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If things had gone differently, Kansas City football fans could have been rooting for the Kansas City Texans.
Other ideas on the table? The Kansas City Mules, the Kansas City Stars or — how about the Kansas City Royals, only as a football team?
As the Chiefs have entered dynasty status with more presence on the international stage, local apparel companies have made products featuring made-up mascot names like the Villains or the Chefs.
The origin of the Kansas City Chiefs moniker goes back to 1963, a decision connected to the region’s Native American heritage, a boisterous mayor, a fan-driven newspaper contest, and Lamar Hunt — the man also credited with naming the Super Bowl.
“He loved everything about sports: the competition, the pageantry,” says writer Michael MacCambridge, author of “America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation” and "'69 Chiefs: A Team, a Season and the Birth of Modern Kansas City.”
Hunt was the son of a very rich oil man and played football himself.
“He was shy by nature. The place where he found refuge was sport,” says MacCambridge.
In 1960, Hunt started the American Football League and ran the Dallas Texans, one of three pro football teams in the state at the time. Within two years, he realized this was too much competition, and he began casting a net for places to relocate.
Many city leaders saw this as a huge opportunity, and heard Hunt was scouting in places like New Orleans.
“At one point the mayor of Kansas City, H. Roe Bartle, learned that Lamar had been in Atlanta, scouting that out,” says MacCambridge. “He flew directly to Dallas and sat down with Lamar in his office and said, ‘Please consider Kansas City.’”
Mayor Bartle made a compelling case to Hunt: There were no other pro football teams in the area, and the business community would support the team by promising to sell a certain number of tickets.
So Hunt announced he’d move the team to Kansas City.
What’s in a nickname?
Bartle was as big as a linebacker and loved cigars. He was also a lawyer, philanthropist, and had been a leader for the Boy Scouts, where he landed his nickname "the Chief." Bartle was not Native, but claimed to be inducted into an Arapaho tribe and said he was given the name “Chief Lone Bear.”
It’s just one of the many things Gaylene Crouser takes issue with about him.
“He was the founder of the Tribe of Mic-O-Say, which is not an actual federally-recognized tribe of American Indians,” says Crouser, executive director of the Kansas City Indian Center. “It’s a made up tribe.”
Crouser is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Hunkpapa and Oglala, and also a member of the group Not In Our Honor, which has called for decades for the Chiefs to change their name.
The Mic-O-Say group, which still exists in Missouri today, claims on their website they blend aspects of American Indian heritage with the ideals of scouting.
The state of Missouri’s history with Native American tribes is another point of pain for Crouser. The state violently discriminated against tribal people, forced them to relocate, and did not allow them to speak their languages or practice their customs.
“It adds insult,” says Crouser. “The whole fact that not only are you bastardizing our culture, you are doing it in a state that didn’t want us to be here.”
It’s not clear if, at the time, concerns like Crouser’s ever made it to owner Lamar Hunt, the ultimate decision maker. At first, Hunt was set on keeping the name the Texans.
“He felt it was intrinsic to the team's identity,” says MacCambridge.
Hunt was eventually swayed, and announced a “Rename the Dallas Texans contest” in the Kansas City Star, which received more than 4,000 submissions and more than 1,000 ideas.
If Hunt had gone with the most popular entry, Kansas City fans would be cheering for the Mules.
Instead, he landed on the Chiefs for a few reasons, according to the Kansas City Call: to honor the region's Native American heritage, because of Bartle’s nickname, and because it was classy, short and would look good in a headline.
Hunt was also the idea-man behind the Chiefs’ red and gold team colors, which were his second choice. (His first choice was Columbia blue and white.) Inspired by the look of the San Francisco 49ers helmets, Hunt created the arrowhead logo with the intertwined letters K and C.
Moving forward and scaling back
Another, more problematic, early Chiefs logo showed a cartoon Native American character in full headdress running across a map of the Kansas City region. The team eventually got rid of that one and, over the decades, have scaled back on other offensive logos and imagery.
But fan practices like the “tomahawk chop,” which started in the 1990s, continue to be a point of frustration for activists calling for change.
The chop and chant got started at Florida State University football games, then the Atlanta Braves baseball team adopted it. Eventually, it was performed at a Chiefs game by a Northwest Missouri State University marching band, and it caught on with fans.
“It’s just unacceptable in this day and age,” says Crouser. “And frankly, Kansas City deserves better than that.”
Twenty years ago, the American Psychological Association released a recommendation that all Native American imagery and mascots in sports should be changed. As a response, sports organizations and teams at all levels have scaled back or completely changed their mascots and logos.
In 2020, the Chiefs organization announced they would ban headdresses and face paint inside Arrowhead Stadium. In 2021, they retired Warpaint, a horse mascot that would run around the field after touchdowns.
Team leaders have said they want to honor Native American heritage of the region, and they formed an American Indian Community Working Group to “promote an awareness and understanding of Native cultures and tribes,” according to their website.
While no real plans for a name change are on the docket, MacCambridge, a lifelong fan, has an idea to throw in the hat.
“I would have no problem being the Kansas City Wolves,” he says.
Crouser offers a different thought, which plays into the original history of the naming of the team.
“Maybe they should, again, do a contest and see where people are with it,” she suggests.
A few years back, the alt-weekly magazine The Pitch asked Kansas Citians for their ideas — from Kansas City Crowns to the Reds.
And who doesn’t get inspired by some of the spin-off schwag fans have taken upon themselves to create — especially those “Chefs” shirts, which are an homage to that original Snickers commercial of the ‘90s.
If there’s one thing to learn from the past, it’s that things like names and trends aren’t set in stone. They can evolve and change.
This episode of A People's History of Kansas City was reported by Suzanne Hogan, and produced by Suzanne Hogan and Olivia Hewitt, with editing by Luke X. Martin and Mackenzie Martin.
