Exhibit Chronicles Native Americans

 In Baseball

HOWES CAVE, N.Y. (AP) — Long before Jackie Robinson endured torrents of racial taunts in breaking baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, Louis Sockalexis had a bull’s-eye on his back.

From the day in 1897 when he first donned a uniform for the Cleveland Spiders, Sockalexis suffered more than his share of racial slurs.

Sockalexis figured the tormenting was just part of the game. A Penobscot Indian from Maine, he is considered the first player of Native American descent to make it to the major leagues. Sockalexis’s story is one of many chronicled in “Baseball’s League of Nations: A Tribute to Native Americans in Baseball,” an exhibit on display through the end of the year at the Iroquois Indian Museum. The exhibit features photos and several artifacts, many on loan from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in nearby Cooperstown.