THE REAL ALL AMERICANS satisfies the reader with an Innovative look at events from the Carlisle Indian School through the development of American football. The innocent sports enthusiast may just find herself intrigued as a previously unknown history unfolds through Jenkins' stories of  players and their unique circumstances placing them into the first off-rez boarding school far from Indian Country. We are introduced to Carlisle athletes one-by-one as they move from their traditional communities on the reservations and agencies on to the gridiron where they meet and compete with the Ivy League teams typically credited with the early development of the game. Set just before and after the turn of the last century we are privileged to meet and understand the experiences of real-people athletes, outside the legendary treatment of the greatest of them all, the Sac and Fox athlete, Jim Thorpe.

Thorpe's cohorts on the field included teams with athletes of much lesser fame who paved the way for him. They represented a variety of nations and cultures located in every corner of the United States and in between. Anishinaabe, Lakota, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Alaskan, Oneida, Seneca, Tuscarora, Pueblo, Delaware, Mission and Cherokee among them. 

Jenkins writes,
 

"Their presence on the football field presented an unmistakable shadow play, for players and spectators alike, of the old frontier battles."

For an in-depth review of the book by John Peterson, go to ON HALLOWED GROUND, the Kansas City Chiefs' web pages.