Chances are that football fans may be rooting for (or against) the team without really thinking about how odd of a name that is. Under Edward, the franchise became a juggernaut. In the 1940s, when the team was founded, the idea of expanding the league that far across the country was considered a very risky move. Meanwhile, the first game of American football was played in 1869 in New Jersey, and even then it didnt really look like football, more like soccer mixed with rugby. And this campaign of exploitation and genocide against the 150,000 people who had originally lived in what's nowCalifornia was hardly accidental. But those aggressive gold miners would give their nickname to a football team one hundred years later. The name was in place, the team was in town, and logos needed to be made. NFL Week 4 recap: From Tottenham to Tom Brady. After James W. Marshall, whod been overseeing the sawmills construction, found the gold nuggets he and his boss, John Sutter, attempted to keep the discovery a secret. Because roughly 80% of the U.S. population was white in the 1960s, it's safe. America only achieved possession of it through imperialism in part by having white settlers colonize the land and eventually declare that a section of it should be "independent" of Mexico. And not anybody in an American Indian community can wear an eagle feather headdress. Still, there are a lot of them. However, in those days, it could take as long as a year for people to get from the major population hubs on the East Coast to California. In early February, the Washington football team announced their new name, the Washington Commanders. DeBartolo Jr. gave up his ownership stake in 2000, transferring it to his sister Denise. Come game time, an expected global audience of 100 million people will tune in to see the 49ers take on the Chiefs. The team, which started out as part of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC), a rival to the National Football League (NFL), played its first regular-season game in September 1946. But first, Taylor had to bring civil order to California, and that meant statehood. In January 1848, a group of Maidu Indians were helping James W. Marshall construct a sawmill on the property of the Swiss settler John Sutter. If you liked this post, you might also enjoy this: Top 10 Crazy Moments in NFL History. After settling a QB controversy between Alex Smith and Colin Kaepernick, the 49ers played their way into Super Bowl XLVII. Published January 31, 2013 When the California Gold Rush began in 1848, American football didn't exist. The 49ers went west with hearts full of greed for the riches of the land. Hes often portrayed as a grizzled prospector sporting a bushy beard, a floppy felt hat, a carefree smile, and a pickax on his shoulder. So, if your football festivities seem to be lagging on Super Bowl Sunday, feel free to whip out some of these facts and launch into a detailed conversation about bread. Indeed, the Gold Rush was made possible by Native Americans, including the Mewuk and Maiduwho built Sutter's Fort in what's now Sacramento. Thats not hyperbole. Who Is Colin Kaepernick? This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. What happened next would become one of the lowest moments of shameless treachery in the history of the U.S. Senate. This is a team that is named after a Native American position of authority, features an arrowhead on their helmets andplays at a facility called Arrowhead Stadium. The voided agreements would not see the light of day again until 1905. As one newspaper wrote at the time, "Whites are becoming impressed with the belief that it will be absolutely necessary to exterminate the savages before they can labor much longer in the mines with security. Sports have political meaning because we, as consumers of entertainment, have chosen for decades to idolize athletes, identify with teams and invest greater social significance in the games themselves. In 1985, the 49ers selected Jerry Rice out of Mississippi Valley State. I felt like the 49ers hierarchy left me.. Fun fact: In the 1950s, the San Francisco 49ers were the first to implement the shotgun formation into plays, a common method to give the quarterback extra time to make a throw. ", She added, "The Nisenan Maidu just happened to be right in the middle of this whole chaotic event. ", He added, "Let's go back to the scenario featuring African Americans. The main thrust of the story is that the United States armed local militias thanks to the second amendment and sent them out on raiding parties. While the teams philosophy has shifted (a little heres the team president talking about it like its some heritage-listed activity that must be preserved), the fans arent fully on board. Why is the Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier taking a break from the NFL for the 2023-24 season? Political symbolism in sports doesn't stop with the Olympics and the Jackie Robinson story. The 49ers did their part to kill off Indian chiefs and their tribes. Between 1849 and the late 1870s, the United States government in conjunction with the territory of California enacted laws to legally exterminate the Indigenous people of California. Even in that image above, from