 |
| The Great Wahoo Polka – 1863. |
 |
| The Makio - 1906 (Ohio State University Fraternity Yearbook), Columbus, Ohio, 1906, page 12. |
In the opening sequence of Paul
Thomas Anderson’s film, Magnolia,
the narrator recites a series of bizarre coincidences in which seemingly
unrelated events intersect in apparently random, unexpected, almost
unbelievable ways. In retrospect,
however, each coincidence seems preordained.
The narrator
refuses to accept the apparent coincidences as just “one of those things”:
And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is
not just "something that happened."
This cannot be "one of those things." This, please, cannot be that.
Similarly, the
history of the Cleveland baseball’s “Indians” nickname and “Chief Wahoo” logo
is laced with uncanny coincidences too bizarre to believe; a whole can of worms
tied together in one continuous thread.
In 1915,
Cleveland’s National League baseball team selected a new nickname – the “Indians”
– in honor, they say, of a former star player, Louis Sockalexis, who in 1897 was
the first Native-American to sign a major league contract.
And yet
newspapers referred to the Spiders as “Tebeau’s Indians” (after their manager
Olliver Wendell Tebeau) as early as 1895 – two years BEFORE signing Sockalexis.
“This cannot
be “one of those things”. This, please,
cannot be that.”
In 1947, the
Cleveland Indians hired a young artist to design a new Indian head logo. After some revisions, the logo more-or-less reached
its current look by 1951. Sportswriters
dubbed the logo “Chief Wahoo.”
And yet, when
the Cleveland Plain Dealer published
cartoon images of Indians in 1915, along with some “new rooter’s lingo”
suitable for a team now called the “Indians,” the word “Wahoo” appeared twice. And, in 1915 rooters for the Ohio State
University football team had been yelling “Wahoo, Wahoo, Rip Zip Bazoo” for at
least twenty-five years.
This cannot
be “one of those things”. This, please,
cannot be that.
An article
in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1950 referred to New York Yankees pitcher
Allie Reynolds, a former Cleveland Indian and actual Creek Indian, as “Chief
Wahoo.”
And yet, a
Chippewa Indian catcher, who played games throughout Northern Ohio from 1906
through 1908, was widely known by (and frequently referred to himself as) the
one-name moniker – “Wahoo,” and sometimes “Chief Wahoo”.
And, if you
believe the old histories, Samuel Dickason, one of the early pioneers to settle
in Somerford Township, Madison County, Ohio, built his first cabin in about
1814 – “on Wahoo Glade , so called for Chief Wahoo, whose camp was not far
distant.”[i]
This cannot
be “one of those things”. This, please,
cannot be that.
In 1936, an
artist from Toledo, Ohio created the nationally syndicated comic strip, “The
Great Chief Wahoo.” The Chief Wahoo character
invented patent medicine sold by his partner, J. Mortimer Gusto.
And yet, decades
earlier, you could buy “Wa-Hoo Blood and Nerve Tonic” from the “Wahoo Remedy
Company” of Detroit, Michigan, “Wahoo Bitters” from the E. Dexter Loveridge
Company in Buffalo, New York, and some sort of “medicine” from the “Wahoo
Medicine Company” of Hamilton, Ohio. Detroit,
Hamilton and Buffalo are all nearly equidistant (by land) from Cleveland, Ohio.
This cannot be “one of those
things”. This, please, cannot be that.
And, perhaps
most unbelievably, the word “Wahoo” was associated with Cleveland’s National
League baseball team in 1893 – two years BEFORE they were first known as
“Tebeau’s Indians”:
Over half the teams in the
big League started off last week with new commanders. . . . Oliver Wahoo
Tabeau is the Cleveland captain . . . .
Hamilton Evening Journal (Hamilton,
Ohio), May 20, 1893, page 6 (citing Sporting
Life).
The
Narrator, Magnolia, New Line Cinema,
1999, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
Wahoo’s Roots in Cleveland
When sportswriters
called the Cleveland Indians’ new logo “Chief Wahoo” in the early 1950s, the
most likely pop-cultural influence on the name seems to have been the
well-known, nationally syndicated comic strip “Chief Wahoo,” which had recently
finished a twelve year run (1936-1947). The
roots of the name of the comic strip character can be traced in a straight line
(with a few detours) to Native-American and Early-American natural medicine
practices of an earlier century.
