In the roaring '20s, a 5-foot-11, 195-pound Haida Indian became Alaska's first National Football League player during a largely forgotten era in which a group of Native American athletes -- including some Alaskans -- briefly dominated the gridiron.
His name was George Nix, and he was about as stout as a Sitka spruce. As a young man Nix wrestled, boxed, ran track, played basketball and was an interior lineman on some of the best college and pro football teams in the United States.
In family photos, of which precious few remain, he appears custom-cut for Hollywood, with ink-black hair, chisel-carved cheekbones and a chin that looks like it was leveled by a laser beam. His dark eyes twinkle with the mischievous balance of mettle and menace you'd expect to see in the gaze of a Wild West sheriff.
He was, in his grandson's words, the kind of guy who "didn't take no s--- from anybody."
Alaska's first NFL player was born to Frank and Minnie (George) Nix in 1895 in Howkan, a small village of red cedar houses where a plank boardwalk doubled as the main drag. The village was located on Long Island, just south of Prince of Wales Island, a larger island where villagers resettled to the present-day town of Hydaburg around the turn of the 20th century. The region is known for its rich fishing grounds and the iconic totem poles forged from the towering trees -- spruce, cedar and hemlock -- of the vast temperate rain forest that dominates the region.
As a teenager, Nix was sent to boarding school in Oregon's Willamette Valley, where he first gained attention as an athlete. He later traveled to the plains of Kansas to attend Haskell Institute. It was at Haskell where his football career blossomed, and he played with and against many of the premier college stars of the day. After Haskell he played for the Hominy Indians, a legendary all-Indian professional team from Oklahoma, and for the NFL's Buffalo Rangers. His football journey included stops in many of the major cities and college towns across the country, and he was a participant in one of the more noteworthy sporting events of the 1920s.
His grandson, also named George Nix, remembers his grandfather as a prominent man in the community, a tough, plain-spoken customer who was known to have been an extraordinarily gifted athlete.
"He was involved in sports in a big way," said Nix, 59, during a phone interview from his home in Tacoma, Washington.
Despite his accomplishments, the elder Nix wasn't one to boast and rarely spoke of his days as a big-time professional football player.
"He was kind of a stoic guy," recalled his grandson.
'The football demon from Alaska'
Much of Nix's life is a puzzle. All that remains of his legacy are a few newspaper clippings, some fading photos, a scattering of tales posted online by football historians and the memories of those who only knew him as an old man. But what bits and pieces remain can be used to put together a fascinating tale of Alaska's first football star.
Nix's trailblazing path from the vast coniferous forests of Southeast Alaska to the NFL began when he was sent to Chemewa Indian School in Salem, Oregon. He was an excellent basketball player, according an account from the Feb. 6, 1920 Morning Oregonian that recalls a game in which Nix scored eight of his team's points in a 24-18 win over South Parkway.
In 1922, Nix went to the Haskell Institute, now known at Haskell Indian Nations University, an all-Native vocational college in Lawrence, Kansas.
At the time, Haskell football teams were on par with some of the best college programs in the country. In the book "Shaping College Football: The Transformation of an American Sport," author Raymond Schmidt writes that "within a few years of fielding its first football team [in 1895] Haskell's gridiron schedules would begin to include annual matchups against major universities such as Missouri, Nebraska, Texas, Kansas A&M, Oklahoma and the Texas Aggies." Frequently playing several games in a single road trip, Haskell played in front of huge crowds at world-famous venues like New York's Yankee Stadium.
According to several articles from the Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World, Nix boxed, played basketball and starred on the football team as part of the first class of Alaska Natives to attend the school. In one account from the paper's Sept. 4, 1923 edition, Nix is described as "the football demon from Alaska," whose return to the school was apparently much anticipated, along with several other Alaskans rumored to be on the way.
That group likely included Nix's brother, Frank, and Klawock's Frank Peratrovich, who would later go on to become a prominent Alaska Native leader. Peratrovich was the only Native delegate elected to the Alaska Constitutional Convention, where he served as vice president. His brother, Roy, was married to Elizabeth Peratrovich, the famed Native civil rights leader for whom Feb. 16 is celebrated as a state holiday.
After attending Chemewa, several Alaskans left Oregon for Kansas because they could receive a better education at Haskell, according to a story about their departure in the Sept. 9, 1922 Oregon Statesman. Fans of the Chemewa sports teams must have taken the news hard if the tenor of the story is any indication:
"Peratrovich is rated one of the greatest football tackles that the Indians ever had, and one of the real stars of the Northwest," read the article.
