1. Bemus Pierce was an American football player and coach.
28 Facts About Bemus Pierce
1. 2.
Bemus Pierce played as a guard in the 1890s and 1900s.
3.
Bemus Pierce played for the All-Syracuse team in 1902, the first indoor professional football team.
4.
Bemus Pierce served as the head football coach at the University of Buffalo in 1899, at the Carlisle Indian School in 1906, and at Kenyon College from 1908 to 1910.
5.
Bemus Pierce, a member of the Seneca nation, was born on February 23 or 28,1873 on the Cattaraugus Reservation, Erie County, New York.
6.
Bemus Pierce married Annie Gesis, a fellow Carlisle student, from Cattaraugus, in April 1899 in the local Episcopal Church.
7.
Bemus Pierce attended the Carlisle Indian School where he played on the first great Carlisle football teams from 1894 to 1898.
8.
Bemus Pierce was a large player for the 1890s at six-feet, one and one-half inches, and 225 pounds.
9.
Bemus Pierce was selected as captain of the Carlisle football teams of 1895,1896, and 1897.
10.
Bemus Pierce became Carlisle's first All-American as a lineman in 1896.
11.
At Carlisle, Bemus Pierce was teammates with his brother Hawley Bemus Pierce.
12.
Bemus Pierce was captain of the team and one of the best men on the kick-off football has seen.
13.
Bull and Bemus Pierce faced each other on the line throughout the game, and on a play late in the game Bemus Pierce sent Bull to the ground, and the play went over him.
14.
In 1919, more than 20 years after Bemus Pierce played his last college football game, one sports writer cited him as perhaps the greatest lineman of all time:.
15.
Bemus Pierce played with his brothers, Jerry and Hawley, on the same team.
16.
Bemus Pierce scaled nearly 225 pounds, but he was tall and solid as a rock.
17.
Bemus Pierce went on to play professional football in the early years of the sport.
18.
On December 29,1902, the Bemus Pierce brothers played in what was billed as the first professional football game played in New York City.
19.
On New Year's Eve 1902, the Bemus Pierce brothers made several big gains as Syracuse defeated the Knickerbocker Athletic Club with a score of 36 points.
20.
Bemus Pierce was unable to finish the game after he was kicked in the face during a scrimmage resulting in a badly broken nose.
21.
Bemus Pierce coached the University of Buffalo football team in 1899 and gave that institution one of the best football teams it ever had.
22.
Bemus Pierce introduced football to the Sherman Institute, as the sport was new in the west.
23.
Bemus Pierce played on the Sherman teams that he coached in 1902 and 1903.
24.
In 1904, Bemus Pierce was hired as an assistant football coach at Carlisle under head coach Eddie Rogers.
25.
Between games he coached at Carlisle, Bemus Pierce played for a semi-professional team in northern New York that made a barnstorming tour.
26.
Bemus Pierce coached football at the Haskell Indian School in 1906 and at Kenyon College from 1908 to 1910.
27.
Bemus Pierce died on February 15,1957, in Loma Linda, California.
28.
Bemus Pierce has been inducted into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame at Haskell in Kansas.