Early
American settlers learned the medicinal value of the Wahoo root from Native
Americans. By the 1860s, technological
advances made it possible for entrepreneurs to manufacture, bottle and sell
“patent medicines” and other types of “snake oil” on an industrial scale. In a nod to the origin of the medicinal
practices, many such products were marketed using Indian imagery on the labels,
and sold by “snake oil salesmen” in travelling medicine shows. A common feature of the medicine show was a
character called a “medicine show Indian”:
A band of stockyard
cowboys and medicine show Indians have been
engaged to play a prominent part in the great Fourth of July daylight parade.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), July
3, 1900, page 3.
 |
| A “patent medicine show Indian Chief” near Cincinnati, Ohio – 1920s or 1930s.[ii] |
The bark of
the root of the Wahoo tree was popular ingredient (or purported ingredient) in
“patent medicines.” Numerous patent medicine
companies used “Wahoo” in their company names and/or sold products with “Wahoo”
in the name. The Native-American origin
and marketing of Wahoo-based medicines may have created the association between
Indians and the name, “Wahoo.”
The business
of making and selling Wahoo-based medicines seems to have been based in and
around Western New York, Ohio and Michigan.
The word or name “Wahoo” may therefore have been even more familiar to
people in places in and around the Southern and Eastern Great Lakes; places like
Cleveland and Toledo, Ohio.
 |
| Zanesville Signal (Zanesville, Ohio), March 24, 1938, page 6. |
A minor-league
professional catcher widely known as “Wahoo” picked up his nickname while
playing for the Carlisle Indian school in Western Pennsylvania. “Wahoo” played for three seasons in towns throughout
Western Pennsylvania, Northern Ohio and Southeastern Michigan.
 |
| “Wahoo” – Cincinnati Enquirer, April 29, 1906, page 33. |
Elmer
Woggon, the artist who created the “Chief Wahoo” comic strip, was born and
raised in Toledo, Ohio, and spent his entire life there. Woggon was a young boy of nine to twelve
years old when “Wahoo” played baseball throughout the region. He would also have been generally familiar with
medicine show-style marketing of patent medicines, including many “Wahoo”
medicines, manufactured and sold throughout the region.
 |
| Pittsburgh Press, November 16, 1936, page 1. |
Elmer Woggon
may have been even more familiar with Toledo’s own “Wa-Hoo Bitters,” manufactured
and sold by the Old Indian Medicine Company of Toledo:
 |
| C. K. Wilson's Original Compound Wa-Hoo Bitters, Peachridgeglass.com |
How and why
Oliver Wendell Thebeau was called Oliver “Wahoo” Tebeau in 1893 is a bit more of
a mystery.
But it did
happen, and it happened in Ohio, where Wahoo medicines had been made and sold
for several decades, and where the official cheer of the state’s largest
university included the phrase, “Wahoo! Wahoo! Rip-Zip, Bazoo!”
 |
| The Oberlin Review (Oberlin, Ohio), Volume 17, Number 34, June 3, 1890, page 491. |
While it is
difficult to sort out the influence any particular one of these various threads may
have had on the eventual naming of the Cleveland Indians’ logo, any of them,
alone or in combination, may have played some role. Whether or not any of this influences your
opinion on the continued propriety of keeping the logo or the name is another
question.
You be the
judge.
The Battle of Wahoo Swamp
In 1836, during
the Second Seminole War, US Army Captain David Moniac was killed in the Battle
of Wahoo Swamp in Sumter County, Florida.
Captain Moniac was a Creek Indian and graduate of the United States
Military Academy at West Point. He was
the first Native-American to graduate from the school, and the then new state
of Alabama’s first cadet to be sent to West Point.
There is no
obvious connection between the Battle of Wahoo Swamp and later Wahoo medicines,
but it appears to have been the first time that an event of national prominence
created an association between the word, “Wahoo” and American-Indians.
If Florida’s
Wahoo Swamp was named after a tree, it would likely have been named for the Ulmus Alata, more commonly known as the winged elm or wahoo,
found in the Southeastern United States from Missouri to Texas and across to
North Carolina to Florida.
The Wahoo
root that became so popular in Ohio is from a different species.
Wahoo Root
 |
| Euonymus atropurpureus (eastern wahoo, burning bush, bitter-ash) |
Early
American settlers learned the medicinal value of the Wahoo tree from Native
Americans:
Sir, I invite you to a
thorough examination of the virtues of the Wahoo tree
I saw mentioned in the Recorder. . . . I obtained, thirteen years ago, and
fifteen hundred miles northeast of this, a knowledge of its use from a tribe of
Indians, together with their mode of steaming and system of medicine . . . .
