`Savages' Mascot Is Cast Out -- School Nestled In Ancestral Valley Of Nez Perce Drops Logo

The Savages have been banished.

As of midnight yesterday, a small eastern Oregon high school in the ancestral valley of the Nez Perce officially dropped the use of the name "Savages" and its accompanying Indian logo.

Gone will be the sign at the entrance to town that reads, "Welcome to Enterprise: Home of the Savages." Gone, too, will be the cartoonish, bulbous-nosed Indian face - from signs and wall murals and wrestling mats and football jerseys and helmets.

"Dang it, it's near the 21st century. It's about time," said Joe McCormack, the only Nez Perce in Wallowa County.

While a relatively small accomplishment in the larger scheme of things, the decision was a major step in the improving relations between the white residents of Wallowa County and the Nez Perce people.

County residents have recently invited the Indians to return to Wallowa Valley, partly for their tourism value, but also to make amends for past injustices. In 1877, white settlers drove the Indians out of the valley, which is wedged in the northeastern corner of Oregon, and was once the home of the Joseph band of the Nez Perce tribe.

The decision to drop the Indian mascot came largely as a result of a Seattle Times story that featured McCormack saying he would never set foot inside Enterprise High School as long as it used the name "Savages" next to the image of an Indian.

McCormack was present at the meeting late Tuesday night in which School Board members voted unanimously to get rid of the mascot and logo, which have been part of the school for at least 71 years.

The change was inevitable, said school Superintendent Roger McGath. "There was a sense among many people in the area that it was not a matter of if, but a matter of when."

School Board member Don Swart Jr., an Enterprise High alumnus, said there have been numerous appeals over the years by citizens and visitors to drop the mascot name, but never one so powerful as the appeal made Tuesday night by longtime resident Sam Miller, whose white ancestors settled in the region in the 1870s.

"Slandering Native Americans as `savages' is a practice long ago abandoned by every enlightened community on the planet," Miller told the School Board.

"There is no standard in existence that would not define such a characterization as representative of racial hatred and intolerance," Miller said. "The presumption of our racial superiority expressed by the degrading and contemptuous characterization of Native Americans as savages is not OK anymore."

Miller was joined by McCormack, who surprised everyone at the meeting with his presence. Board members later said McCormack was the first Nez Perce to personally request the logo be dropped.

"To hear him say that it hurt him - that's what really convinced me," Swart said.

School Board member Tim Melville, an alumnus of Enterprise High, said the word "savage" never conjured up any feelings of racism in him, "but, hey, if it hurts someone else, I'm not stuck on it," he said. "Let's get rid of it. It's the Christian thing to do."

The quick and unanimous vote surprised everyone. The discussion then turned to selecting a new mascot. The board agreed that would be decided by the students of Enterprise High sometime this summer.