Bemus Pierce
Encyclopedia
Bemus Pierce was a Native American football
guard
in the 1890s and 1900s. He played for the great Carlisle Indian School teams from 1894-1898 and later played professional football for the championship teams from the Homestead Library & Athletic Club of 1900 and 1901. He also played for the All-Syracuse team
in 1902, the first indoor professional football team. Pierce was also a football coach at the Carlisle Indian School, University of Buffalo and Sherman Institute
.
, was born on February 23 or 28, 1873 on the Cattaraugus Reservation, Erie County, New York
. He married Annie Gesis, a fellow Carlisle student, also from Cattaraugus, in April 1899 in the local Episcopal Church
. Together they had three children.
At Carlisle, Pierce was teammates with his brother Hawley Pierce
. The two brothers, each weighing over 200 pounds, were both among the best players of their day. In 1906, The Washington Post declared them the greatest pair of linesman brothers in the history of the sport:
During a game against Penn, Pierce faced off against Alfred E. Bull
. Bull and Pierce faced each other on the line throughout the game, and on a play late in the game Pierce sent Bull to the ground, and the play went over him. After the play, Pierce cried out to the Penn players, "Look, look at Sitting Bull."
In 1919, more than 20 years after Pierce played his last college football game, one sports writer cited him as perhaps the greatest lineman of all time:
Even after the successes of Carlisle's later stars Jim Thorpe
, Joe Guyon
and Albert Exendine
, sports columnist Lawrence Perry opined in 1923 that Bemus Pierce was the greatest of all the American Indian football stars:
and 1901 Homestead Library & Athletic Club football team
, the latter of which won the professional football championship of 1901.
In December 1902 and January 1903, Bemus and Hawley Pierce helped the All-Syracuse football team win the World Series of Football
. On December 29, 1902, the Pierce brothers played in what was billed as the first professional football game played in New York City
. The game, played in front of 3,500 spectators at Madison Square Garden
, matched the All-Syracuse team featuring the Pierce Brothers and Glenn Warner against a local New York City team. The wood flooring of the arena was pulled up, and a gridiron was laid out on dirt, with a field 70 yards long and 35 yards wide. A newspaper from Syracuse credited the Pierce brothers with playing to win. Pops Warner and Bemus Pierce were credited with "tearing great holes in the Gotham line." And on offense, the paper wrote that "Bemus Pierce hurdled like a racehorse for distance." "Another interesting chapter occurred when the temper of Bemus Pierce was aroused and he threatened to mix it up with everybody in general."
On New Year's Eve 1902, the Pierce brothers made several big gains as Syracuse defeated the Knickerbocker Athletic Club
with a score of 36 points. The championship game was held at Madison Square Garden in New York City, and Syracuse defeated the Orange Athletic Club by a score of 36 to 0. Bemus was unable to finish the game after he was kicked in the face during a scrimmage resulting in a badly broken nose. His brother Hawley, however, scored a touchdown for the All-Syracuse team.
During the summers, Piece also played semi-professional baseball. Pierce was the catcher for a semi-professional team in St. Paul, Minnesota, and also coached baseball at the University of Wisconsin.
at Riverside, California
from 1902-1903. Pierce introduced football to the Sherman Institute, as the sport was new in the west. The team he coached was the Sherman Institute Braves. Photos and records of this team are part of the Sherman Indian Museum today.
In 1904, Pierce was hired as an assistant football coach at Carlisle under head coach Edward Rodgers. The 1904 season marked the first time the Carlisle school had a Native American coaching staff:
Rodgers, Pierce and Hudson replaced Glenn "Pop" Warner. Pierce also served as Carlisle's interim head coach in 1906. During the 1904 season, Pierce continued to play professional football. Between games he coached at Carlisle, Pierce played for a semi-professional team in northern New York that made a barnstorming tour.
Pierce also coached at the Haskell Indian School
and Kenyon College
(1910).
Pierce died in 1957 in New York.
Pierce has been inducted into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame at Haskell in Kansas.
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
guard
Guard (American football)
In American and Canadian football, a guard is a player that lines up between the center and the tackles on the offensive line of a football team....
in the 1890s and 1900s. He played for the great Carlisle Indian School teams from 1894-1898 and later played professional football for the championship teams from the Homestead Library & Athletic Club of 1900 and 1901. He also played for the All-Syracuse team
Syracuse Pros
The Syracuse Pros, also sometimes referred to as the Syracuse Eleven, were a professional American football team from Syracuse, New York. It is suspected, though not known for sure, that the team joined the American Professional Football Association in 1921 and left the same year...
in 1902, the first indoor professional football team. Pierce was also a football coach at the Carlisle Indian School, University of Buffalo and Sherman Institute
Sherman Indian High School
Sherman Indian High School is an off-reservation boarding high school for Native Americans. Originally opened in 1892 as the Perris Indian School, in Perris, California, United States, the school was relocated to Riverside, California, in 1903, under the name The Sherman Institute...
