A Gordon High School graduate who was one of Nebraska’s most successful and poplar athletes nearly 70 years ago and has dedicated his life to assisting others received special recognition at the University of Colorado in Boulder Thursday, May 8.
Joe American Horse, 87, was among three recipients of honorary degrees authorized by the University of Colorado Board of Regents “to recognize outstanding achievement in intellectual contributions, university service, philanthropy and/or public service.” His degree is a Doctor of Humane Letters.
Specifically, American Horse, who lives alongside American Horse Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation east of the village of Pine Ridge, was cited for “his services and leadership for the Oglala Lakota and Indigenous peoples in the Americas and around the world.”
The complete statement issued by the University of Colorado is printed in conjunction with this article. It says American Horse has held numerous leadership positions and has been involved in helping youths receive the education and training to become successful.
In the mid-1950s, the name Joe American Horse was well-known throughout Nebraska. He was the state’s premier mile runner.
His classmates at Gordon High School said Joe was “always on the run,” going to and from his home to school and while assisting his father, who drove a team of horses pulling a wagon to pick up the trash throughout Gordon.
American Horse placed second in the Class B mile run at the state meet as a freshman. It was the last time he was defeated in that race during his high school career. He was the Class B mile winner as a sophomore and the next two years he also won the all-class gold medal.
His time of 4:28.1 as a senior in 1957 was the Class B state record, improving on the one he’d set the year before by seven-tenths of a second. He won the race by at least 50 yards.
Just prior to the 1957 state meet, Omaha World-Herald sports columnist Gregg McBride wrote, “It will be ‘Hi Ho Joe,’ not ‘Hi Ho Silver’ at the Nebraska High School Championships. I refer to Joe American Horse, one of the most colorful athletes in Cornhusker prep history.”
McBride went on to tell that when a fan yelled “Go it. Joe,” as the Class B mile was about to begin at state the previous year, American Horse had straightened up out of his crouch and waved at the fans. Less than 4 ½ minutes after the starting gun was fired, Joe had circled the track four times and knocked seven seconds off the Class B record.
Bill Madden of the Scottsbluff Star-Herald, another of Nebraska’s all-time outstanding sportswriters, wrote in 1957 that American Horse was the first athlete in 21 years to win the same event at the state meet three years in a row.
In addition, the Lincoln Journal and Star named him one of the top 10 athletes in the state in 1956-57. “Never before has any high school athlete won the hearts of so many track fans as Joe American Horse did four straight years,” it was stated.
After his terrific high school career, he received a scholarship from the University of Nebraska. Now he could run cross country and also the two-mile during the track season. In high school, he and everyone else in Nebraska were limited to just one race of 880 yards or more.
His highlights as a college runner included setting the Cornhuskers’ two-mile indoor records of 9:24.6 and 9:18.2 outdoors. He had a best of 4:12.6 in the outdoors mile. In 2000, he became the first Native American and the first athlete from Northwest Nebraska to be inducted into the Nebraska High School Sports Hall of Fame.
American Horse left college and joined the Marines prior to what would have been his senior year at UNL. He sustained a broken ankle while he was in the Marines, ending his track career.
He’s kept busy serving his people through the years. He was the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council chairman twice in the 1980s and also the vice chairman twice. He’s also been a medicine man, who among other activities, assisted with the dedication of the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center at Chadron State College in 2002 and the naming of Highway 27 between Gordon and Ellsworth the Mari Sandoz Trail.
He also has continued to attend sun dances and other special events close to home and keeps in touch with and assists several of the foster children he and his wife Dorothy helped raise. But even his numerous friends in and around Gordon were not aware of his far-reaching activities that led to his selection for the honorary degree he received.