Sticks and Stones and Sports Team Names

Ethnic groups as sports mascots is wrong. I do wonder about the fact that the author seems to be pretty confident that the names were not originally meant to disparage Native Americans. How can he be sure? Although team names are created to speak to the strength of the team, it is no secret that Native Americans like African Americans worth has been devalued especially during the early years of this county in this country. After all, the teams in question were created in the late 1800's and early 1900's ; so in my opinion it would make perfect sense that when these names were given to these sports teams, the thought never crossed their minds that there were a group of proud, beautiful, worthy people who no longer want their ethnicity or their cultural beliefs associated with their ethnicity to be a mascot (mascots have been known to get defamed and disrespected by opposing teams) or a costume day at an elementary school.