I knew I could never cheer for a team called the Yankees.  My great-grandparents(deep South, born in the 1890's) were still alive back then, so I'm sure that the first time I ever heard "damn Yankees", it had nothing to do with baseball.  So I asked Mom to name another team. "Indians" was the reply.

Genealogy aside:
Now, my mother is a descendant(on her mother's side) of a man named Joseph Willis who fought in the Revolutionary War with Francis Marion, "the Swamp Fox".  This man had been born to a Cherokee slave and her white owner in North Carolina.  Interracial marriages were illegal under N.C. law at the time and despite his father's wishes, the slave son could not obtain his freedom until 1787, after his father's death.  Though disinherited by his father's family, Willis would eventually move to Louisiana and become the first Baptist preacher west of the Mississippi River.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~larapide/bits/josephwillis.htm

My mother's father was at least half-Indian, but she knows little more of him.  Obviously, it was a short marriage and my grandmother did not speak much of him.

None of this family history was known to me at the time I was looking for a baseball team, however.  I simply became a Cleveland Indian fan because she named them...and they weren't the Yankees.  Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I've never liked the Dallas Cowboys either.

I've never regretted being a fan of the Tribe, LSU, or the New Orleans Saints.  My LSU boys came through for me with a national championship in '03, the Saints may get a ring this year, and I KNOW the Tribe will get it done one year(or more?).  If not...so what.  They'll always be MY teams.  ;)

For now they are assuming the birds were poisoned.   They sent some birds off to be autopsied(!) to confirm it.  Exterminators are allowed to kill certain species, or it could have been a prank or an accident.