Date: Fri 16-Feb-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: TOMW

Quick Words:

NHS-Indian-mascot-history

Full Text:

Indian Mascot Tradition Had Early Beginnings

B Y T. W YATT

There has been a confusion of facts in recent days, as to the origin of the

Indian as Newtown High School's mascot. Quotes and published reports in area

newspapers claimed that the school started using its Indian nickname in the

1960s, which is false.

The actual Indian nickname was first used in the year 1919 when an internal

feud at Newtown's secondary school resulted in a split and the opening of a

second high school, on Sunset Hill, called Newtown Community School.

When a fire destroyed the original high school in 1920, Hawley School was then

built and became the town's official high school in 1922, whereupon NCS closed

its doors.

During its two years of existence, students at the Newtown Community School

were responsible for beginning the town's Indian mascot tradition.

That year, school yearbook's Board of Editors, which included Jacob Schoch,

Earle Smith, Helen Howard, Gertrude Wellington, and Marguerite Bradley headed

up a drive to adopt a mascot.

On page one of the 1920 yearbook, Miss Bradley, one of only three seniors,

explains how the Indian mascot came to be. Though Newtown's indigenous Indians

were the Pootatucks, the mascot Indian was said to be of a fictional tribe

named the Necosko Indians, by acronym for Ne(wtown) Co(mmunity) Sko(ol).

Miss Bradley's opening paragraphs in the 1920 school yearbook read as follows:

"No world movement ever yet grew as a mere doctrine. It had to have some noble

example, a living, appealing personality; something to which its followers

could point and say, 'This is what we stand for.'

To typify our school movement we wished to have a living being of this country

and climate, who was physically beautiful, heroic, honorable, and well-known.

The best types of the American Indian combine all these traits. It was for

these reasons that Ne(wtown) Co(mmunity S'k'o(ol) chose the Indian as its

mascot."

When Hawley School opened, its athletic teams seemed to have dropped usage of

the Indian mascot. In NHS yearbooks through 1948, not a single Indian

reference was made while the school's athletic teams' uniforms either had the

word "Newtown" printed across the fronts, or just the letter "N."

The Indian reappeared in the 1949 yearbook where the boys' basketball teams'

new uniforms had the symbol of an Indian's head, in full headdress, on the

breast.

In Newtown Bee articles and yearbook passages, Newtown High School still

didn't officially call itself the Indians, though the Indian head appeared

regularly on the school athletic uniforms after 1949.

The 1959 NHS yearbook was the first to have an Indian on its cover and several

afterward have followed suit.

The sports teams of the sixties commonly referred to themselves as the

Indians, but were still referred to as Newtown in press articles.

It wasn't until football began at Newtown High in 1967, that the Indian mascot

really took its full form. And through present date, really only the football

team and the school band has used Indian symbols in its actual attire.

The baseball team, one year, had the word Indians on its jerseys, but that was

because the first batch came back with the town's name misspelled, Newton,

across the front.

And so ends the 77-year history of the Indian in the Newtown School system.