Over the four decades after that 1871 founding, the Red Stockings went through a series of nicknames, with the most consistent and longstanding reflecting those local roots: starting in 1883, they were generally known as the Beaneaters. In the early 20th century a new American League team was founded in the city; known initially as the Boston Americans and then as the Boston Red Sox, this franchise experienced immediate and lasting success, and the less successful National League franchise the Beaneaters would soon lose many of their players to this new rival and struggle to keep a fanbase in the city and region. Something new and different was needed to make the Beaneaters stand out on this increasingly crowded regional and national baseball landscape.
Unfortunately, in 1912 club president John Ward settled on racist stereotypes as the means to draw that renewed attention and fandom. The team had recently been purchased by James E. Gaffney, a New York City construction magnate who was also an alderman in the city’s Tammany Hall political machine. Tammany Hall, which had been named after the Delaware Native American Chief Tammamend, had long used a stereotypical “Indian chief” in full headdress as its emblem. And so Ward decided to honor Gaffney, and in the process to differentiate this New York owner and new franchise direction from its Bostonian roots, by christening the team with a new Tammany-inspired nickname and a stereotypical logo to go with it: the Boston Braves.
Over the subsequent century, the Braves would go through two moves, to Milwaukee in 1953 and then to Atlanta in 1966, but the nickname and (increasingly) stereotypical logos would endure. Indeed, it was during their years in Milwaukee and Atlanta that the franchise truly doubled down on the racist rituals, through the stereotypical mascot known as Chief Noc-a-Homa. Between its 1966 creation and the character’s 1986 retirement, three men played the Chief at home games; the first two were white performers in “redface,” but the third and most enduring was an Ottawa Native American, Levi Walker, who played the role from 1969 to 1986. Walker’s role unquestionably complicates narratives of this character as purely stereotypical, but it doesn’t absolve the team of the consistent and overarching use of stereotyping imagery—not just around the Chief, but with other characters (such as the early 1980’s addition Princess Win-a-Lotta) and rituals (such as the early 1990s use of the Tomahawk Chop, which has endured long past the retirement of these mascots).