Notable Native American Runners

TIME TO READ7 mins

BYNYRR Staff

DATENovember 3, 2025

Patti Dillon and Grete Waitz running the 1981 L'eggs Mini Marathon.

As part of Native American Heritage Month, we acknowledge and celebrate the Native runners who have made an impact in the sport throughout the years. Native American running is a tradition that goes back generations. Running was essential for transportation, communication, and survival before the widespread use of horses and continues today as a form of spiritual connection to the land and a way to honor heritage and promote community. Below is a list of notable runners, each with unique stories of how they’ve contributed to the running community.

Deerfoot

Deerfoot was born into the Seneca tribe on the Cattaraugus Reservation in about the year 1828. Other sources claim his birth year was either 1830, 1826, or 1825. Deerfoot, also known as Lewis Bennett, was first recognized for his racing talent in 1856 when he won a five-mile race in Fredonia at the Chautauqua County Fair by running it in 25:00 flat and winning a $50 prize. Deerfoot sometimes raced under his nickname Red Jacket, a title that both referenced a celebrated Seneca chief and cited his colorful and often revealing racing outfits.

Jim Thorpe

Jim Thorpe was an All-American in football at the Carlisle Indian School and won the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912 Olympics. The Olympic gold medalist was a member of the Sac and Fox Nation. Named to the U.S. team for the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden, Thorpe won four of five events to claim the gold medal in the pentathlon. A week later he triumphed in the decathlon, winning the high jump, the 110-meter hurdles and the 1,500 meters despite competing in a pair of mismatched shoes. He was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States and is considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports.

Billy Mills

A member of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) tribe, Mills was born in 1938 and grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. After losing his parents, Mills was sent to the Haskell Indian School in Kansas where he developed into a promising runner. He earned an athletic scholarship to the University of Kansas and became a three-time All-American cross-country athlete. After graduating from the University of Kansas, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps and trained with Tommy Thomson who helped Mills reach his goal of competing in the Olympics. He won gold in the 10,000-meter race at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 becoming the first and only American to win gold at the event.

Louis Tewanima

During the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm Sweden, Tewanima won the silver medal in the 10,000 meters in a time of 32:06.6, a new American record which held for 52 years until Billy Mills set a new record winning a gold medal in the 1964 Olympics. Tewanima also ran the marathon and placed 16th. Tewanima was a Hopi Indian and spend nearly his entire life on a reservation in Arizona and in 1907 was sent to the Carlisle Indian School where he was a teammate of Jim Thorpe. Tewanima also competed at the 1908 Olympics, finishing in ninth place in the marathon.

Ellison Brown

Ellison Brown (also known as Deerfoot) was a citizen of the Narragansett Tribe of Rhode Island and a two-time winner of the Boston Marathon in 1936 (2:33:40) and 1939 (2:28:51). He ran the marathon in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin and also qualified for the 1940 Summer Olympics, which were ultimately canceled due to the outbreak of World War II. Brown is the only Indigenous person who won the Boston Marathon twice. He was inducted into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame in 1973. He set the American men's record for the marathon at the 1939 Boston Marathon (2:28:51) and at the 1940 marathon in Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts (2:27:30).

Tom Longboat

Tom Longboat was an Onondaga distance runner from Six Nations of the Grand River. One of the most famous athletes of the early 20th century, Longboat pioneered training methods still used today. He is considered one of the first celebrity athletes in Canada, with his athletic successes known across North America and overseas. He was a leader in establishing marathon running as an international sport and won many marathons in record-breaking times, beating competitors from all over the world. Longboat was the first Indigenous person to win the Boston Marathon (1907). He competed for Canada at the 1908 Olympic Games. He was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame and the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame.

Patti Dillon

Patti Dillon (née Catalano) was one of the most dominant American road runners of the 1970s and 80s. She was the recipient of the 2023 Abebe Bikila Award, presented annually by NYRR to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the sport of distance running. Dillon shared her story of her heritage and her dramatic run at the 1980 New York City Marathon, where she became the first American woman to break 2:30 in this NYRR blog post.

Alvina Begay

Born on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Ganado, Arizona, she ran track and cross country in junior high and high school. After graduating, she attended Adams State University and Arizona State University and continued to excel in the sport. Begay finished 10th in the women’s field of the 2007 New York City Marathon at 27 years old. She qualified for the 2012 Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon in the 10,000-meter race. In April 2017, Begay finished the Boston Marathon in 2:22:05.

Rosalie Fish

Rosalie Fish is a Native American runner, member of the Cowlitz Tribe, former student athlete at Iowa Central Community College and the University of Washington. As a senior at Muckleshoot Tribal School, Fish made international headlines when she painted a red handprint over her mouth, the fingers extending across her cheeks to honor the lives of missing and murdered indigenous women. She won two National Junior College Athletic Association championship titles and earned 11 All-American awards as a college distance runner.

María Lorena Ramírez

María Lorena Ramírez won the 2017 Ultra Trail Cerro Rojo 50K in Puebla, Mexico in a time of 7:20 and shortly after, she became the first Rarámuri woman to compete in a European ultra with her inaugural attempt at the Tenerife Bluetrail by UTMB, the second-highest race in Europe. She competes wearing huaraches sandals and a long skirt indicative of her cultural roots. She was featured in the 2019 Netflix documentary “Lorena, Light-Footed Woman.”

Verna NezBegay Volker

Verna NezBegay Volker is from the Navajo Nation. Volker grew up in the Dziłna'oodilii area of New Mexico and currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She started her running journey in 2009 and since then went from a new runner to an experienced ultramarathoner. Her desire is to use her running to inspire others, heal and bring community together. Volker is the founder of Native Women Run, an organization she created to draw visibility to Native Women Runners. She’s also a co-host of the EARTHMOVERS, a weekly podcast reclaiming the narrative by centering the experiences of people of color on the trail.

Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Whetstone

Whetstone founded Rising Hearts, an Indigenous-led grassroots organization founded in January 2017. Whetstone created the organization because of the lack of Indigenous representation around community organizing in Washington, D.C. for Standing Rock, home to the Lakota and Dakota nations, and the fight to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Whetstone is a fourth-generation citizen of the Kul Wicasa Oyate, an advocate, filmmaker, and former professional runner. She ran the Boston Marathon in honor of the 26 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW).