Jim Thorpe’s case as the greatest athlete ever starts with how many things he did at an elite level. Born in Indian Territory in 1887 and educated at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, he was spotted by Pop Warner after clearing a 5'9" high bar in his work clothes and became a two-time All-American halfback. At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, the Sac and Fox Nation member became the first Native American to win Olympic gold, taking the pentathlon and the decathlon, which he won by 688 points. He then played major league baseball from 1913 to 1919, starred in early pro football, served as the first president of what became the NFL, and played pro basketball. His medals were stripped in 1913 over minor league baseball pay and finally restored by the IOC in 2022. In 1950, sportswriters and broadcasters voted him the greatest American athlete of the half century. No one else has Olympic gold and a career in three professional sports.||

Part of his story played out in LaRue, Ohio. Walter Lingo of Oorang Kennels created the Oorang Indians, an all-Native American NFL team built to market his Airedales, and paid Thorpe $500 a week as player-coach and kennel supervisor. The team went 3-6 in 1922 and 1-10 in 1923 before folding, but Thorpe kept returning to visit friends.

These beaded moccasins were his own. They come from the family of Carl Hoffmire, a friend close enough that, per a 1986 Ohio Magazine article in the family scrapbook, Thorpe named his son Carl Phillip after him. A February 1989 postcard begins: “You have Jim Thorpe’s beaded moccasins which he left at our house as they were worn out.” It also notes Thorpe bought a small blue baseball suit, shoes, and cap for the youngest boy. The moccasins have green and blue beadwork on worn leather with red cloth trim, with some material loss on one from heavy use. Personal items of the era’s most famous athlete, with written family provenance, rarely surface.