Talk:Moses Yellowhorse

A fact from Moses Yellowhorse appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 4 June 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Chief Yellow Horse was the first full-blooded Native American to play Major League Baseball?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2007/June.

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On 28 August 2024, it was proposed that this article be moved from Moses J. Yellow Horse to Moses Yellowhorse. The result of the discussion was moved.

Really the first?

For a competing and better sourced claimant to be the first Native American baseball player, see Louis Sockalexis, who played for Cleveland from 1897 to 1899. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:58, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

From my understanding, and based on the sources I provided here, Sockalexis was not a full-blooded native American. Keep in mind, this does not claim that he was the first person of Native American decent to play, just that he was the first full-blooded one. // Tecmobowl 03:20, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I had missed the distinction of full-blooded or not. Congrats on the DYK, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:29, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Again, this is ONLY based on what I've found. Growing up, I was under the impression that Chief Yellow Horse was the first full-blooded. It is entirely possible that this is not the case. There is no doubt he was not the first with Native American blood. Perhaps, we should mention this in the article? // Tecmobowl 03:32, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The sources cited certainly back up the article, though I would cite the second ref (biography) as well as the first ref (photo advertisement) for the first full-blooded Native American baseball player claim, as the first ref alone might be seen as having WP:RS issues. As for other previous players, it is probably worth adding a sentence or two about them in the body of the article. The second ref says "YellowHorse is considered by many to have been the first full-blooded American Indian to have played in the major leagues. Other Native Americans who played major league baseball such as Charles Albert (Chief) Bender, John (Chief) Meyers, and Lou Sockalexis were not believed to have been full-blooded natives." so some sort of brief paraphrase / similar statement would work. Hope this helps and keep up the good work, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:15, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, i try to avoid using references that don't meet WP:RS. The sources in the article appear to be reliable. That being said, I don't have a problem with expanding on this comment. Perhaps the best way would be to find some contradictory information and present both sides. how about something like:

- - At this time, there is some debate as to whether or not Chief Yellow Horse was the first full-blooded Native American to play Major League baseball. A number of sources have claimed that he is (insert ref); while other sources have stated that ______ (ref), ____ (ref), or ____ (ref) was the first.

That's a spur of the moment proposal, but do you think we're headed in the right direction? //Tecmobowl 18:17, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

- - - Congrats on the DYK! Your proposed text sounds fine to me - in that era, I think they tended to see anyone with any substantial minority ancestry as belonging to that minority (so they didn't always distinguish between "full blooded" and mixed ancestry). That plus the tendency of those who were able to to try and pass as non-minorities means we will likely never know who was first. Still, Wikipedia is based on what is verifiable and I think you've done a fine job demonstrating that there are reliable sources who verifiably say Chief Yellow Horse was the first full blooded Native American to play baseball. One last minor point, the Bio source says his name was "Mose" (no second "s"), not "Moses", though all the other sources seem to call him "Moses". Probably also worth a mention of the alternate first name version. Take care, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:53, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well thanks much for your kind words. Tell you what, i think the point of wiki is to make the enteries better through group collaboration, do you want to take this one and do some editing? I'm really thinking either of our proposals is more than acceptable. It would be good to get at least another editor involved! Let me know and this was SOO COOL! :-) //Tecmobowl 23:55, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have also enjoyed this collaboration and made some copyedits to the article - feel free to edit / revert. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:26, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sweet! Nice job! I'd give you a star if i could :-) // Tecmobowl 01:38, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! That's what we're here for, to make a better encyclopedia one edit at a time, 01:52, 5 June 2007 (UTC)!

Tecmo Banned Indefinitely. FYI--Tecmo has been banned indefinitely for repeated violations of Wiki policy.--Epeefleche 01:30, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 28 August 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Reading Beans 18:51, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Moses J. Yellow Horse → Moses Yellowhorse – Searches of Newspapers.com for "Moses J. Yellow Horse" and "Moses J. Yellowhorse" return 21 results collectively. Baseball-Reference and SABR use "Moses Yellow Horse," Fangraphs and MLB use "Chief Yellowhorse" and Retrosheet uses "Chief Yellow Horse." (Career statistics and player information from MLB, or Baseball Reference, or Fangraphs, or Retrosheet) Whatever name we end up using, there is no need for his middle initial to be in the title of this article. The following Newspapers.com searches return the following results:

Moses Yellowhorse: 1,651 results
Chief Yellow Horse: 1,615 results
Chief Yellowhorse: 1,491 results
Moses Yellow Horse: 904 results

Chief Yellowhorse and Moses Yellowhorse are roughly equally popular according to the Google Ngram Viewer (but I don't know how reliable that is because it also returns no results for "Moses Yellow Horse." I would support (and I think the data support) moving this article to Moses Yellowhorse, Chief Yellow Horse or Chief Yellowhorse. I can't see that there's a way to nominate multiple different titles though. Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 14:10, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 14:43, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Some sources also use "Mose Yellowhorse"[1][2]. This name is the one inscribed on his headstone.[3] 162 etc. (talk) 17:49, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support move to Moses Yellowhorse. Newspaper hits and Google Ngrams are not necessarily the best ways to make decisions since the generic nickname of "Chief" for Native American men has not aged well. That said, the middle initial appears unnecessary. Official documents list his surname as being Yellowhorse, Yellow Horse, and Yellow-horse, and the family uses YellowHorse today. As User:162 etc. points out, his gravestone reads "Mose Yellowhorse," which complicates things but at least reveals that he preferred his surname be written "Yellowhorse" with no space. Google Scholar has:
- Moses Yellowhorse: 29 results
- Mose Yellowhorse: 28 results
- Moses Yellow Horse: 14 results
- Moses J. Yellow Horse: 0 results.

Yuchitown (talk) 17:54, 29 August 2024 (UTC)Yuchitown[reply]

Comment: I don't think it is relevant that "Chief" as a nickname "has not aged well." See Wikipedia:Presentism. Also, I omitted Google Scholar mostly because it had so few results but also because it skews toward more recent results which tend to be influenced by presentism. WP:COMMONNAME "generally prefers the name that is [or was] most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable, English-language sources)" so I'm confident in saying that Newspapers.com, the biggest English-language corpus of news articles on the internet, is "the best way[] to make decisions" like this. That's not to say I'm arguing for "Chief" over "Moses," I'm just saying I don't think this is sound reasoning for such a position. Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 18:18, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Google Scholar matters because these are academic sources that have (hopefully) been much more thoroughly researched and reviewed than random websites. I support your move proposal and shared my looks into the man's preferred name. Yuchitown (talk) 19:19, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.