.
Background and personal life
Bemus Pierce, a member of the Seneca nationSeneca nation
The Seneca are a group of indigenous people native to North America. They were the nation located farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League in New York before the American Revolution. While exact population figures are unknown, approximately 15,000 to 25,000 Seneca live in...
, was born on February 23 or 28, 1873 on the Cattaraugus Reservation, Erie County, New York
Cattaraugus Reservation, Erie County, New York
Cattaraugus Reservation is an Indian reservation located partly in Erie County, New York, United States. The population was 2,001 at the 2000 census....
. He married Annie Gesis, a fellow Carlisle student, also from Cattaraugus, in April 1899 in the local Episcopal Church
Episcopal Church (United States)
The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States , but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe...
. Together they had three children.
College
He attended the Carlisle Indian School where he played on the first great Carlisle football teams from 1894-1897. Pierce was a large player for the 1890s at six-feet, one and one-half inches, and 225 pounds. He was selected as captain of the Carlisle football teams of 1895, 1896, and 1897. He also became Carlisle's first All-American as a lineman in 1896. In an 1896 game between Carlisle and the University of Illinois played in Chicago, Pierce returned three kick-offs for touchdowns.At Carlisle, Pierce was teammates with his brother Hawley Pierce
Hawley Pierce
Hawley Pierce was an early professional football player for the Philadelphia Athletics of the first National Football League and later for the Syracuse Athletic Club during the 1902 and 1903 World Series of Football. In 1901, he began his professional career playing on the 1901 Homestead Library &...
. The two brothers, each weighing over 200 pounds, were both among the best players of their day. In 1906, The Washington Post declared them the greatest pair of linesman brothers in the history of the sport:
"But the greatest pair of brother linesmen were the Indians, Pierce. Bemus Pierce and Hawley Pierce were right guard and left tackle in the Carlisle line in the old days when the redskin booters of the prolate had everything in the country scared. Two hundred pounds apiece they weighed, and they won games for their team in 97. Tackle back and guard back for a solid half was the Indian play and it was 400 pounds of Pierce into the opponents' line pretty steady. Bemus was captain of the team and one of the best men on the kick-off football has seen. He could measure and place his kicks accurately and every red knew where the ball was going before it soared."
During a game against Penn, Pierce faced off against Alfred E. Bull
Alfred E. Bull
-External links:...
. Bull and Pierce faced each other on the line throughout the game, and on a play late in the game Pierce sent Bull to the ground, and the play went over him. After the play, Pierce cried out to the Penn players, "Look, look at Sitting Bull."
In 1919, more than 20 years after Pierce played his last college football game, one sports writer cited him as perhaps the greatest lineman of all time:
"When the great line men are discussed in these days and times, some of the veterans of football hark back to the days of Carlisle's glory on the gridiron and speak of the mighty Bemus Pierce. Pierce played with his brothers, Jerry and Hawley, on the same team ... Bemus Pierce scaled nearly 225 pounds, but he was tall and solid as a rock. Despite his great bulk he was fast as a streak, and no line player of recent years has shown more real ability."
Even after the successes of Carlisle's later stars Jim Thorpe
Jim Thorpe
Jacobus Franciscus "Jim" Thorpe * Gerasimo and Whiteley. pg. 28 * americaslibrary.gov, accessed April 23, 2007. was an American athlete of mixed ancestry...
, Joe Guyon
Joe Guyon
Joseph Napoleon Guyon was a professional American football player in the National Football League...
and Albert Exendine
Albert Exendine
Albert Andrew "Al" Exendine was an American football player, coach, and lawyer. He played college football at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School where he was an All-American end...
, sports columnist Lawrence Perry opined in 1923 that Bemus Pierce was the greatest of all the American Indian football stars:
"But of all indian footballers old Bemus Pierce stands first in the affections of those who played against him. Bemus in the opinion of Princeton and Harvard opponents, was one of the greatest linemen that ever stood on a football field. Foster Sanford agrees with this and Foster knows a lineman when he sees one."
Professional football and baseball
Pierce went on to play professional football in the early years of the sport. Bemus and Hawley Pierce played together on the line of the famous 19001900 Homestead Library & Athletic Club football team
The 1900 Homestead Library & Athletic Club football team won the professional football championship of 1900. The team was affiliated with the Homestead Library & Athletic Club in Homestead, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh...
and 1901 Homestead Library & Athletic Club football team
1901 Homestead Library & Athletic Club football team
The 1901 Homestead Library & Athletic Club football team won the professional football championship of 1901. The team was affiliated with the Homestead Library & Athletic Club in Homestead, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh...
