What Carlisle also had was an athletic program that Pop Warner had built into something genuinely remarkable.

The Carlisle Indians competed against Harvard, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Army, and the other major universities of the era — and often won.

The athletic success served Pratt’s institutional goals in a specific way: it demonstrated, to the American public and to politicians who controlled the school’s funding, that Native Americans could compete successfully in a mainstream American arena.

The games were not simple sport.

They were arguments.