Bemus Pierce

Background and personal life

Bemus Pierce, a member of the Seneca nation, 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.

College

He attended the Carlisle Indian School where he played on the first great Carlisle football teams from 1894 to 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 Illinois played in Chicago, Pierce returned three kick-offs for touchdowns.

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:

"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. 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, 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:

"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 1900 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.

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 one of the best football teams it ever had. After spending the 1900 and 1901 seasons playing professional football for Homesetead, Pierce worked at the Sherman Institute at Riverside, California from 1902 to 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 football at the Haskell Indian School in 1906 and at Kenyon College from 1908 to 1910. In 1911 he coached football at Lafayette High School in Buffalo, New York.

Death and honors

Pierce died in 1957 in New York.

Pierce has been inducted into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame at Haskell in Kansas.