Thompsonian Recorder (Columbus, Ohio),
Volume 5, Number 15, April 22, 1837, page 234.
The wahoo is a beautiful and ornamental shrub, attaining
from six to twelve feet in height, and may be found throughout the Northern and
Middle, and perhaps over the whole of the United States. . . .
The taste of the bark of the root is a pleasant bitter, slightly
pungent. It possesses a faint odor. Both odor and taste much resemble that of
Ipecacuanha. . . . Water and alcohol extract its virtues. . . .
When this substance was
first known as a remedy, it is impossible at this time to determine. It has, however, long enjoyed a reputation as
a valuable expectorant in pulmonary diseases. . . .
As a Tonic, it enters
largely into the various popular compounds, known as bitters, and as such, used
in various conditions of the system; such for example, as rheumatism, indigestion,
want of appetite, &c., and is extensively used during convalescence from
autumnal intermittents.
“An Essay on
the Therapeutic Virtues of the Euonymus Atropurpureus, or Wahoo,” Illinois and Indiana Medical and Surgical
Journal, Volume 1, Number 1, April 1846, page 16.
Etymonline.com
credits the name of the Northeastern “Wahoo” to the “Dakota (Siouan) wahu, from wa- “arrow” + -hu
“wood.” It credits the name of the
Southeastern “Wahoo” to “Muskogee vhahwv.” Given the early use of the word in the
Northeastern United States, however, it is possible that the word “Wahoo” (or
something like it) may have been used in other Native-American languages and
dialects, as well.
Wahoo Medicines
 |
| The Evening Argus (Rock Island, Illinois), June 23, 1865, page 3. |
Loveridge’s
Wahoo Bitters. – Among the most healthful of tonics, the most
invigorating of stimulants, and the most efficacious of anti-dyspeptics, are
the Wahoo Bitters, manufactured by E. Dexter Loveridge, of Buffalo. They are entirely vegetable, being composed
of some twenty different roots and
barks; among which the chief is the Wahoo bark,
widely known as an excellent tonic and alterative. The spirits used to preserve the bitters are pure rye whisky . . . .
Cleveland Morning Leader (Cleveland,
Ohio), July 13, 1864, page 4.
One of the early,
commercially successful “Wahoo” medicinal drinks was “Wahoo Bitters,”
manufactured and sold by E. Dexter Loveridge of Buffalo, New York. The “Great Indian Beverage” was marketed
using Native-American imagery in ad-copy and artwork.
The “The
Great Wahoo Polka” (1863) was dedicated “To E. Dexter Loveridge Esq., Buffalo,
N. Y.”:
Loveridge’s
“Wahoo Bitters” were sold from as early as 1864 and as late as 1870.[iii]
Loveridge’s
was not the only “Wahoo” bitter on the
market:
Wahoo! –
Eating much of the many vegetables and fruit which now flood the market is a
great instigator of biliousness, people should provide themselves a remedy
against such disagreeable attacks, and none better can be obtained than Pinkerton’s Wahoo and Calisaya Bitters which are
becoming all the rage just now.
The Daily Journal (Ogdensburgh, New
York), September 15, 1864, page 3.
The exclamation point near the beginning of this notice
suggests that the word, “wahoo,” already had the alternate sense of an
enthusiastic yell, like “yahoo” or “yee haw.”
Jacob
Pinkerton manufactured Pinkerton’s Wahoo and Calisaya Bitters in Syracuse, New
York.[iv]
 |
| Shepard’s Wahoo Bitters – 1880. See PeachridgeGlass.com. |
Dr.
Shepard’s “Wahoo Bitters” company was located in Grand Rapids, Michigan as
early as 1880. [v]
Beginning in
about 1889, Johathon Primley of Elkhart, Indiana went into business with Alfred
Jones of Grand Rapids, Michigan manufacturing Jones & Primley’s Iron and
Wahoo Tonic.[vi]
A “Wahoo
medicine company” was located in Hamilton, Ohio in 1898.[vii]
 |
| Yale Expositor (Yale, Michigan), November 7, 1902, page 7. |
The “Wa-Hoo
Remedy Company” was headquartered in Detroit, Michigan as early as 1902.[viii]
and had
offices in Sandusky, Ohio in 1901.[ix]
C. K.
Wilson’s Old Indian Medicine Company manufactured and sold “Wahoo Bitters” and
other remedies in Toledo, Ohio from about 1910 and into the 1940s.[x]
 |
| Old Indian Medicine Company, Toledo, Ohio (PeachridgeGlass.com). |
 |
| C. K. Wilson, Toledo, Ohio – 1930s (Note the NRA logo) (PeachridgeGlass.com) |
Other
“patent medicines” sold under Native-American names and imagery included, Dr.
