The Cleveland Indians (nicknamed The Tribe) are a Major League Baseball team based in Cleveland, Ohio. They currently are in the Central Division of the American League. Legend has it that the team honored Louis Sockalexis when it assumed its current name in 1915. The spectacular Sockalexis, a Native American, had played in Cleveland 1897-1899. On the contrary, when the "Naps" sent longtime leader Napoleon Lajoie to the Philadelphia Athletics at the end of the 1914 season, owner Charles Somers asked the local newspapers to come up with a new name for the team. They chose "Indians" as a play on the name of the Boston Braves, then known as the "Miracle Braves" after going from last place on July 4 to a sweep in the 1914 World Series. Proponents of the name acknowledged that the Cleveland Spiders of the National League had sometimes been informally called the "Indians" during Sockalexis' short career there, a fact which merely reinforced the new name. In any case, the name stuck. And 34 years later, the Indians went on to defeat that same Braves franchise, 4 games to 2, in the 1948 World Series -- after first winning a one game playoff against Boston's other team, the Red Sox. The victory over the Braves was the franchise's second of two World Series titles; the Tribe had also won the 1920 World Series, defeating the Brooklyn Robins 5 games to 2. (Pluto, 1999) The club nickname and its cartoon logo have been criticized for perpetuating Native American stereotypes, and protests have arisen from time to time. In 1997, during the team's most recent World Series, three American Indian protesters were arrested, but later acquitted. Full Article on Wikipedia