William Henry Dietz
William Henry Dietz
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William Henry Dietz

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William Henry Dietz

William Henry "Lone Star" Dietz (August 17, 1884 – July 20, 1964) was an American football player and coach. He served as the head college football coach at Washington State University, Purdue University, Louisiana Tech University, University of Wyoming, Haskell Institute—now known as Haskell Indian Nations University, and Albright College. Dietz was also head coach for the Boston Redskins of the National Football League (NFL). He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2012.

Dietz was born on August 17, 1884, in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. His father William Wallace Dietz, settled in the area in 1871 and was elected county sheriff in 1877. His father married Leanna Ginder in November 1879.

Dietz was an employee of and briefly claimed to attend Oklahoma's Chilocco Indian Agricultural School. He left the school after appearing in one football game for them and did not graduate. He attended Macalester College in Minnesota in 1902 and 1903. Dietz enrolled at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania beginning in 1907 and was a star player for their football team.

Dietz's heritage was first contested in 1916 after former neighbors who settled on the Pacific Coast heard he was posing as a Native American. In December 1918 the Federal Bureau of Investigation looked into his heritage after he registered for the draft as a "Non-Citizen Indian" with an allotment. The Bureau found he had taken on the identity of James One Star, an Oglala man of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation 12 years his senior who had disappeared in Cuba in 1894. Dietz also claimed he was the head of an American film company that produced propaganda films for the war.

Dietz was tried in Spokane, Washington in June 1919 for violating the Selective Service law. One Star's sister, Sallie Eaglehorse, testified after seeing him for the first time at the trial that Dietz was surely not her brother. Still, the judge instructed the jury to determine whether Dietz "believed" he was a Native American, not whether it was true. Despite that others had witnessed his birth in the summer of 1884 or had seen him the following day, Dietz's mother Leanna claimed he was the Native American son of her husband who had been switched a week or more after she had a stillbirth. Dietz's acting ability along with his mother's fallacious testimony (to protect him from prison) resulted in a hung jury, but Dietz was immediately re-indicted. The second trial resulted in a sentence of 30 days in the Spokane County Jail after he pleaded "no contest".

Dietz's true heritage remains controversial. Although he is recognized as an "Indian athlete" by Dan Snyder, former owner of the Washington Commanders (formerly known as the Washington Redskins), Indian Country Today Media Network ran a series of articles in 2004 exposing Dietz as a white man masquerading as a Native American. In 1988, the National Congress of American Indians attempted to meet and discuss the issue with the team's former owner, Jack Kent Cooke, but Cooke refused a meeting. Researcher Linda Waggoner traced Dietz's heritage in several articles in Indian Country Today Media Network and at a 2013 symposium at the National Museum of the American Indian.

Dietz played at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, with teammate Jim Thorpe, under famed coach Pop Warner. Author Tom Benjey speculated that Dietz may have been the "Frank Lone Star" who played for the Columbus Panhandles of the American Professional Football Association (now NFL) in 1920.

In 1921, Dietz took a coaching position with Purdue University in Indiana. After Angel De Cora died in 1919, he married Doris O. Pottlitzer, a middle-aged local journalist, on January 29, 1922. The week previous to their marriage, Purdue officials fired him for illegal recruiting. In spring 1933, George Preston Marshall, owner of the Boston Braves, hired Dietz to replace Coach Lud Wray. In 1937, the team moved to Washington, D.C.

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