Joe Pappio

Joseph Aloysious Pappio (October 1, 1902 – August 22, 1971) was an American professional football player who played eight seasons, both in the National Football League (NFL) for the 1923 Oorang Indians and for 1930 Chicago Cardinals as well as independent teams the Cincinnati Guardsmen, Hominy Indians, and Oklahoma Indians.

A member of the Ojibwe (Chippewa) nation of Native Americans, Pappio attended and played college football at the Haskell Institute from 1924 through 1926, helping to see the latter team to an undefeated 12–0–1 record.

Biography Early life

Joe Pappio was born October 1, 1902, in Sawyer, Minnesota. His parents were both part of the Fond du Lac band of the Ojibwe (Chippewa) nation of Native Americans. He grew up on an reservation in Minnesota, where he began to emerge as a gifted athlete.

Pappio as part of the undefeated 1926 Haskell Indians football team. In the fall of 1916, seeking to emulate his hero, Pappio enrolled at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. During the war he served aboard two gunboats — the USS Castine and the USS Nashville — before being honorably discharged after the end of the war in August 1919.

Football career

His hero Jim Thorpe was the player-coach of the Ohio-based Oorang Indians of the National Football League in 1923, a team composes solely of Native Americans, and needed an extra player at the end of the season. was tapped by the famous halfback to fill a late-season hole in the Indians' roster. a 19–0 victory over the Louisville Brecks, in which Pappio started at right end. It would be the club's final game played before the franchise folded and his only start in the NFL. a federally sponsored college for Native Americans, where he played for the school's highly regarded football team.

Joe Pappio in the 1928 uniform of the Cincinnati Guardsmen, a pro team sponsored by the Ohio National Guard.

The Haskell squad would become one of the most potent college teams in the country, opening the 1926 season with four consecutive shutout victories, quickly amassing 215 points in those initial games. For the year, the 1926 Haskell Indians squad would outscore its opponents 558 to 69 — an average score of 43–5 — with the only blemish coming in a 21–21 tie with Boston College. In his first game with the club, Pappio found himself facing off against a Portsmouth, Ohio team featuring his former coach and idol, Jim Thorpe. The two Native American stars starting at left halfback in front of 5,100 fans, reckoned to be the largest crowd ever to see a football game in Cincinnati. Despite Thorpe's excellent day throwing the football, the hometown Guardsmen emerged victorious by a score of 19 to 12.

He signed a contract to play football in 1929 for the Hominy Indians, an independent club based in Hominy, Oklahoma, that like the Oorang Indians was composed entirely of Native Americans.

In 1930, at the age of 28, Pappio returned to the NFL to play the 1930 season with the Chicago Cardinals.

Life after football

Pappio worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and joined the merchant marine during World War II.

In 1946, Pappio moved to Oklahoma City. He made a career working as a maintenance engineer at Tinker Air Force Base in that city. Together with his wife, Nell, herself a member of the Kiowa nation, Pappio founded the Oklahoma City Pow Wow Club in 1950.

Pappio died October 22, 1971, in Oklahoma City at the age of 68. He was survived by his widow, two daughters, and a son.