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To understand how Sam Bradford has gone beyond Oklahoma Sooner star to American Indian icon, meet Anthony Beaver.

Beaver, 17, is a senior at the state's premier Indian school, Sequoyah-Tahlequah. He plays football, he draws Indian-inspired art, and he loves University of Oklahoma football. He wears a crimson-and-white beaded necklace made by one of the school's staff members. He's been a Sooner fan as long as he can remember, maybe longer.

"I was an OU fan when I didn't even know I was,” he said.

Safe to say, Beaver would've been a Bradford fan regardless. What's not to love about a freshman quarterback who's amassed 20 touchdowns and 1,689 yards passing and launched the Sooners into the national championship hunt? But when Beaver looks at Bradford, he sees something more.

He sees himself.

Bradford is Cherokee, the great-, great-grandson of Susie Walkingstick, a full-blood. Both Bradford and his father, Kent, are registered members of the Cherokee Nation. In a state with "Native America” on its license plates and the second-largest American Indian population in the nation, Bradford is among the 400,000 Indians living in Oklahoma.

Then again, as an Indian playing the highest-profile position in this sport-crazed state, Bradford is like no one else.

He is a living, breathing Jim Thorpe.

Bradford shrugs off the attention, but he also knows he holds a unique place in American Indian hearts. Regardless of their tribe, they are proclaiming Bradford as one of their own. His performances are celebrated by Indians young and old, even chronicled on Indian Web sites. It wasn't so long ago people doubted he'd still be the starter after seven games. Now, his stardom is skyrocketing.

Bradford's success is a people's pride.

"I'm glad he's Native American,” said Beaver, who is Choctaw and Creek. "I really hadn't ever seen any high-profile Native American athletes since, like, Jim Thorpe.”

He shook his head.

"It's pretty amazing to me.”

Beaver is hardly alone.

"There's a huge buzz,” said Chad Smith, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, "and it's a great buzz.

"He's done a great service for us.”

Sam Bradford has been a well-known athlete since his sophomore year at Putnam City North.

Yet his Cherokee blood was largely unknown until this year. Oklahoma's sports information office asks all Sooner athletes if they have any Indian heritage, and Bradford acknowledged his.

"But I don't know much about it,” he told them, "so call my dad.”

Kent Bradford provided as much information as possible. The Cherokee heritage was passed down through Sam's great, great-grandmother, then his great-grandfather, his grandfather, then finally his father.

"We actually have never been active in Indian affairs or culture,” Kent Bradford said. "Not that we aren't proud of the Cherokee heritage, but we were simply raised as middle-class, Oklahoma City people.”

Several other high-profile American Indian athletes are more steeped in their heritage. New York Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain is Winnebago while Boston Red Sox outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury is Navajo. OU women's basketball player Jenna Plumley is Pueblo, Comanche, Otoe and Pawnee.

But whether the ties are tight or loose, they are ties nevertheless.

"It's still part of your identity,” Cherokee chief Smith said of being American Indian. "You are, even though you may not have the depth of the knowledge of it.”

Bradford just saying that he's Cherokee is a big deal.

Sequoyah-Tahlequah athletic director Larry Grigg suspects there have been many Indian athletes whose heritage went unknown. Dozens, of course, are known. Jim Thorpe was arguably the best athlete of the 20th century. At Oklahoma, Jack Jacobs played quarterback in the '40s, Wahoo McDaniel linebacker in the '50s and Sam Claphan offensive line in the '70s. New York Yankees pitching great Allie Reynolds played baseball at Oklahoma State.

Yet when Grigg received a book about Indians in baseball recently, he was surprised to see some of the names.

"I'm sure there have been people that have been pretty good athletes in the pros but just never said, ‘I'm a Native American,'” Grigg said. "It was more of, ‘I'm not going to say I'm Native American.'”

Occasionally when he's signing autographs, Sam Bradford is reminded of his Indian heritage.

"Can you sign this to my Indian name?” someone will ask.

Bradford said: "I definitely think since I've been the starter at Oklahoma, people are more aware of that culture that I have. It is important to some people. If it affects someone in a positive way, then I'm all for it.”

A Kiowa who spent his entire adult life involved in athletics knows that it is.

"Native Americans have always been proud of their own when they achieve,” said Bud Sahmaunt, the longtime athletic director at Oklahoma City University who retired in 2000. "You have to go back and understand how difficult it was to break into the non-Indian society.”

Sahmaunt grew up in the 1940s, when American Indians struggled to swim in the mainstream society. Many lacked the education and the motivation.

When Sahmaunt graduated from Elgin High, then played basketball at Cameron and OCU, he was celebrated by the Indian community.

"The pride shown to me by the Indian people back in my day wasn't so much about what I did or didn't do,” Sahmaunt said. "It was more about the fact I was competing in an area that Indian people didn't usually compete in.

"We have professionals, Indian professionals, who are achieving at a high level all over the country. Doctors. Lawyers. Educators. They're as significant as Sam Bradford is to Native people from the standpoint that they're achieving and showing they can be as good as everybody else in what they do. They're role models also.”

Like it or not, though, our society celebrates athletes and movie stars more than doctors and lawyers.

Being the quarterback, then, for one of the country's most high-profile programs has untold impact.

Mary Thornton celebrated the news when she heard it during the broadcast of OU's game at Tulsa. As the president of the American Indian Student Association, the largest American Indian organization at OU, Thornton believes Bradford can spread her group's message to the masses.

"It gives younger kids a chance to see that nothing's going to hold them back,” Thornton said. "They can go to college. They can do whatever than want.”

It's a valuable lesson for kids like Anthony Beaver.

Anthony Beaver plastered his dorm room walls at Sequoyah with OU posters and pictures.

"I expect them to go all the way every year,” he said.

If Sam Bradford leads the Sooners to a national championship, though, it might just mean a little more.

"This is something that's identifiable for them,” said Sequoyah football coach Brent Scott, who also teaches history. "We were talking in class the other day. How many Native Americans are in professional football? How many are in basketball?

"Well, now they can say, ‘Sam Bradford is the starting quarterback at OU.'”

Four years ago, when Scott took over Sequoyah football, he had four kids from a senior class of 18 who went to college. The next year, he had 10. The next, 14. This year, Scott has 22 seniors, and he expects almost all of them will go to college.

Anthony Beaver will.

So will Nathan Stanley.

The Sequoyah senior is regarded by coaches and media as the state's best quarterback with offers from the likes of Oklahoma State and Florida State. He is part Sam Bradford, part Jason White, a lanky 6-foot-5 kid racking up big numbers against small-school competition.

Stanley had a chance to meet Bradford last spring at OU. Bradford told him that he was Indian, though it wasn't until later that Stanley learned he was Cherokee.

"It was pretty neat to know that he's at OU, and he's the same kind of Indian I am,” Stanley said.

And now?

"Sometimes when I'm watching,” Stanley said, "I'll be like, ‘He and I are just about the same.'”