Wonser’s Indian Root Bitters, Old Sachem Bitters andWigwam Tonic, Objibway
Bitters and the Kickapoo
Indian Medicine Company.
Baseball “Wahoos”
Oliver “Wahoo” Tebeau
In 1893, Sporting Life magazine listed the seven
new managers of the twelve National League teams; among them was “Oliver Wahoo
Tebeau” of the Cleveland Spiders:
Over half the teams in the
big League started off last week with new commanders. . . . Oliver Wahoo
Tabeau is the Cleveland captain . . . .
Hamilton Evening Journal (Hamilton,
Ohio), May 20, 1893, page 6 (citing Sporting
Life).
Two years
later, the team was called (on occasion) “Tebeau’s Indians”:
The Orioles have played
good, steady ball, and as their pitchers were in good shape until the shank of
the season, they have gained the honor, though not without having a close
finish with “Patsy” Tebeau’s Indians.
The Tennessean (Nashville, Tennessee),
September 30, 1895, page 6.
Two years
after that, the Cleveland Spiders signed Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscott Indian
from Maine who was believed to be the first Native-American in the major
leagues:
New York, March 12. – . . . “In
the future,” said Mr. Robinson, “the Clevelands will be
known as Tebeau’s Indians. For
the life of me I do not see how they were ever called the ‘Spiders,’ for
certain it is they never crept.”
The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer (West
Virginia), March 13, 1897, page 3.
How and why
Tebeau, whose real middle name was Wendell, was called “Oliver Wahoo Tebeau” in
1893 is a complete mystery. Was it
because he liked to yell “Wahoo” to encourage his players during games? Was it because he liked drinking “Wahoo
Bitters”?
And, how and
why his team became known as “Tebeau’s Indians” even before they signed
Sockalexis in 1897 is also a complete mystery.
Did his nickname “Wahoo” suggest the association with Native-Americans,
and his team tagged “Indians” as a result?
Was he, as the manager – or chief, of the team considered “Chief Wahoo”
long before the team was called the Indians?
I do not
know. But there seem to be several
explanations available, any one of which alone, or in combination, might have
triggered the names.
Charles “Wahoo” Guyon
Charles
Guyon was a Chippewa Indian from White Earth, Minnesota who attended the
Haskell Indian School in Kansas from about 1900 to 1904, and enrolled at
Carlisle, in Pennsylvania, in the fall of 1905 at the age of 19. In 1900, at the age of 15, he played for
the Haskell football team that beat Kansas State and Missouri.
In 1901, he
reportedly ran away from school and went home to Minnesota. Whatever else he was up to Minnesota, he was
slated to return to the team for the Haskell-Minnesota game in November 1901,
but ran into trouble of his own making.
Guyon showed up at the University of Minnesota game, where he worked as
a ticket taker but did not play in the game.
A post office agent recognized him and reported him to Federal
authorities. He returned with the team
to Kansas and played for Haskell in a game against the University of Kansas the
following week. He was arrested a few
days later.
In the weeks
leading up to the Minnesota game, Guyon purchased two postal money orders, one
for $6.00 and one for $8.00. He added an
extra zero to each one and cashed them for $60.00 and $80.00, respectively. An investigation into one of the checks
identified two postal agents as prime suspects.
But when a second check showed up, payable to Charles Guyon, the focus
of the investigation shifted. The agent
who sold the money orders to Guyon just happened to go to the game in Minnesota
and recognized Guyon. The gig was up.
He seems to
have turned his life around after that. He
was captain of the Haskell football team in 1904 when they beat Washburn
14-0. A local newspaper depicted the Washburn "Sons of Ichabod" making
their “last stand” against the Indians:
In 1905, at
the age of 19, he enrolled at Carlisle University where he became a multi-sport
star and unofficially changed his name to “Wahoo.”