a Chicago Blackhawks game, shows a single fan in a sea of fans who are not in fake headdresses. After keeping a small portion for the Indians, the justice held the power to sell or grant the excess property to any chosen white man, who could, with the same magistrates permission, kidnap Indian children and adopt themor keep the youths as unpaid houseworkers and field hands until they reached the age of majority. "Our sacred sites, our cultural places and our water clean water, clean air have been threatened all through this administration by the cutbacks in the regulatory framework for various environmental laws, whether it's the Clean Water Act that just got narrowed just this last week, to what happened with Standing Rock, to Bears Ears," she said. We live in an age where the reality of Americas history with Indigenous people is easily accessible from the people living through the fallout of that history. With the Chiefs specifically, the damage caused is that it disrespects Native American images and customs in front of millions of people. The History And Traditions That Make Hanukkah Light Up, Examples Of Ableist Language You May Not Realize Youre Using, Winter 2023 New Words: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, Fall In Love With 14 Captivating Valentines Day Words, Rizz And 7 Other Slang Trends That Explain The Internet In 2023, Win With Qi And This List Of Our Best Scrabble Words, We Had ChatGPT Coin Nonsense PhrasesAnd Then We Defined Them, Surprise! He was elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a contributor in 2016. The California Gold Rush began in 1848 but it took a year for the word to get out, and soby the time 1849 rolled around, thousands of fortune hunters had arrived in Northern California to mine for gold. Fittingly, its deeply tied to the history of the San Francisco area. There were no taxes or land rights arguments. As a result, while gold technically was discovered in 1848, the Gold Rush didnt hit full swing until 1849. (A 49er is also a kind of Olympic-style racing dinghy, which would make for an equally rich team name. Thats not to say that everything is the worst. Things are changing in some regards. At a time when President Donald Trump has brought vilification of Mexico to a fevered pitch in the United States, it is important to recall that the future American state was originally owned by the Mexican government. He pointed to "the distance it takes to travel to polling locations, the distance it takes to travel to county seats to obtain voter IDs, the ability to use a tribal ID to vote, the lack of access to transportation, the lack of access to a residential address, when those are made requirements for voting." The teams mascot was a gold miner named Sourdough Sam (pictured above). The 49er represents brutal manifest destiny and wealth capture at the expense of an entire population. Pro Football Network strives to passionately deliver purposeful, captivating, and exceptional football content. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Stephen A. Douglas, the Illinois senator whose seat would later be challenged by Abraham Lincoln, proposed extinguishing Indian land ownership in the far West by establishing expansive plots of land where Indians may be permanently located and protected. (This proposal was the beginning of todays reservation system.) The renamed arrowhead chop. Whopping and chanting. The All-American Football League would end up dissolving and merging with rival the National Football League after the teams first season, along with teams like the Baltimore Colts and Cleveland Browns. When most people think of the real-life 49ers, they envision hardy American pioneers during the Gold Rush risking their lives in the hopethat they could carve out a little piece of the American dream for themselves. Origin and meaning, San Fran's defense shuts down Stafford and Rams. Its one thing for a population or group of sports fans to claim ignorance to all of this pre-2000. It is why people cared so much when a San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, used his platform to speak out against injustice, and why they are inspired by 49ers offensive assistant coach Katie Sowers, one of the few women to ever coach for an NFL team, the first openly LGBTQ coach and the first woman and openly LGBTQ coach to appear in a Super Bowl. Just like Warriors and Indians may not be offensive," Kevin Allis, the CEO of the National Congress of American Indians and a member of the Forest County Potawatomi Community, told Salon. Lets end by taking this out of the theoretical. Fake headdresses abound. The reality of the early gold-rush prospectors was not nearly as benevolent as the mascots wide smile may suggest. This version of the legend, Sourdough Sam, will be on full display in this years Super Bowl, when the San Francisco 49ers play the Kansas City Chiefs. Is she dating Chiefs Travis Kelce? There are history podcasts. Yet the same men and women who attempted to become wealthy off of the precious metals in the earth exploited, enslaved and even murdered the indigenous people in what's now the state of California in order to do so. The dont have to dead end. Copyright 2019-2023. A party of Maidu