Franklin Pierce Mt. Pleasant, Jr.

Tuscarora
1st Lieutenant Infantry US Army WWI
29th American Division in France

Biography

Franklin Pierce Mount Pleasant Jr. (June 13, 1884 – April 12, 1937) was a Native American football player, track and field athlete, and coach of football, basketball, and baseball. He played college football at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and Dickinson College and graduated from Dickinson in 1910. He was the first Native American to graduate from Dickinson. He made the 1904 and 1908 US Olympic track teams, placing sixth in the triple jump and long jump at the 1908 Summer Olympics.

Mount Pleasant served as the head football coach at Franklin & Marshall College (1910), Indiana Normal School, now Indiana University of Pennsylvania (1911–1913), West Virginia Wesleyan College (1914), and the University at Buffalo (1915). He was also the head basketball coach at Franklin & Marshall for the 1910–11 season and the school's head baseball coach in the spring of 1911. After World War I, in which he served as a first lieutenant, he settled in Buffalo, New York, where he worked odd jobs. But, to his credit, he was the person who put the spiral on the football.

After the Olympics, Mount Pleasant completed his studies at Dickinson College, becoming its first Native American graduate. He worked as the head football coach at Franklin & Marshall College for the 1910 season. His coaching record at Franklin & Marshall was 4–3–2. For the following three years he was the head football coach at the Indiana Normal School, now Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His last two teams won state championships. Mount Pleasant moved to the University of Buffalo in 1915, where he coached the football team to a 3–4 season. Mount Pleasant's coaching career was cut short by World War I. He was commissioned and served as an officer, a first lieutenant.

After the war, Mount Pleasant settled in Buffalo, New York, not far from the Tuscarora reservation. He played several years of semi-pro football with the Buffalo All-Stars. The team included many former college stars, including Tall Chief, a teammate at Carlisle Indian School.Mount Pleasant worked odd jobs throughout the remainder of his life. He enjoyed playing the piano.

His death in 1937 is a mystery, as two policemen found him unconscious on a Buffalo sidewalk. He died three days later at Emergency Hospital. Initial reports indicated that Mount Pleasant sustained a fractured skull, "possibly by violence." But the next day, Francis M. Kujawa, the Buffalo medical examiner, ruled the death the result of an accidental fall.

Mount Pleasant was posthumously inducted into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame (1973), the Hall of Fame at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (1998), and that of Dickinson College. In 2007 Chapman University in Southern California named a library after him.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Mount_Pleasant

Athletic Career

• Played American football, track and field, basketball, and baseball.
• Made the 1904, and 1908 Olympic teams, placing 6th in the triple jump, and 6th in the long jump in the Summer Olympic games
• He played football from 1905-07 at Carlisle College, and 1909 Dickinson as the QB and HB
• Coached football in 1910 at Franklin and Marchall, 1911-13 Indiana Normal, 1914 at West Virginia Wesleyan, and 1915 for Buffalo. Record: 35-15-3
• Coached basketball in 1910-1911 at Franklin and Marshall. Record: 4-4
• Coached baseball in 1911 at Franklin and Marchall. Record: 5-7-1
• Joined the United States Army, as a first lieutenant in WWI, afterwards settled in Buffalo, NY where he did odd jobs till his death
• Invented the spiral pass
• https://www.buffalosportshallfame.com/member/frank-mount-pleasant/