“Wahoo”
played only one year at Carlisle (he became ineligible based on the number of
years he played at Haskell), but did well enough to be named to at least one
“All-Eastern” team:
In 1910,
just before Jim Thorpe set the world on fire, The Carlisle Arrow, the school’s weekly newspaper, remembered him as,
“Charles M. Wahoo, a Chippewa Indian, former Carlisle student, and one of the
greatest all-around athletes . . . .”[xi]
“Wahoo” was
also known for his wit. In 1906, his
anecdote about the value of form in athletics was picked up and reprinted in
newspapers from New York to San Francisco:
 |
| Adair County News (Columbia, Kentucky), July 4, 1906, page 6, part 2. |
“Wahoo”
started the 1906 baseball season playing with Carlisle, but signed a minor
league contract with the Washington Senators (Washington, Pennsylvania) of
the Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland League (P. O. M. League) in mid-season. After two seasons with Washington, he spent
one season with Canton of the Ohio League.
Press
accounts of his game generally referred to him by the single name, “Wahoo,” or
“Chief Wahoo” on a few occasions.
He appears
to have moved to New York City following the 1908 season, where he occasionally
played professional or semi-professional baseball for the New York Seventh
Regiment team. In New York, he also
started refereeing big-time college football games and took a job as a salesman
with the Spalding sporting goods company.
Spalding
promoted him and moved him to Atlanta, Georgia in 1911, where they gave him
responsibility for the Southeast region.
In Georgia, Guyon continued refereeing big-time college football games and
hooked up with Coach Heisman (THE “Heisman”) at Georgia Tech, where he became an assistant coach for several years.
Charles’ little
brother, Joe Guyon Sr., played for Georgia Tech while Charles coached there. Joe Napoleon “Big Chief”
Guyon” played for the Canton Bulldogs in 1919 and played for seven seasons in
the NFL, where he usually shared backfield duties with his old Carlisle
teammate Jim Thorpe. The two helped the
New York Giants win the NFL Championship in 1927. Joe was inducted into the Pro Football Hall
of Fame in 1966. A recollection
published years later suggested the Charles Guyon also played professional
football in Massillon,
Ohio, which had a professional football team when Charles played minor league baseball in Ohio, but I have been unable to confirm it from
contemporary accounts.
In about
1920, Charles “Wahoo” Guyon moved from Georgia to Washington DC, where he took
a job at Eastern High School teaching typing and coaching football, basketball and baseball. His new students loved him:
 |
| The Washington Times (Washington DC), February 24, 1921, page 15. |
And he must have loved them. He stayed at the school for at least 25 years.
After moving
to DC, he continued refereeing for college and professional football
games. He refereed numerous games for
the United States Naval Academy, and in 1921 refereed a game between the Canton
Bulldogs and Washington DC's NFL team (who were not yet known as the
Redskins).
Charles
Guyon's nephew, Joe Guyon Jr., continued in his forebears' football tradition. He helped
Catholic University of Washington DC cap off a successful 1939 season with a trip to
the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas.
Reports
leading up to the game suggest that the younger Guyon enjoyed playing-up his
Native-American heritage, and was even called “Wahoo” on occasion:
Joe Guyon, C. U. left halfback, will be renewing old
friendships when he goes to El Paso.
Joe, a full-blooded Chippewa Indian, is the son of Joe Guyon, Sr.,
Carlisle Indian star who played with Jim Thorpe. The elder Guyon is now in Arizona, coaching
an Indian school and may come to El Paso to see his offspring play. Young Joe plans to take his tribal feathers
along on the trip, just to show the Southwesterners that the effete East can
whoop it up a bit.
If he’s coaxed hard enough, Joe will give his famous Indian
dance that has become a tradition at Catholic University. Only on rare occasions has “Wahoo” Guyon danced the “Dance of Victory” and then
only when the game has been important enough Joe says the Sun Bowl game calls
for a special demonstration and if the Cardinals are fortunate enough to win on
New Year’s Day, the handsome Indian will strut his stuff with all the
trimmings.
El Paso Herald-Post (Texas), December
19, 1939, page 8.
Sadly, the
game ended in a scoreless tie, so Joe Jr. had no occasion to do the “Victory
Dance.”
 |
| Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) August 13, 1945, page 9. |
It is not
clear how or why Charles Guyon picked up the “Wahoo” nickname in the first
place. Perhaps he borrowed the name from
the popular “Wahoo” medicines, based on their close association with
Native-Americans. But he played at a
school full of Indians and on teams full of Indians, so that does not answer
why he, of all of the players, picked up the name.
Perhaps he
liked to yell “Wahoo” when he played, to encourage himself or others.
Perhaps it
was a known Indian name that he liked.