men retaliated by killing five of the miners, who then recruited a posse of 20 armed white men and invaded another nearby village. Jed York, the son of Denise and John, has been involved with the team after leaving his job as a financial analyst for Guggenheim Partners at their New York City offices. They would also have some of the most recognizable and acclaimed players ever to take the field during this period, like wide receiver Jerry Rice, quarterbacks Joe Montana and Steve Young, and cornerback Ronnie Lott. In one of the earliest conflicts, a group of white miners from Oregon barged into the nearby Maidu hamlet, beat and shot the men, and savagely assaulted a number of the women. Theres no way you could go wrong. I have seen it, and seeing all this, I cannot help them. "There's colleges and there's high schoolswhere it's a really big deal, because you're talking about young kids that are impressionable and are developing their thought process about life, their self-awareness, self-esteem, consciousness, all that developed in those years and when you have unfriendly, American Indian imagery and mascots, to the American Indian kids that go to those schoolsthere certainly is an impact that is not good," Allis said. Like O'Loughlin, he cited the "growing epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women across the country, across Indian country at large, and where we see these large disproportionate number of our native women and children in particular have gone missing and turned up deceased" and "the protection of native peoples' natural resources, their lands, their waters, their cultures and who they are as a people.". This slave trade lasted well into the 1870s with slave markets in San Francisco still functioning until they simply ran out of people to sell. Alas.). The area consisted of several hundred Americans; about 6,500 Californios (people of Spanish or Mexican descent); and roughly 150,000 Native Americans. Matt Maiocco of NBC Sports Bay Area noted the 49ers have a history of signing their core players to extensions, but it tends to take them longer than it might for another team.. Maiocco cited the . Merriam-Webster defines uppity as "putting on or marked by airs of superiority" and likens the word to arrogant and presumptuous behavior. Every day, get free NFL updates sent straight to your inbox! When the California Gold Rush began in 1848, American football didnt exist. A lot of the people who first came to the region would end up being known as 49ers as a result. To a 49er miner, an Indigenous woman or child was nothing more than a pick-ax when it broke, you simply had to buy a new one. Now you can watch the entire NBA season or your favorite teams on streaming. This explains the name, but theres a lot more to delve into when it comes to the overall history of the San Francisco 49ers team. The nation is coming to grips with that. The 49ers are not the only professional franchise the York family has shaped. The team, of course, is not alone in casting the old gold miners in a friendly light. Bickering over the nacho plate! Bezos, Fertitta. But, like the 49ers of the gold rush, team founder Tony Morabito saw opportunity where others saw uncertainty. The Cleveland Indians have walked back from Chief Wahoo. As the owner and co-chair of the 49ers, Marie Denise DeBartolo York presides at the head of the table. This slave trade lasted well into. With Jed York serving as president, the 49ers are once again on the cusp of greatness. The San Francisco 49ers name, which refers to the Gold Rush, is also problematic, said Schilling, a former 49ers fan himself. The otherpart of this was the larger trend in American conquest of Mexican land. The average American simply has no clue to the horrific nature of the actions taken by the United States and its citizens against Indigenous people from sea-to-shining-sea. Political reality demands it. But those aggressive gold miners would give their nickname to a football team one hundred years later. 1:30 PM EST, Sat February 1, 2020, A look inside the stadium hosting Super Bowl LIV. After the game . Names change all the time. What Do Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday, And Lent Mean? Land losses were near total. A few days later, they killed the hostages too. The old 49er has long been a beloved figure in the states lore. That levy produced its intended effect: an exodus of nonwhites from the mining region. Lea noted, with some chagrin, that there was violent opposition to [the California treaties] in the legislature of that State, but he nonetheless requested their adoption by the U.S. Senate. There was actually a write-in contest for local Kansas City denizens to name the team. They were the 49ers from the start. No other way to describe it. