Paul Jacobs (ice hockey)

Paul Oronhyatekha Jacobs (1893 to 1973) was a Canadian professional ice hockey and lacrosse player from the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory south of Montreal. He grew up playing lacrosse, and photographs exist of him on the reserve lacrosse team in 1910, but he also became a capable hockey player and is first recorded on the Dominion Bridge Company team in the 1912-13 season. Records place him on various teams from 1912 through 1916 and again from 1917 through 1925, the last recorded team being the amateur Cleveland Ohio Blues of the USAHA. He was invited to the Toronto Arenas training camp in December 1918 and signed as a free agent, and he is credited with a single game in the National Hockey League during the 1918-19 season, although newspaper reports of the time do not list him in the lineup, so his true NHL record is unclear. He may have been the first aboriginal ice hockey player in the NHL. United States census records for 1930 and 1940 show him living in Detroit with his wife Alice.