Larger than life
Media accounts, such as the following excerpt from the Oct. 29, 1924 Bridgeport (Connecticut) Telegram, played up the Alaskans' rural upbringing, making them appear to be larger-than-life frontier figures:
"Frank Nix, another guard, is from far off Alaska as his brother, George Nix, a tackle. The former in his own Hydah tribe is known as Big Bone, and the latter as Totem Pole. They are sons of a mighty hunter in Alaska, whose name is Young-Man-Covered-With-Bear-Blood. He got this name because he is the greatest bear hunter in the Yukon country and has earned over $3000 in government bounties for killing bears at $3.00 per bear.
Their home is in the lands where the last totem poles on this continent are to be found."
Many of the wild accounts of life in Alaska differ from paper to paper. In a 1923 story in the Danville (Virginia) Bee, the same tale can be found -- except in that paper's version, it's one of the "Dix" boys whose bear-killing prowess is chronicled.
While the Haskell teams were widely praised by the press for their football heroics, the newspaper stories also reflect a more difficult reality regarding attitudes toward Native Americans. Reporters often used what would by today's standards be considered racist language when referring to the all-Indian squads. The 1920 Morning Oregonian article about Chemewa's basketball win includes the grim description of the victorious Chemewa players leaving the gym "with the Parkway's team's scalps dangling from their belts."
Dr. Eric Anderson is head of the American Indian Studies program at Haskell. He said such language was common during the era, a transition period in American history that saw an emphasis on educating and assimilating Native Americans into American culture rather than waging outright war. However, the nation's newspapers were having a hard time letting go of language commonly used to describe Native Americans during the warfare that characterized much of the first 400 years of European settlement in North America.
"The irony is we're celebrating what they're doing, but still bring along these stereotypes and ethnocentric -- if not racist -- attitudes in the copy," Anderson said.
Time and again, both in newspaper headlines and columns, writers and editors seemed to go out of their way to reinforce Native American stereotypes in their stories about football.
"Tricky Indians defeat Friends by clever play," read one headline in the Wichita (Kansas) Beacon.
When the Haskell team visited New York City in 1923, the team posed in suits and ties. In the Cincinnati Enquirer, the photo ran beneath a headline reading "Redskins on Broadway."
Making history
Nix's meandering path through 1920s football took him to the NFL in 1926, when he played briefly for the Buffalo Rangers, a forerunner of the modern Buffalo Bills. According to the league's official website, he played in two games. No other statistics from his career are available.
However, according to a rather exhaustive 1926 season-recap written by Professional Football Researchers Association president Ken Crippen, Nix was released after Buffalo changed coaches mid-season. It would take another 57 years for another Alaskan to reach the NFL, when Anchorage's Rocky Klever suited up for the New York Jets.
After he was released, Nix went back to playing for the Hominy Indians, where he played in the team's greatest victory, a 13-6 win over the reigning world champion New York Football Giants. For a time, pro football was huge in Oklahoma, which experienced an oil boom that allowed local businessmen to field a team.
A new docudrama called "Playground of the Native Son" focuses on the December 1927 game. Although virtually unknown to modern fans, the contest marked a significant moment in the history of Native American sports. Led by the likes of Nix and the legendary All-American John Levi -- a player Jim Thorpe is reputed to have called the best athlete he ever saw -- Hominy defeated the champion Giants 13-6 on the plains of Oklahoma.
Levi wasn't the only famous athlete Nix played with. While playing for Hominy, Nix was also teammates with Jonny "Pepper" Martin, a four-time Major League Baseball All-Star who was a member of the famed St. Louis Cardinals' "Gashouse Gang" that won a pair of World Series in the 1930s.
'Somebody that should be recognized'
When his playing days ended Nix married a woman named Addie Christie and they had one child, a boy named Richard. During the Great Depression the family lived in Oklahoma and California before returning to Hydaburg in the 1940s.
According to his obituary, Nix was a member of the Alaska Native Brotherhood, which fought for civil rights for Alaska Natives. Nix spent the next two decades as a fisherman in his hometown before moving to Tacoma, where he died in 1978 at the age of 83. He was buried in Hydaburg following services at the local Presbyterian church.
A pair of house fires destroyed much of the Nix family memorabilia. Only a few photos remain from Nix's playing days, including one that shows him and Peratrovich grinning proudly in full football regalia.
While few today know the old stories, there has been a renewed interest in Native American football. In addition to the movie about the Hominy Indians, Anderson said he recently fielded a call from producers of the NPR program Radiolab, who interviewed him about Native American football for an upcoming program.
Nix's grandson said he's happy players like George Nix might finally get the attention they deserve.
"I think he's somebody that should be recognized," he said.
And while fame may still come to Alaska NFL pioneer George Nix and the other forgotten Native American athletes, the younger Nix said he'll always remember his grandfather as an honest, strong and upright example of someone to look up to.
"When I knew him he was just a fisherman," Nix said. "I was proud of him because he was a good grandfather and a good guy."
Contact reporter Matt Tunseth at (907) 257-4335 or mtunseth@alaskadispatch.com