Frank Mount Pleasant

Frank Mount Pleasant was a member of the Tuscarora Indian Nation. He attended college at the Carlisle Indian School and later at Dickinson College. At Carlisle, which he attended from 1902-1907, Mount Pleasant was a jumper on the track team, and he also played quarterback on the football team alongside Jim Thorpe. Mount Pleasant never competed in the AAU championships in track & field, but in 1908 he entered the long jump at the Eastern Olympic Trials in Philadelphia. There he jumped 23-2¼ to finish second, only ¼ inch behind Cornell’s Edward Cook. This performance was enough to place Mount Pleasant on the 1908 US Olympic team.

At London, Frank Mount Pleasant competed in both the long jump and triple jump, and finished sixth in both events. In the long jump, won by Frank Irons of the United States, he failed to equal his performance at the Trials, jumping 22-4½ and trailing four Americans and the Canadian, Calvin Bricker. In the triple jump, he set a personal best with 45-10 but was over three feet behind Ireland’s Tim Ahearne, who won with 48-11¼. This basically ended Mount Pleasant’s track & field career, leaving him with career bests of 23-2¼ for the long jump and 45-10 for the triple jump. Frank Mount Pleasant later coached football at what was then the Indiana Normal School (later Indiana University of Pennsylania) from 1911-13, where his last two teams won state championships. In 1998, he was inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Mount Pleasant settled in Buffalo, New York, near his ancestral home, where he worked odd jobs throughout his life. He never played professional football, as the NFL did not come into existence until 1920. However, he played several years of semi-pro football with the Buffalo All-Stars, made up of many former college stars, including one of his old Carlisle teammates, Tall Chief. He died under suspicious circumstances. Two policemen found him unconscious on a Buffalo sidewalk and his obituary noted that he had sustained “a fractured skull ‘possibly by violence’”.

Personal Bests: LJ – 7.24 (1906); TJ – 13.97 (1908).