They Stood Before Kings

When the 2011 149-day NBA lockout finally ended in December, millions watched a dazzling opener as (my team) the Miami Heat, prevailed over the Dallas Mavericks 105-94 (no "boos," please).

I also love the WNBA. But as phenomenal as these female basketball pros are, their games, played during the summer months, do not attract nearly the viewers that men's competitions do.

There was a time, though, when the novelty of female hoopsters drew big crowds to "basket ball," a sport invented by Dr. James Naismith in 1891. Young women embraced it big time and girls' squads sprang up virtually everywhere.

One specific team of multi-talented young women battled all the way from an obscure Montana school to the finals of the 1904 World's Fair Championship.

Rules could vary from town-to-town back then, and most girls played half-court. But to "wow" the crowds, the coach of the scrappy Montana team requested and received permission to play full-court—girls rules were too prissy.

When they walked sedately onto the court, ribbons on their long braids, in bloomer uniforms, they were the epitome of turn-of-the-20th-Century "Victorian" young womanhood...until tip-off. Then all bets were off.

For the World's Fair Championship, the Montana team faced the tough, undefeated "big city" state champions, the St. Louis All-Stars in a best-of-three highly touted competitions.

Of itself, their advance to the finals was not the stuff of legends. Except that the Montana girls, also undefeated, were Native Americans from the off-reservation Fort Shaw Indian Boarding School. "Basket ball" was introduced there by former student, Josephine Langley, who had mastered the game and returned to Fort Shaw as physical culture teacher.

There were ten players: Flora Lucero, Rose LaRose, Genevieve Healy, Belle Johnson (Captain), Gennie Butch, "tiny" Emma Sansaver, Nettie Wirth, Katie Snell, "big" Minnie Burton and Sarah Mitchell.

The moment had come. Game One for the championship. Great crowds gathered. Fort Shaw huddled:  "Bum-a-ling, bum-a ling, bow-wow, wow; ching-a-ling, ching-a-ling, chow, chow, chow; bum-a-ling, ching-a-ling, who are we? Fort Shaw, Fort Shaw, rah, rah, rah!"...

Tip off...and then the final score: the All Stars, a White team, suffered a crushing 24-2 loss. Desperate to salvage his squad's reputation, their coach requested—and was granted—several weeks delay to better prepare for the Indian girls' blistering attack.

Game Two. The All Stars made an aggressive comeback. But Fort Shaw swept the competition 17-6 to claim the 1904 World's Fair World Championship.

Fort Shaw itself was originally built to protect Anglo settlers from Indian attacks, but when the U.S. Government determined that such threats no longer existed, it was converted into a boarding school for 35 girls and boys whose school at the Fort Peck agency had burned down.

Under the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Boarding Schools were created to "Americanize" and assimilate Native youngsters into Euro culture. Such required the suppression of all things Indian: language, clothing, cultural practices. Some dealt harshly with students for minor infractions. Some students would not see their families again for many years. Among males, there was a high rate of runaways.

Fort Shaw's new superintendent, Fred C. Campbell, a tall, red-haired Scotsman, knew he could not change boarding school mandates, so he found inventive ways to work within the system to instill pride within his Native students as he strove to alter the concept of Indians as "uneducated savages."

Under his tenure, school enrollment swelled to over 300 students. And while he encouraged boy's athletics, at the pinnacle of their two-year reign, it was the Fort Shaw girls who became invincible juggernauts crushing all in their path--even college teams. They played Rez ball* long before the term was invented!

In cooperation with the government's desire to demonstrate the success of the schools, the director of the Model Indian School, erected on the World's Fair grounds, invited the Fort Shaw team along with other aboriginal students from across the country to move there as part of the World's Fair "anthropological exhibit."

For some five months, displayed in booths before thousands of spectators to contrast the old ways with the modern, traditional Indians demonstrated ancient arts. Others, wearing Euro styles, largely viewed as curiosities and not "real Indians," plied trades designed to make them good servants.

The Fort Shaw team, sometimes clad in Nativedress, demonstrated academic, artistic and athletic excellence through musical concerts, recitations, gymnastics—and the kind of basketball that earned them the silver Championship Trophy.

But who, exactly, were these girls, and what did they endure to achieve such a title?

Ages 15-19, from seven tribes across Idaho and Montana, long before the age of "political correctness," their race and ethnicities frequently fueled sensationalism that boosted game attendance: newspapers hyped them as "dusky maidens"; described them by blood quantum—full-bloods, half-breeds. At least one headline pitted White Girls Against Reds.

Overall, local Whites cheered the team; and, also mentally tough, Fort Shaw answered the occasional insults and racial epithets with continued excellence on the basketball court.

Despite such victories, Indian boarding schools themselves had their critics. Some regarded them as imperialistic travesties that created the illusion of success while they separated children from their families and fostered hostility toward Native cultures that promoted eventual eradication of them.

The Fort Shaw team soon went their separate ways to marry and live out their post-Championship lives in anonymity. Some, with cheering crowds still echoing in their ears, faced discrimination, as, once out of uniform, they quickly became "just another Indian." Some struggled with issues of identity to the extent of denying any Indian ancestry.

All weighed, however, through their travels, participation in World's Fair activities and playing world-class basketball, they also achieved a broader perspective that otherwise they would not have attained.

Rediscovered a century later, they are now legends in both worlds, immortalized in Full-Court Quest; the movie, They Played for the World; and in May 2004, through a monument at the entrance of the present-day Fort Shaw Elementary School.

Proverbs 22:29 states: "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings."

And while they did not appear before royalty in a literal sense in the world of 1904, standing on an international platform for a moment all too brief, in spirit, the Fort Shaw Indian Boarding School World Champions did exactly that.

*Rez ball: Native American slang for rough-and-tumble basketball popular among reservation youngsters

Resources: Boswell, Evelyn, MSU News Service, Montana team more than performers at 1904 World's Fair; Cabe, Delia, World Beaters, Humanities magazine; Peavy, Linda, and Smith, Ursula, Full-Court Quest; Hoopedia; Wikipedia; Holy Bible, KJV.

K.B. Schaller, journalist, novelist and conference speaker, is author of Gray Rainbow Journey (National Best Books Award Winner, USA Book News) and Journey by the Sackcloth Moon (both OakTara). She lives in South Florida, where she is currently writing the third novel in the Journey series. http://www.kbschaller.com.