their heart telling them to adjust or steady their pace. And they listened to birds singing and the sound of the wind cutting through the canyons. And often they ran alone, experiencing physical ailments that all distance runners endure. “He was alone and running on,” Kiowa poet N. Scott Momaday writes of a Jemez Pueblo runner named Abel. “All of his being was concentrated in the sheer motion of running on, and he was past caring about pain.” In the high desert of Arizona, Hopi runners also beheld beautiful landscapes , greeted majestic sunrises and sunsets, and had unobstructed views for miles in all directions. Running with no distractions from the outside world, Hopis ran with “good hearts,” prayed silently for the well-being of their people, and sang songs to the katsina spirits to entice the rain clouds to follow them home to their villages.

However, the tranquil environment that encompassed the trails back home did not reflect the fast pace and at times chaotic life in large modern American cities…

Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, Hopi Runners: Crossing the Terrain between Indian and American (University Press of Kansas, 2018), 8, 9, 10.

 

 

ESPN to air film on Hopi cross country team

On By Matthew Sakiestewa GilbertIn Hopi High runners, Hopi Runners, Hopi Running, Native runners, Running, Uncategorized5 Comments

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In May of this year, I was interviewed by ESPN producer Scott Harves for a film on Hopi running and the Hopi cross country team. The interview took place in the Department of History library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

During the two-hour interview, Harves asked me to talk about Hopi culture and society, but most of his questions centered on the long history of Hopis and distance running.

Having won 26 consecutive state titles, the Hopi High cross country team has received considerable attention from media outlets, including a recent story by John Branch in the New York Times.

A 15 minute version of the film, Run Hopi, is scheduled to air on ESPN this Sunday July 24 at 10:00AM and 11:00PM (eastern time) on the SportsCenter (http://espn.go.com/video/sportscenter). It will likely be aired several more times throughout the summer.

A longer 30 minute version of the film will be aired on July 29 at 8:30PM (eastern time) on ESPN2.

To learn more about Run Hopi, and to watch a trailer of the film, see Andy Hall’s article on the ESPN FrontRow website entitled “Sunday’s SC Featured tells of Hopi reservation cross-country dynasty.”

Coyote still has something to teach us about running

On By Matthew Sakiestewa GilbertIn RunningLeave a comment

Below is  a story in Runner’s World about a coyote who joined the 5K race at the recent AIA Cross Country State Championship in Phoenix, Arizona.

News reporters noted that the coyote only stayed in the race for 50 meters, and one AIA official jokingly suggested that he may have been chasing after The Road Runner.

But I believe that there was a far deeper reason why Coyote joined the race.

People back home talk about how Hopi runners of long ago learned to run by studying the running motions of various animals. I can only imagine what Coyote was thinking when he ran with the other runners at the AIA event:

“Look at me run. Observe my speed, strength, and grace. See how effortlessly I run alongside, behind, and ahead of you. I still have something to teach you.”

________________

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A new running partner and those darn concrete slabs

On By Matthew Sakiestewa GilbertIn Hopi Running, Running, Uncategorized1 Comment

Illinois is experiencing unseasonably warm weather. Today, it’s already in the low 70s, which is great weather to run in. Yesterday, I took advantage of the nice weather and hit the running trails near my neighborhood.

This winter I started running with a new friend named John who lives a block away from me. In the past I would usually run by myself. This is still the case, but once a week I run with John.

He is a stronger runner than me, which makes him a good running partner. And he’s already saved me from two potentially really bad spills. They both happened when we were running on uneven sidewalks with trip lips sticking up from between the concrete slabs.

While running at a decent pace, I tripped over those lips, lunged forward, and John quickly turned around each time to catch my fall. Had it not been for John, I would have hit the pavement face first – a bloody mess for sure!

So my near falls have taught me a few lessons: pay better attention to those darn concrete slabs, don’t let your feet drag (easy to do when you’re tired), and keep John running in the lead.

Running through exhaust

On By Matthew Sakiestewa GilbertIn Hopi Runners, Hopi Running, Photos, Running3 Comments
Illinois cornfield and rural road - Photograph by Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert

On Friday of last week I went on a run that brought me to the middle of corn fields outside the city of Champaign, Illinois. As I plugged away on a country road, a large truck drove by and I got a mouth full of exhaust. This is one of my least favorite parts about running on rural roads.

But it reminded me of Hopis during the 1910s and 1920s who “ate exhaust” in many marathons that they competed in. It was not uncommon for newspaper reporters or race officials to drive their automobiles 10 or 15 feet in front of the lead runners.  Some runners were so overcome with exhaust that they quit.

