As a young Ojibwe boy growing up in Lac du Flambeau around the turn of the twentieth century, Bobidosh came of age in a world shaped by both tradition and change.
Families still followed seasonal rhythms tied to fishing, hunting, trapping, maple sugaring, and wild rice harvesting, while at the same time railroads, logging camps, and growing Northwoods towns were rapidly changing the region. They also navigated a world increasingly influenced by forced assimilation, government boarding schools, tourism, and outside pressures on Native communities.
By 1922, Bobidosh found himself part of a fascinating chapter in early professional football history as a player for the Oorang Indians during the early years of the National Football League.
The team was coached by Jim Thorpe, the legendary Native American athlete who won Olympic gold medals and became famous for dominating nearly every sport he touched, even competing in races barefoot. The Oorang Indians were made up entirely of Native American players and traveled the country playing football games mixed with demonstrations of Native skills and culture. At that point, professional football was still in its infancy, and these games were as much spectacle as sport.
Records show Bobidosh appeared in one game during that 1922 season. While his time with the team was brief, it connected a young man from Lac du Flambeau to the earliest days of the NFL. He was one of several young Ojibwe men from the reservation to make the team, showing the athletic talent that existed in northern Wisconsin at a time when opportunities for Native athletes were limited.
Photographs from the team still survive today, including the well known Oorang Indians team photo featuring Jim Thorpe surrounded by players in buckskin style uniforms. Because Bobidosh was on the roster that season, historians believe he is likely somewhere in that photograph, though the players were poorly identified. A separate archival portrait from 1922 does survive and provides a confirmed image of Bobidosh during that same period.
After his football days, Bobidosh returned home to Lac du Flambeau, and that is really where his story unfolds. He became a leader within the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa during the mid twentieth century, a time when tribal communities across the country were working to preserve language, culture, and identity while navigating tremendous political and economic change.
In 1957, Alex Bobidosh and Lac du Flambeau found themselves connected to one of the most recognizable places in America when Disneyland turned to northern Wisconsin for help building an authentic Native longhouse for its Frontierland Indian Village. Bobidosh traveled to California at the request of Walt Disney to supervise construction of the birch bark lodge using traditional methods and materials shipped directly from the Lac du Flambeau. Bobidosh had learned the craft as a young boy from his parents, carrying on a building tradition that stretched back generations. The finished structure reportedly measured more than 30 feet long and was considered authentic in every respect, giving Disneyland what was described as a distinctly Wisconsin touch.
In another remarkable moment in Alex Bobidosh’s life came during a 1967 powwow at Lac du Flambeau, when former President Dwight Eisenhower visited the reservation and took part in tribal ceremonies. By that point, Eisenhower had made many trips to Wisconsin’s Northwoods and had developed a close relationship with the Lac du Flambeau Band. During the gathering, Bobidosh, serving as head of the tribal council, placed a traditional headdress upon the former president as part of an adoption ceremony held before the crowd. It was a powerful scene, a former President of the United States standing on tribal land in the Northwoods alongside a man who had spent his life representing and preserving the traditions of his community.
Records of Bobidosh paint a picture of a man whose life stretched from a transitional period of the Northwood’s into the modern age.
Alex Bobidosh died on September 11, 1981, at the age of 91. Over the course of those nine decades, he witnessed enormous change in both the Northwoods and the country as a whole. From the early days of professional football, to leadership within Lac du Flambeau, to developing a friendship with a former U.S. president, his story remains one of the more fascinating and unexpected connections between the Northwoods and the broader story of twentieth century America.
Sources: Rhinelander Daily News 1957, 1967, 1981. Wisconsin Historical Society, Indianbowlproject com