He was not the only person to study at Carlisle who had the name:
Joseph Twin, a Winnebago
and a former student at the Carlisle Indian School, has eloped with pretty Lystia Wahoo, a maiden of the Cherokee tribe.
The Evening World (New York), December 3,
1908, page 3.
The name
does not seem to have been foisted on him against his wishes. He proudly signed his name as “Wahoo” in
correspondence with Carlisle years after leaving the school.
Or, perhaps
Guyon, who was considered a better hitter than a catcher, picked up the name in
emulation of “Wahoo” Sam
Crawford, the 9th best major league batter ever (under the “grey
ink test”), who finished the season at or near the top of the American League
in home-runs, triples, slugging percentage and number of bases reached in many
seasons over a nineteen-year career, beginning in 1899.
“Wahoo” Sam Crawford
“Wahoo” Sam
Crawford played for the Cincinnati Reds (1899-1902) and the Detroit Tigers
(1903-1917) during a nineteen-year career in the major leagues. Crawford came by his nickname naturally – he
was born and raised in Wahoo, Nebraska, which, in turn, was named for the
plant.[xii]
Crawford
played for Wahoo’s town-team as early as 1894.[xiii]
He was such a good player that he had his
own team by 1897:
 |
| Omaha Daily Bee, August 10, 1897, page 2. |
With a hometown
team named for him in Nebraska, perhaps it was no shock that he took his
hometown’s name in the major leagues.
 |
| The Times (Washington DC), September 27, 1899, page 6. |
The “Wahoo” League
A more
obscure baseball “Wahoo” appeared in the Minneapolis
Journal in 1905. An anecdote about a
game purportedly played in the “Wahoo League” (wherever that was) featured a
loophole in the rules, a pneumatic pitching machine, and a cat that went to
sleep in the wrong place at the wrong time:
You can
probably fill in the rest of the story with a quick look at the accompanying
sketch. The story itself is of little
consequence, but it is interesting to see a one-off use of “Wahoo” in another baseball
context.
Wahoo Cartoons
1915
 |
| See the entire image at JoePosnanski.com, “Cleveland Indians: The name”. |
In January
1915, on the day after announcing the team’s name change, from Naps to Indians,
the Cleveland Plain Dealer published
a cartoon with several images of Native-Americans and baseball players in
Native-American dress. The cartoon
suggested that the name change might bring “new rooting lingo for the
fans.” The “new rooting lingo” included
the words “wahooooooo” and “wahoo.”
Looking back
on the cartoon from today’s perspective, the word “Wahoo” might be interpreted
as a specific, negative reference to Native-Americans. At the time, however, the word “Wahoo” was
not only associated with the Wahoo-root remedies learned from an earlier
generation of Indians, it was also an enthusiastic yell.
In a local
football game in Indiana in 1894, for example:
Gifford made the touchdown
and Parker kicked goal. Wabash again
promised to score, and the wahoo of the Crawfordsville
boys was shrieked in a high key, but the ball was again lost and Butler
started back.
The Indianapolis Journal, November 25,
1894, page 4.
Wahoo was
also a prominent and long-standing feature of cheers at Ohio State University
football games, and had been since at least as early as 1890.[xiv]
Sing along,
if you’d like:
 |
Songs of Ohio State University, New
York, Hinds, Hayden & Eldredge Inc, 1916.
|
Ohio State’s
student newspaper was briefly renamed “Wahoo” in 1892:
In the fall of 1892 the
name was changed to Wahoo, and as such it was published three times a week for
three months. The name Lantern was
resumed in 1893, and a new plan of publication was adopted.
Thomas C.
Mendenhall, History of the Ohio State
University, Volume II, Columbus, Ohio, The Ohio State University Press,
1926, page 188.
It is not
clear whether “Wahoo” had been a feature of cheers at the Cleveland Naps’
baseball games before 1915, but many of their fans would have presumably have
been familiar with OSU’s old school yell.
Perhaps the word “wahoo” was not the new part of the “new rooters’
lingo” referenced in the 1915 cartoon; perhaps the “new” words were the
non-standard gibberish words like “weck oo” and “zoea erk.”
It is also
unclear whether OSU originally used “Wahoo” in its sense as an enthusiastic
yell, or in reference to “Wahoo Bitters” (or the like). Or perhaps they just copied Dartmouth:
Dartmouth. Wah, who, wah! Wah, who, wah!
Do, didi, Dartmouth! Wah,
who, wah!
