The nickname, worked end to end

1922 OR 1923 · THE YEAR ITSELF UNFIXED

One small mystery, worked in the open, the way this section works them all: Mishawaka High School's teams are the Cavemen — by the school's own belief, the only school in the country with such a mascot — and the name is a century old. Where did it come from? The sources were tried in order, and the order is the entry. First, the school's own telling. The School City of Mishawaka's alumni newsletter of October 2015 prints the story on the authority of Robert D. Smith, a former coach, teacher, principal, and administrator at the school, provided by a member of the class of 1959: in 1922 or 1923, Mishawaka was playing South Bend High School in football at Cartier Field, Notre Dame's old ground, the game tied at nothing at halftime, when an ardent Mishawaka fan named Curt Johnson held up a sign — OUR TEAM WILL FIGHT LIKE CAVEMEN. Mishawaka won; the name was adopted; Johnson was better known in later years for a greenhouse on South Spring Street. It is a good story with a named chain of tellers, and it cannot fix its own year: the telling itself says 1922 or 1923.

Second, the city's commissioned history — the thickest single file on Mishawaka's past — was read for this entry: it uses "Cavemen" throughout, of the 1939 stadium that is "still the home of the Cavemen football and track teams" and of championships eighty years on, and it gives the name no origin at all. Third, the collision test, the one this record has had to run before on a famous local name: San Diego High School, in California, is also the Cavemen, and its origin is documented — to 1921, when its players dressed in a dark room beneath a school building, entered by a tunnel, and a reporter for the school paper, Alden Ross, watching them file out, named them for the dwellers of caves, in print, in the school's own newspaper. That is a documented birth for the same nickname, one or two years before Mishawaka's traditional date, three time zones away, with no connection between the schools in any record reached. It is not evidence about Mishawaka; names travel, and independent coinage is ordinary. But it dissolves, cleanly, the newsletter's proudest sentence: whatever else is true, Mishawaka is not the only school in the country to have had the caveman — San Diego carried the name from 1921 until it amended it to Cavers in the 1970s. Fourth and last, the press of record for the game itself — the South Bend papers' football coverage of the autumn of 1922 and of 1923, and the high school's own paper and yearbooks of those years — was not reached, and the entry stops there rather than borrow strength it has not earned. The verdict, printed at its true size: the Cavemen's name rests on a school tradition with a named chain and an unfixed year; the game's coverage exists, or does not, in files that are named here as the settling sources; and until they are read, the most famous name in Mishawaka sport has a story, not a document.

Sources:

1. School City of Mishawaka, alumni newsletter, October 2015 — "How MHS became known as 'Cavemen'": the Cartier Field game, the sign, Curt Johnson, the adoption; credited to Robert D. Smith, provided by Pat Downing '59; the year given as 1922 or 1923; the only-school belief stated as the newsletter's.
2. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — "Cavemen" used throughout with no origin given (read for this entry).
3. Don King, Caver Conquest (1993), the history of San Diego High athletics, as carried in the San Diego prep-sports history record — the 1921 tunnel dressing room, Alden Ross, the school paper The Russ, and the 1970s amendment to Cavers.
4. The settling sources, not reached: the South Bend Tribune and News-Times football coverage of fall 1922 and fall 1923; Mishawaka High School's school paper and yearbooks of those years.