The athlete’s father was part Sac and Fox; his mother was part Potawatomi.
Born at a Sac and Fox village in Oklahoma, Thorpe (1888-1953) won the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912 Olympics and went on to play professional football and baseball.
Although Thorpe was stripped of his gold medals for playing professional baseball before appearing in the Olympics, the medals were restored posthumously in 1982.