Hopi Footraces and American Marathons, 1912–1930

Abstract

The Hopi people of northeastern Arizona have always been known as great long distance runners. This article examines Hopi runners at Sherman Institute, an off-reservation Indian boarding school in Riverside, California. When Hopis succeeded on the Sherman Institute crosscountry team between 1912 and 1930, their cultural identities challenged white American perceptions of modernity and placed them in a context that had national and international dimensions. These dimensions linked Hopi runners to other athletes from different parts of the world, including Ireland and Japan, and they caused non-Natives to reevaluate their understandings of sports, nationhood, and the cultures of American Indian people. Furthermore, this article examines Hopi agency, and the complex and various ways Hopi runners navigated between tribal dynamics, school loyalties, and a country that closely associated sports with U.S. nationalism. It calls attention to certain cultural philosophies of running that connected Hopi runners to their village communities, and the internal and external forces that strained these ties when Hopis competed in national and international running events.

Communication in the Chaco World: A Consideration of Time and Labor Mobilization

“…Running historically provided a primary means for sending and receiving messages between individuals in different residential localities. Although the individual achievements of Native runners in Western-style competitions is well known, long-distance running is also a deeply valued cultural tradition of participation for group benefit rather than individual accomplishment or notoriety (Gilbert 2010; Martin 2020). In many Native American communities, young men were specially trained and entrusted with carrying messages; the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 is perhaps the most famous historical example (Liebmann and Preucel 2015).…”

Putting Indian Country on the Map: Indigenous Practices of Spatial Justice

“…Scholars mark Native running as a means to assert Native presence, survival over time, and as political statement. In “Hopi footraces and American marathons, 1912–1930”, Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert (2010) argues that success of runners from Hopi Pueblo in formal running competitions such as the Olympics is an assertion of Hopi agency, a challenge to stereotypes of Indigenous peoples, and an example of the ways in which Indigenous peoples navigate complexities of politics between the nation‐state and the Indigenous nation: “For the Hopi runners at Sherman, their accomplishments in US marathons reflected the beauty and complexities of Hopi culture, and their running victories compelled the athletes to consider the forces that pressured them and other Indigenous people to become modern” (Gilbert 2010). In “To bring honor to my village: Steve Gachupin and the community ceremony of Jemez running and the Pike’s Peak Marathon”, Brian Collier (2007) asserts that at Jemez Pueblo, running is “not about ‘winning’ but about representing their people”.…”