, the latter of which won the professional football championship of 1901.
In December 1902 and January 1903, Bemus and Hawley Pierce helped the All-Syracuse football team win the World Series of Football
World Series of Football (1902)
The World Series of Football was a series of football games played indoors at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1902 and 1903. It originally comprised five teams, four from New York state and one from New Jersey...
. On December 29, 1902, the Pierce brothers played in what was billed as the first professional football game played in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The game, played in front of 3,500 spectators at Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden (1890)
Madison Square Garden was an indoor arena in New York City, the second by that name, and the second to be located at 26th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan...
, matched the All-Syracuse team featuring the Pierce Brothers and Glenn Warner against a local New York City team. The wood flooring of the arena was pulled up, and a gridiron was laid out on dirt, with a field 70 yards long and 35 yards wide. A newspaper from Syracuse credited the Pierce brothers with playing to win. Pops Warner and Bemus Pierce were credited with "tearing great holes in the Gotham line." And on offense, the paper wrote that "Bemus Pierce hurdled like a racehorse for distance." "Another interesting chapter occurred when the temper of Bemus Pierce was aroused and he threatened to mix it up with everybody in general."
On New Year's Eve 1902, the Pierce brothers made several big gains as Syracuse defeated the Knickerbocker Athletic Club
Knickerbocker Athletic Club football team
The Knickerbocker Athletic Club was an early amateur and later professional football team based in New York City from around 1897 until 1902. The team is best known for participating in the 1902 World Series of Football. During the event, the Knickerbockers defeated the Warslow Athletic Club from...
with a score of 36 points. The championship game was held at Madison Square Garden in New York City, and Syracuse defeated the Orange Athletic Club by a score of 36 to 0. Bemus was unable to finish the game after he was kicked in the face during a scrimmage resulting in a badly broken nose. His brother Hawley, however, scored a touchdown for the All-Syracuse team.
During the summers, Piece also played semi-professional baseball. Pierce was the catcher for a semi-professional team in St. Paul, Minnesota, and also coached baseball at the University of Wisconsin.
Coaching career
After retiring as a player, Pierce became a football coach. He coached the University of Buffalo football team in 1899 and gave that institution the best football team it ever had. After spending the 1900 and 1901 seasons playing professional football for Homesetead, Pierce worked at the Sherman InstituteSherman Indian High School
Sherman Indian High School is an off-reservation boarding high school for Native Americans. Originally opened in 1892 as the Perris Indian School, in Perris, California, United States, the school was relocated to Riverside, California, in 1903, under the name The Sherman Institute...
at Riverside, California
Riverside, California
Riverside is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, and the county seat of the eponymous county. Named for its location beside the Santa Ana River, it is the largest city in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metropolitan area of Southern California, 4th largest inland California...
from 1902-1903. Pierce introduced football to the Sherman Institute, as the sport was new in the west. The team he coached was the Sherman Institute Braves. Photos and records of this team are part of the Sherman Indian Museum today.
In 1904, Pierce was hired as an assistant football coach at Carlisle under head coach Edward Rodgers. The 1904 season marked the first time the Carlisle school had a Native American coaching staff:
"For the first time in its history, this season the Carlisle Indian football team will have full-blooded Indians as head coach and assistant coaches, with full authority to plan their own campaigns against the products of the white men's universities in the persons of Edward Rodgers, head coach, Frank Hudson and Bemus Pierce, assistants. Never before have the redskins been trusted to do the brainwork incident to the planning for a football season ... Assistant Coach Bemus Pierce is a former Carlisle pupil, and for the past two years has had charge of the Sherman Institute team, of California."
Rodgers, Pierce and Hudson replaced Glenn "Pop" Warner. Pierce also served as Carlisle's interim head coach in 1906. During the 1904 season, Pierce continued to play professional football. Between games he coached at Carlisle, Pierce played for a semi-professional team in northern New York that made a barnstorming tour.
Pierce also coached at the Haskell Indian School
Haskell Indian Nations University
Haskell Indian Nations University is a tribal university located in Lawrence, Kansas, for members of federally recognized Native American tribes in the United States...
and Kenyon College
Kenyon College
Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio, founded in 1824 by Bishop Philander Chase of The Episcopal Church, in parallel with the Bexley Hall seminary. It is the oldest private college in Ohio...
(1910).
Pierce died in 1957 in New York.
Pierce has been inducted into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame at Haskell in Kansas.