1984 “You have this person who runs around and acts like a wild man just to incite the crowd,” he said. “It perpetuates a negative stereotypical image of native American people.”

The ghost of the Warrior
still roams Syracuse U campus

1984 April 29, Democrat and Chronicle 

   “There’s so much emotional attachment among alumni to the Saltine Warrior,” [said Paul Erickmann, SU vice president for student affairs.] “You could put a variety of things on the field, but there’s an outspoken group of alumni that would never accept anything but the Saltine Warrior. I sense some of that among the student body , too.” ….

      The warrior was a student dressed and painted as an Indian who waved a tomahawk, did war dances and whooped up cheers for the crowd.

      But in the late 1970s, a native American student group protested that the warrior represented a racist stereotype of Indians as barbarians and comic figures, and Syracuse dropped the warrior as the official mascot in 1978…..

      Although interest in the Warrior still is alive, so is opposition to it among native American students, said Gary Gordon, president of Jogwe Owe, the Native American Student Organization.

      “You have this person who runs around and acts like a wild man just to incite the crowd,” he said. “It perpetuates a negative stereotypical image of native American people.”

      Gordon also noted the lack of a real connection between SU and native Americans.

      The Saltine Warrior grew out of a fictional story published in the 1931 humor magazine, The Orange Peel. 

1931 The Orange Peel 

      As the story went, the home of a 16th-century tribal chief – whose name was translated as the Saltine Warrior – was uncovered in excavations on campus in 1928. The story was widely believed, and the warrior was selected the mascot the next year….

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Editor's Note: A song was written  by Samuel E. Darby, Junior Class of 1913 and music by David R. Walsh, Class of 1912, that told of the Saltine Warrior: 

The Saltine Warrior is a bold, bad man,

And his weapon is a pigskin ball.

When on the field he takes a firm stand,

He's the hero of large and small.

He will rush towards the goal with might and main;

His opponents all fight, but they fight in vain,

Because the Saltine Warrior's a bold, bad man,

And victorious over all!

1984 April 29, Democrat and Chronicle