Back out at Hopi, runners did not have to contend with automobile exhaust, but when they competed in events beyond the mesas, it became a serious issue for them to manage.

It’s difficult enough to run long distances with high heat and humidity, and sore legs and feet, but adding the heavy exhaust element to running must have seemed unbearable.

And yet the vast majority of Hopi runners pressed on to complete (and sometimes win) the marathons that they started.

For the runners, the exhaust was simply another obstacle for them to overcome. It was one more hurdle for them to navigate through when they ran beyond their homelands in northeastern Arizona.

Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert

A Hopi runner and his marathon trophy

On By Matthew Sakiestewa GilbertIn Hopi scholarship, Running, Sherman Institute10 Comments

Photograph by Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert

Most people who visit the Sherman Indian Museum in Riverside, California, see this first place trophy without knowing who won it. Marathon officials did not engrave the athlete’s name on the trophy, but they did include the date and the event, which was the Vallejo Pre-Olympic National Marathon held in California on December 22, 1929.

At one point in the school’s history, the student’s at Sherman Institute knew who won this award. But as time passed, the trophy, one of the largest in the Museum’s collection, became disassociated from its owner.

The trophy belongs to Hopi runner Harry Chaca from the village of Polacca on First Mesa. He was among the great Hopi runners of the twentieth century. Chaca attended Sherman in the 1920s and early 1930s and he earned several marathon honors while a student at the school.

I wrote about Chaca and his victory of the 1929 Vallejo Pre-Olympic National Marathon in my article “Hopi Footraces and American Marathons, 1912-1930” (American Quarterly, March 2010). I note that prior to this event, Chaca had won other prestigious marathons and his reputation as a great runner spread far beyond the United States.

In Japan, for example, a runner named Yoshikio Sudsuki heard that Chaca was the best runner in America and so he traveled to the U.S. for the sole purpose of competing against the Hopi from Polacca. But at the 1929 Vallejo Pre-Olympic National Marathon, Chaca’s speed and endurance proved too much for the forty-nine year old runner from Tokyo. In my article I write that the

Hopi runner ran at a “killing pace to win” the full marathon in two hours, forty-one minutes, and twenty-five seconds, a “full second better than the performance of Alpien Stenroos” in the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. One of the fifty thousand spectators of the marathon recalled that Chaca’s “victory” was “all the more noteworthy for his sensational finish. After trailing for twenty-three miles it was at that mark that he applied a final burst of speed that sent him ahead” of Hopi runner Franklin Suhu. In addition to winning the race, Chaca set a new American marathon record, which immediately confirmed his place as the top long-distance runner in the nation. [p. 91]

Shortly after Chaca’s marathon victory, school officials took his trophy and displayed it in a large cabinet located in Sherman’s administration building (now the Sherman Indian Museum). According to school administrators, all individually won trophies belonged to the school.

At times Hopi students attempted to obtain their trophy cups after their terms at Sherman had expired.  During the 1940s, for example, Hopi runner Philip Zeyouma asked the school’s superintendent if he could reclaim his trophies (pictured on the front cover of American Quarterly), but school officials refused to honor his request.

More than eighty years after Chaca won the Vallejo Pre-Olympic National Marathon, his trophy remains at the Sherman Indian Museum. Although government officials consider the award to be property of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the trophy will always belong to Harry Chaca and his family.

Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert

Hopi runners in the audience

On By Matthew Sakiestewa GilbertIn American Indian Studies, Hopi scholarship, Running11 Comments

I recently returned from attending the American Indian Studies Association (AISA) Conference in Tempe, Arizona. I delivered a paper titled “Hopi Footraces and American Marathons, 1912-1930.” This paper, in its article form, will appear next month in American Quarterly. I was happy to see that some Hopis came to my talk, including two students from ASU. Since I first presented on this topic, I cannot recall the last time I had Hopi long distance runners in the audience. Both of these students were runners.

After the session I talked at length with the students about how the world focuses so much attention on Louis Tewanima, but back home our people realize that while Tewanima was good, other Hopi runners were just as good or better than the famous Olympian from Shungopavi. Although these students already knew about Tewanima, they had not heard of the other runners that I mentioned in my paper. I also did not know about these runners before I started this project.

One of the most rewarding aspects of being a faculty at the University of Illinois is the opportunity I have to make my research available and meaningful to the Hopi community. This has always been the driving force behind my work.

Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert