Of “Tom” Longboat, the Canadian Indian champion long distance runner, the public has read much, and demanded more. His recent achievement of beating the world's record at Boston, Massachusetts, where he covered a track of twenty-five miles of country roadway almost a half a mile ahead of the field of one hundred and two starters, is too well known to require comment here.
But the admirers of this fleet-footed young redskin are hardly yet familiar with the ancient tribe to which he owes his lineage of agility in both brain and body. “Tom” Longboat is an Onondaga, the most intellectual, aristocratic, and exclusive red race in America. One of the original five powerful tribes known to the early French explorers, and named by them the “Iroquois,” but to-day generally called “The Six Nations,” an important band of Indian loyalists who in 1776 took up arms for the King, fought against Washington, relinquished their leagues of picked lands in the Mohawk Valley (now in the State of New York), and threw in their cause with that of the Crown. In acknowledgment for this loyalty the Six Nations received from the Imperial Government the choicest lands bordering the Grand River, in the Province of Ontario, and it was on these identical lands given to his ancestors as an award for fealty to King George, that Longboat was born.
His early environment was that of the typical present-day semi-civilised Indian, the usual three-roomed log house, set in a “clearing” in the forest, a small acreage of arable land producing Indian corn, beans, and garden roots, and within earshot of the melancholy beat of the Indian drum, the soft shuffling of moccasined feet as the imposing dances and religious festivals were being enacted in the tribal place of worship, the “Long House.” For the Onondagas are yet pagans to a man; a race too conservative to embrace Christianity and its innovations. Border civilisation, with its frequent trail of dissolution, has not touched this ancient nation with the white man's corruption and disease. The Onondagas live a primitive life of extreme simplicity, morality, and exclusiveness. Within their veins beats the blood of many honourable titles. They are represented in the Council of the Six Nations by four more Chiefs than any other tribe is entitled to, and they are the Keepers of the “Wampum” Records for the whole nation. They are the “Judges,” the Fire Keepers, and the Medicine Men in the Great Council House of the Iroquois. And it is this tribe that has given to the world Tom Longboat, who in his turn has given to Canada the championship. Twice before has the great young Dominion claimed a similar superiority over all rivals, when Jack Caffery and William Sherring proved themselves world beaters. But it has remained for this splendid young forest-bred red man to prove that the real native blood of Canada is not in its decadence, and that the splendid physique of the Canadian Indian can yet hold its own against all comers and all colours.