“American
College Cheers,” Miscellaneous Notes and
Queries, Volume 6, Number 6, June 1889, page 301.[xv]
The
pharmaceutical sense of “Wahoo” converged with the cheering sense of “Wahoo” at Kansas State University’s School of
Pharmacy (the other words are medicinal herbs as well):
Eriodictyon
glutinosum!
Chondodentron
tomentosum!
Wahoo! Buchu!
Pharmacy! Pharmacy!
K.
S. U.
Iola Register (Iola, Kansas), June 10,
1898, page 5.[xvi]
Although it
is possible that Cleveland’s “new rooters’ lingo” word, “Wahoo,” could have
been a specific reference to the medicine (and by extension to American-Indians),
it may well have had another connotations as well. And even if the “Wahoo” was intended as a
reference to medicine or Indians, it is not clear whether the word itself would
have been understood as “negative,” even if other aspects of the cartoon were
more clearly negative.
1932
Four years
before the syndicated comic strip, “Great Chief Wahoo,” debuted, and fifteen
years before the Cleveland Indians commissioned the logo that would come to be
known as “Chief Wahoo,” a cartoon Indian appeared on the front page of the
Cleveland Plain Dealer alongside the results of the day’s game:
 |
| Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 3, 1932, page 1 (see Brad Ricca, “The Secret History of Chief Wahoo,” Belt Magazine, June 19, 2014). |
Similar
cartoons ran on the front page with each day’s game results for thirty
years. It seems likely that the familiar
cartoon Indian image could easily have had some influence on the designer of
the Indians’ new logo in 1947.
1936
The publicity
campaign for the new “Chief Wahoo” comic strip introduced readers to the
strip’s characters a week or two before its debut:
 |
| Indianapolis Star, November 22, 1936, page 33. |
· Big Chief Wahoo learned wisdom from
the book of nature . . . The Great Gusto attended the University of Hard Knocks
and flunked the course in common sense.
· Big Chief Wahoo has money to throw at
the birds . . . The Great Gusto couldn’t buy breakfast for a canary.
· Big Chief Wahoo is the salt of the
earth . . . The Great Gusto is the salt seller.
 |
| Indianapolis Star, November 22, 1936, page 33. |
Chief Wahoo
was like a Native-American Jed Clampett.
He had money from striking oil in Teepee town, but instead of moving to Beverly Hills, he romanced his
sweetheart, “Minne-ha-cha,” in New York City. His partner Gusto was so impressed with Chief
Wahoo’s medicine formula that he bottled it and sold it as Ka-Zowie
Kure-All. Although Wahoo and other
Indians were frequently portrayed as naïve and backward throughout the series,
the white characters were more likely to be the butt of the strip’s jokes.
The broadly
comic version of the comic strip lasted about four years. The comic tone was replaced in 1940 with the
introduction of globetrotting photojournalist, Stever Roper, who took the
series in a more serious, soap opera-like direction.
In 1942, for
example, Chief Wahoo fought Nazis and sold War Bonds:
 |
| Pittsburgh Press, October 29, 1942, page 32. |
 |
| Washington Court House Record-Herald (Washington Court House, Ohio), May 14, 1942, page 5. |
Coincidentally,
Chief Wahoo was retired from the strip in 1947, the same year in which the
Cleveland Indians commissioned their new logo.
I guess the old saying is true, “when god closes the door on one cartoon
Indian, he opens the door for another” (that is an old saying, isn’t it?). Steve Roper, on
the other hand, survived in one form or another until 2003.
“Chief Wahoo’s”
creator, Elmer Woggon, was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1897 and remained there throughout
his life. He would have been a young boy
of about nine to twelve years old when Charles “Wahoo” Guyon played baseball
throughout Western Pennsylvania, Northern Ohio and Southern Michigan during the
1906-1908 seasons. He would also have
been generally familiar with various “Wahoo” medicines manufactured and sold
throughout the lower Great Lakes during the period.
Elmer Woggon may have been even more
intimately familiar with Toledo's own “Wahoo Bitters”, manufactured by the Old Indian
Medicine Company of Toledo, Ohio beginning in about 1910 and into the
1940s. It seems plausible (if not
likely) that Toledo’s “Wahoo Bitters” were the primary influence when Toledo Native, Woggon, named an American-Indian character who invented his own
patent medicine “Chief Wahoo”.
 |
| “C. K. Wilson’s Original Compound Wa-Hoo Bitters,” PeachridgeGlass.com. |
1947
In1947,
Cleveland Indians’ owner, Bill Veeck, hired Walter Goldbach, 17, to design a
new logo for the team. The logo was
revised in 1951, taking on (more or less) its current form. The earliest known reference to the logo as
“Chief Wahoo” is reportedly from 1952.
