As Elgin High School narrows the field this week to a handful of finalists for a new mascot, the winner will be only the second team symbol in the school’s 157-year history.
The first — Chief Mighty Maroon — was selected in 1982 and remained until 2002, when it was phased out for being offensive to Native Americans, according to EHS records.
Students chose the chief in a contest similar to the one being held right now, according the EHS Athletic Director Paul Pennington.
The school newspaper and student council announced the contest in December 1981, noting “we’ve all had enough of snide comments and insulting remarks about having a color as a mascot or no mascot at all,” an article in the student newspaper, The Mirror, said.
A secret ballot of the paper’s staff and the student council determined the winning entry in January 1982. Chief Mighty Maroon was announced as the new mascot at a home basketball game against DeKalb on Jan. 22 and made his first appearance in September at the football homecoming game.
The chief dressed in maroon pants, a white top with red linear pattern and a headdress, the Mirror noted. He was accompanied by “his little Indian,” a female student also dressed in a costume.
However, the unofficial use of the chief predated his official selection. A March 2004 article in the Mirror quoted then-principal David Smiley as saying that in the 1970s, when a prominent EHS athlete was injured, the school’s principal created the character for the teen to play as a way of keeping him involved in school activities.
An effort to come up with a new mascot was undertaken in 2014 but ultimately stalled when the committee charged with choosing the winner could not decide between a fox or a lion, Pennington said.
In March 1999, E.C. “Mike” Alft, a local historian, former EHS teacher and one-time Elgin mayor, told The Courier-News that some grew disenchanted with the mascot because of his “dance” at EHS games, calling it little more than “shuffling” and an insult to the authentic Indian dancers who had previously danced at Elgin High School for years.
In the 2004 Mirror article, Smiley said the decision to stop using the mascot was an easy one.
“There never was any such tribe as the Maroons and there was never a Chief Mighty Maroon,” he said. “The color maroon being associated with a Native American mascot made it sound like it was about skin color, and that’s offensive. That’s not what Elgin High is about.”
According to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, “from the mid-18th into the 19th century, Black maroons or self-emancipated enslaved people from the Georgia and Florida borderlands (and beyond) gravitated to the Indigenous Seminole Nation.”
Former EHS Principal Jerry Cook, who graduated from EHS in 1991, said the chief may have stemmed from the “Song of Hiawatha” pageant held by locals in the summer at Elgin’s Camp Big Timber, a tradition from 1927 to 1979.
Cook also noted that mascots had become the rage by the early 1980s, thanks to the popularity of the San Diego Chicken. Chosen in a radio station promotion, the costumed chicken character first appeared in 1974 at the San Diego Zoo and later became the mascot for the San Diego Padres baseball team.
As for the Maroons moniker, Cook, Pennington and others with ties to EHS said it comes from the University of Chicago, which uses the color as its team name (and has a phoenix as its mascot).
“The University of Chicago in the late 1800s and early 1900s was a football powerhouse,” Cook said. “The Chicago Bears adopted their ‘C’ for their helmets. Elgin High adopted their school colors: maroon and cream. They were called the Maroons due to their color.”
According to Alft, James McAdams, genealogy and local history librarian for the Gail Borden Public Library District, noted in his book, “Elgin High: A Centennial History,” that “in 1899 the Board of Control set up by the (Elgin High School) Athletic Association decided that the school sweater was the be maroon and that a white letter ‘E’ would be given to each player who retained his place on any team for a season. The Maroons were thus christened, but it was not until 1916, when EHS entered the Northern Illinois High School Conference, that organized high school athletics as we know it today really began in Elgin.”
For a time after the school retired Chief Mighty Maroon, some students took it upon themselves to create an unofficial mascot — a big maroon crayon.
“That was just some students being funny about not having Chief Mighty Maroon anymore,” retired EHS teacher John Devine said.
While some people have posted on social media they still miss the chief, others, including Cook and EHS archivist Chandler Swan, class of 1960, would be happy if the school stuck with the just being the Maroons and not worry about having a mascot.
“For a school that is, I believe, the second oldest public high school in Illinois, started in 1869, first graduating class in 1872, I am proud of that tradition,” Swan said. “So for all except 20 years, if that is correct, we have been the Maroons for some 137 years. We are the Maroons and proud of it, and for most of us, that will never change. You don’t need a mascot.”
Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
