Photo by Sheryl Melius/Historic Preservation
AT 93 YEARS OLD, PHILIP RED EAGLE’S SMILE CAN STILL LIGHT UP A ROOM.
When Philip Red Eagle was 9 years old, he was pulled from his mother’s arms one day and taken away to Poplar Indian School for Orphans in northeastern Montana. The year was 1925. Back then authorities considered boys like Philip Red Eagle an orphan because his father Harold Red Eagle, Fort Peck Assinibione-Sioux, had passed away when Philip Red Eagle was 6 years old. The surviving wife and mother did not matter to white law enforcement. “At that time, if you were missing a parent they’d take you in, no ifs about it,” Philip Red Eagle recalled. “A cop comes and takes you away.”
His mom and his four sisters had successfully kept their favored boy child hidden until that life-changing day when Philip Red Eagle watched his sorrowful mother recede in the distance. He was her only son; his two brothers died as babies. Authorities spotted Philip Red Eagle on the day when he and his family were taking part in a festival at a Montana fairgrounds. They took him right there on the spot. “That’s where they caught me. We were camped there – my grandma and grandpa, my mom and my sisters. A cop came and said, ‘The superintendent wants to see you. He sent me over to get you.’
“I didn’t want to go. That day I ran away seven times. At that time I could hardly talk English. I was just talking Indian. I could talk Indian like hell but I didn’t know a word of English. When they got you in the school, if you talked Indian they’d punish you. The principal said that if you behave yourself you’d get rewards and stuff, so learn how to talk English. It was tough there for a while, but I got used to it because I had no other choice.”
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Philip Red Eagle and his loving family and friends celebrated his 93rd birthday just last month, on Nov. 25. He was wished a happy birthday by his sons and daughters Darlene, Philip, Jr., Keith, Theresa and Bobby (his son Ron has passed away), and by so many loved ones including his great-granddaughters Leslie Jean Salyers and Jacqueline Daniel Salyers, both enrolled Puyallup tribal members.
After all these years, memories of being separated from his mother still cause Philip Red Eagle’s eyes to grow misty with a far-away look. But the clouds part and his dazzling smile bursts forth like the sun when he talks about the good times of his youth, for being put into school allowed him to discover his natural talents like playing sports. He grew up to be the best man he could be and showed his determination both through his excellent grades and through playing basketball, by far his favorite sport. “When I think back on it, it was basketball that kept me going to school,” he said.
On Dec. 7, 2007, Philip Red Eagle was among seven standout athletes to be inducted as the inaugural class to the Indian Athlete Hall of Fame in Montana. Philip Red Eagle is part of the very first group of Indian athletes to be honored by the new hall of fame launched by All-American basketball player Don Wetzel, Sr. of the Blackfeet Reservation to recognize outstanding Indian athletes.
In a ceremony held during the 2007 Native Holiday Classic Basketball Tournament at the MetraPark Arena in Billings, Mont., Executive Board Chairman of the Fort Peck Reservation Rusty Stafne of the Little Shell Tribe presented an honorary check to Philip Red Eagle along with a signed certificate. Philip Red Eagle’s boyhood pal and fellow Sioux Louis Longee was inducted as well. As young men they had played basketball for their Brockton High School team in northeast Montana from 1933-36. Losing just three games during those years, the team won state championships in 1933, 1934 and 1936.
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Philip Red Eagle reached the Indian Athlete Hall of Fame from humble beginnings. He attended Poplar Indian School for Orphans in Montana until the fifth grade then went to Brockton High School, but attended Poplar Junior High (near Brockton) in seventh grade. “We used to play in the basement of the boys’ dormitory where the furnaces and coal bin and hot water pipes were running all around the ceiling and covered in asbestos.” Square openings between where the pipes crisscrossed made for perfect “hoops.” “We used to play down there with a sponge ball and we’d shoot them through that hole. That’s how we started.”
Shooting the ball through those little openings proved later to be a sort of secret weapon for Philip Red Eagle and his teammates, as it built their skill at taking aim and hitting the mark. During his high school years, 1936 at Brockton High School is Philip Red Eagle’s most memorable year. He was 6-feet tall, 150 pounds and played center. “That was our senior year. We won the district championship by defeating Poplar. We beat them two out of three times that year. I think the final score in the championship game was 30-27.”
After high school, Philip Red Eagle and 12 of his cousins and friends hopped on a freight train to travel from northeastern Montana to go to the trade school at Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Ore. His mother had given him $30 to take a passenger train, but Philip Red Eagle used that money instead to help his cousins go with him to Chemawa, too. A brakeman who listened to the boys’ story opened one of the railroad cars for them. “He said, ‘Boys, stay here and I’ll watch to see that nobody else gets in,’” Philip Red Eagle said. He and his chums rode the train to Spokane then had to change trains to Portland. “We all chipped in for food. But food was cheap in those days. You could buy a dozen cinnamon rolls for 10 cents.” His mom gave him $30 to take a passenger train, but Philip Red Eagle used that money instead to help his cousins get to Chemawa with him.
Philip Red Eagle began to learn carpentry when he entered into his first year at Chemawa in 1938. He also joined up with the Chemawa All-Stars basketball team and celebrated a major victory his first year on the team. The All-Stars entered the Salem City Major League made up of eight of the best teams and walked away with the trophy. They were known as the Indian Racers throughout the city of Salem and attracted spectators from far and wide.
He left Chemawa in 1939 to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps, instituted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Upon returning to Chemawa in 1940 he met Marian Steilacoom of Meeker-Steilacoom lineage, and she became his wife that year. Philip Red Eagle graduated from Chemawa as a carpenter but could not find work. “Nobody would hire me. Somebody said, ‘You’re an Indian and that’s why they don’t want to hire you.’” He could have gone to Montana State University, where he was accepted to attend, but could not afford it.
The couple came out to Washington state and Philip Red Eagle went to work for Boeing to produce B-17 bombers for the war effort. He helped organize a basketball league and his team called themselves the Tacoma Tomahawks, made up of Indian players who worked in the shipyards, at Boeing, or who were in the military at Fort Lewis or in training at Camp Murray near Tacoma. The team traveled to many different reservations to play. “That’s how we got acquainted with all the other Indians – the Tahola, Lummis, Tulalips, Muckleshoots, Klamaths, Queets… It went on for three or four years. We went everywhere. We had quite a league.”
Philip Red Eagle played for the Tacoma Tomahawks from about 1951 to 1959, during which time he worked in maintenance at Cushman Indian Hospital for 13 years. Upon its closure, he went to Sitka, Alaska and played softball in a city league until he was 55 years old. He was coach for the American Legion baseball league in Sitka, taking his team to win the Southeast Championship.
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An honored elder who survived many hardships and challenges in his life, Philip Red Eagle is looked up to by tribal members who know in their hearts the value of having such a man in their midst, a blessing to the lives of everyone who knows him. His quick smile and sharp sense of humor keep everyone entertained, but it is his stories that cause a hush to fall in the room when Philip Red Eagle looks back on his long life. The silence is broken quickly enough though by laughter as he sifts through old photographs presented to him by the Puyallup Tribe’s Historic Preservation Department. Philip Red Eagle has a wealth of information in his mind about local tribes’ histories and has been helping Puyallup archivists identify individuals in decades-old photographs reaching back to the Great Depression.
“It was tough. I’ll never forget those days,” he says, then with a twinkle in his eye he begins with that familiar opening “I’ll never forget that time…,” and the rest, as they say, is history.