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. Suppose they painted a couple of small pigs black, placed Afro wigs on their heads, and then chased them around the football field at half time?". The influx of opportunists was a boon for Californias economy, and hastened its admittance into the union in 1850. Who is Zuri Hall? Campbell also expressed concern about a number of issues which impact Native American communities. As soon as he could, he escaped and with his family hid in the mountains." The 1849 Gold Rush and the Oregon Trail that fed it was an outright act of genocide. On Monday, 24-year-old Baker posted a . Nothing, ever, is set in stone. The 49ers is the nickname for those who flocked to northern California in 1849 hoping to take advantage of the gold rush. Then, you have names like the San Francisco 49ers. Such vagrant, as the law described the Indian, would be hired out for four months for the highest price that can be had.. A century after the Gold Rush, the 49ers were memorialized when San Franciscos first major league professional sports franchise, a football team, was named. Similarly,Muhammad Ali declaringhimself a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War and refusing to register for the draft became a flashpoint of both the anti-war and civil rights movements, but it was the regulatory bodies stripping him of his heavyweight title and licenses as a result that made his personal politics an issue within the sport. Olympic Valley in Lake Tahoe continues to shed racist slur, renames main thoroughfare. Congress created a new omnibus federal agencythe Department of the Interiorand transferred Indian affairs to its care from the War Department. All rights reserved. Get Morning Report and other email newsletters. To a 49er miner, an Indigenous woman or child was nothing more than a pick-ax when it broke, you simply had to buy a new one. "It is not just heartbreaking, but it's spiritually and emotionally harmful," O'Loughlin explained. So let me try to keep that promise in the headline and explain why both names should be replaced. While local white settlers awaited the territorys entry into the union, they pressed ahead with the formation of a state government. As April Moore from the Nisenan Maidu told PBS, "this gold strike brought thousands of people from every place known to man into our traditional territory. In San Francisco's 24-20 loss to the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday, safety Budda Baker tackled 49ers star George Kittle's and the tight end wound up leaving with a sprained left knee. By the mid-1850s, more than 300,000 people had poured into California. The white men of the Golden State exercised their homicidal liberty. Gidget Alikpala G_Alikpala. This influx of people was also a major reason why San Francisco and other Californian cities would end up becoming major population centers. And guess what? While the Kansas City Chiefs have in recent years taken steps to improve their relationship with Native American communities, they have not banned offensive regalia from their games, ended their problematic rituals or seriously considered changing their name. Americans (of all cultural backgrounds) are woefully uneducated or, worse, miseducated about anything pertaining to Indigenous history or our modern lives. All Rights Reserved. In 1848, at Sutters Mill, roughly 130 miles from what is now San Francisco, gold was discovered. Not for clicks. You have wifi. The San Francisco 49ers are trying to identify the fan who sent profanely racist messages to a player from a rival team in an effort to ban the person from games and events. From 1991-1998, the 49ers averaged a staggering 13 wins per season, further cementing their legacy in the pantheon of all-time dynasties in professional sports. In the 1940s, when the team was founded, the idea of expanding the league that far across the country was considered a very risky move. 49ers get high marks for facilities, player treatment in NFLPA survey, 49ers GM John Lynch talks Purdy surgery, Lance recovery, Garoppolo exit, Brady retirement, 49ers must survey NFLs quarterback landscape at scouting combine, Mike McGlinchey soon to strike it rich, if not from 49ers then as free agent, is the nickname for those who flocked to northern California in 1849, also a kind of Olympic-style racing dinghy, team founder Tony Morabito saw opportunity where others saw uncertainty, are registered as the San Francisco Forty Niners,, French prospectors were the first to bring the chewy, tangy sourdough recipe, Dear Abby: My wife said she doesn't like it, but it's part of my life. They murdered 12 tribe members and took eight hostages. Legendary San Francisco 49ers quarterback Steve Young plays in Super Bowl XXIX in 1995 in Miami. Since 2014, theyve been playing at Levis Stadium in Santa Clara, around 45 miles from San Francisco proper. Houston Colt .45s? To his credit, current California Governor Gavin Newsom recently took one of the first steps to acknowledge the facts of history by issuing a formal apology to the states Native American tribes. O'Loughlin also reflected on the fact that America's education system shortchanges Native American history, particularly in completely neglecting what has happened to indigenous communities in recent years. In fact, James Marshall and John Sutter, the two men linked with the start of one of the most pivotal events in California history, never got rich. Around this period of US history, the government reportedly armed local militiasto kill Native American men and seize women and childrento besold to miners and used as free labor. 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