{"id":34634,"date":"2013-11-08T13:58:26","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T13:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=34634"},"modified":"2013-11-08T13:58:26","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T13:58:26","slug":"the-legend-of-lone-star-dietz-redskins-namesake-coach-%e2%80%94-and-possible-impostor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=34634","title":{"rendered":"The legend of Lone Star Dietz: Redskins namesake, coach \u2014 and possible impostor?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The legend of Lone Star Dietz: Redskins namesake, coach \u2014 and possible impostor?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2013-11-06<\/p>\n

Richard Leiby<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Reading, Pa. \u2014 Here lies the celebrated Lone Star Dietz <\/a>\u2014 in a donated cemetery plot, aside a back road, under a drooping evergreen. A simple marker, paid for by friends, bears only one word that hints at his legend: \u201cCoach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, we have found him, the Washington Redskins\u2019<\/a> namesake. Dietz coached the inaugural Boston Redskins team 80 years ago, before it moved to Washington. He was a Sioux Indian, and the team was named in his honor, \u201cout of respect for Native American heritage and tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is what the team\u2019s attorneys have said, anyway, in court filings battling an effort by Native Americans to cancel the Redskins trademark as disparaging \u2014 a campaign more than two decades old. Now the objections to the name are reaching an unprecedented volume, including Tuesday\u2019s D.C. Council vote condemning the team name as \u201cracist and derogatory.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the midst of this criticism, team owner Dan Snyder<\/a> wrote a letter to season-ticket holders last month in which he mentioned the team\u2019s former Native American head coach and called the name \u201ca badge of honor.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what if Coach Lone Star Dietz wasn\u2019t an Indian?…<\/p>\n

…A half-century after his death, it seems that no one has decisively pinned down the heritage of William Henry \u201cLone Star\u201d Dietz. This makes the Redskins\u2019 flat-out assertions that the First Coach was an Indian even more problematic for some…<\/p>\n

…Dietz\u2019s claims about his Sioux origins were accepted and repeated for decades by researchers and credulous reporters.<\/p>\n

I was one of them. Ninety years after The Post first took note of Dietz and his artistry at the 1904 World\u2019s Fair, I wrote about him. \u201cHis father was German, his mother Sioux,\u201d I said in a story about how the Redskins got their name.<\/p>\n

At the time, my understanding of Dietz\u2019s heritage was based on the available scholarship and a number of interviews. Indians I talked to did not raise questions about his self-proclaimed Sioux<\/a> identity…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The legend of Lone Star Dietz: Redskins namesake, coach \u2014 and possible impostor? The Washington Post 2013-11-06 Richard Leiby Reading, Pa. \u2014 Here lies the celebrated Lone Star Dietz \u2014 in a donated cemetery plot, aside a back road, under a drooping evergreen. A simple marker, paid for by friends, bears only one word that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,8,3015,20],"tags":[16313,16316,2875,2581,16317,16315,16314],"class_list":["post-34634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-native-americans","category-usa","tag-lone-star-dietz","tag-richard-leiby","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post","tag-washington-redskins","tag-william-h-dietz","tag-william-henry-dietz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}