THE LATE REUBEN SNAKE, ONETIME chairman of the American Indian Movement and member of the Winnebago nation, said that to be an Indian meant “having every third person you meet tell you about his great-grandmother who was a real Cherokee princess” and “nine out of ten people tell you how great Jim Thorpe was.” Thorpe, in that sense, was one of the few Native Americans of the twentieth century whom people could cite and praise even if they knew little else about the indigenous experience.