For a comprehensive survey of the history of the logo, and earlier
cartoon imagery in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Elmer Woggon’s comic strip,
see Brad Ricca’s article, “The Secret History of
Chief Wahoo” (Belt Magazine, June 19, 2014).
Ricca’s
article also points to a few instances of the Plain Dealer referring to a former Cleveland Indian’s pitcher (and
actual Creek Indian) named Allie Reynolds as “Chief Wahoo” in the early
1950s. But since those references came just
a few years after Woggon’s “Chief Wahoo” strip finished its long run, it seems more likely
(to me at least) that the comic strip would have been the primary influence on
both the name of the logo and the paper’s referring to the pitcher as “Chief
Wahoo.” It seems less likely that the
infrequent references to the pitcher would have specifically influenced the name of the
logo – but you never know.
The Cleveland Indians’ name and logo have been roundly criticized as
clearly racist. Brad Ricca’s article on “The Secret History of
Chief Wahoo” and Peter Pattakos’s article, The
Curse of Chief Wahoo, are we paying the price for embracing America’s last
acceptable racist symbol?, Cleveland
Scene (Online), April 25, 2012, lay out the position passionately with
comprehensive documentation.
Joe
Posnanski strikes a somewhat more conciliatory tone (at least with respect to
the name of the team) in his article, “Cleveland Indians: The Name, JoePosnanski.com”. He closed his article saying:
I don’t believe the Indians were
named to honor Louis Sockalexis, not exactly.
But I do believe the Indians name, as long as it exists, could honor
him. That choice is ours.
Perhaps the same may be said about “Chief Wahoo”.
I wonder what Oliver Wahoo Tebeau or Charles “Wahoo” Guyon would have
had to say about it.
[i]
Chester Bryan, History of Madison County,
Ohio, Indianapolis, 1915, page 706.
[ii] Benjamin
and Eleanor Klein, The Ohio River
Handbook and Picture Album, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1950, page Z-37 (undated
photograph by Mr. Lemen; other photographs in the group were dated between 1925
and 1940).
[iii]
For more information about Loveridge’s Wahoo Bitters, see, Ferdinand
Meyer V, “The Great Indian Beverage XXX E. Dexter Loveridge Wahoo Bitters,” October 19, 2012, Peachridge Glass.com.
[iv][iv]
For more information about Pinkerton and other “Bitters” companies, see Ferdinand
Meyer V, “Jacob Pinkerton’s Wahoo & Calisaya Bitters,” PeachridgeGlass.com.
[vii] The Journal News (Hamilton, Ohio, March
28, 1898, page 4, column 1.
[viii]
Michigan State Gazetteer and Business
Directory, 1903-1904, Detroit, R. L. Polk & Co., page 742.
[ix]
Benjamin F. Prince, Editor, The
Centennial Celebration of Springfield, Ohio, Springfield, Ohio, Springfield
Publishing Co., 1901, page 130.
[xi] The Carlisle Arrow, Volume 7, Number 6,
October 14, 1910.
[xiii]
Omaha Daily Bee, September 01, 1894,
Page 2.
[xiv]
The Oberlin Review (Oberlin, Ohio),
Volume 17, Number 34, June 3, 1890, page 491.
[xv]
With the growth of intercollegiate American football after 1869, American
Colleges entered into a sort-of “arms race” to create the most distinctive and
ridiculous sounding cheers. Princeton
developed the first cheer, organically, in response to fireworks shows in
celebration of the completion of the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable in 1851.
Rinceton’s “sis, boom, bah!” cheer is now considered the proto-typical sports
cheer. The sound emulates the sound of
the launch, explosion and reaction to fireworks. See my earlier piece, The
Explosive History of Sis! Boom! Bah!
[xvi]
Nearly the same cheer (with Buchu and Wahoo transposed) appeared three years
earlier in the Topeka State Journal
(Kansas), June 17, 1895, page 4.
Update: This post updated March 16, 2020, to correctly identify the "P. O. M. League" as the "Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland League," not the "Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan League."
Update: This post updated March 16, 2020, to correctly identify the "P. O. M. League" as the "Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland League," not the "Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan League."
Keep it up!
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