Chief Wahoo

Chief Wahoo is a logo of the Cleveland Indians, a Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise based in Cleveland, Ohio. The logo is a cartoon caricature of a stereotypical American Indian face. As part of the larger Native American mascot controversy, it has drawn criticism from American Indians, social scientists, and religious and educational groups, but remains popular among fans of the Cleveland Indians baseball team. The team considered replacing the logo in 1994 when it moved to Jacobs Field (later renamed Progressive Field), but it was ultimately retained. In 2013, Wahoo was replaced as the team's primary cap logo with a block "C", but still appears on the team's uniforms' sleeves and their home baseball caps. Although Chief Wahoo is most properly described as a logo, he is sometimes called a mascot.

In 1932, the front page of the Plain Dealer featured a cartoon by Fred George Reinert that used a caricatured Native American character with a definite resemblance to the later Chief Wahoo as a stand-in for the Cleveland Indians winning an important victory. The character came to be called "The Little Indian," and became a BIG character in cartoon coverage of the team's games, including a small front-page visual box where his head would peek out to announce the outcome of the latest game. Journalist George Condon would write in 1972, "When the baseball club decided to adopt an Indian caricature as its official symbol, it hired an artist to draw a little guy who came very close to Reinert's creation; a blood brother, unquestionably."

In 1947, Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck hired the J.F. Novak Company, designers of the patches worn by Clevelands police and firefighters, to create a new logo for his team. Seventeen-year-old draftsman Walter Goldbach, an employee of the Novak Company, was asked to perform the job. Tasked with creating a mascot that "would convey a spirit of pure joy and unbridled enthusiasm", he created a smiling face with yellow skin and a prominent nose. Goldbach has said that he had difficulty "figuring out how to make an Indian look like a cartoon", and that he was probably influenced by the cartoon style that was popular at the time.

Sportswriters would eventually take to calling the unnamed character "Chief Wahoo". Goldbach has said that the logo's moniker is inaccurate. Quoting a child he met while talking at a school, Goldbach explained in a 2008 interview, "He's not a chief, he's a brave. He only has one feather. Chiefs have full headdresses."

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