Ellison Brown

Ellison Myers Brown (September 22, 1913 – August 23, 1975),[1] widely known as Tarzan Brown, a direct descendant of the last acknowledged royal family of the Narragansett Tribe of Rhode Island (also known as Deerfoot amongst his people), was a two-time winner of the Boston Marathon in 1936 (2:33:40) and 1939 (2:28:51) and 1936 U.S. Olympian.

Brown had three sisters: Myra, Alice aka "Nina," and Grace; and three brothers: Franklin, Elwin and Clifford.

His strength and balance were so remarkable it seemed to observers that his athleticism had no limits, and reminded them of Edgar Rice Burroughs‘s famous fictional hero.

These begin at the 16-mile (26 km) mark and challenge contestants with late climbs after the course's general downhill trend to that point.

[9] He would later qualify for the 1940 U.S. Olympic team but the games were canceled due to World War II's outbreak in Europe.

[10] In one of his earliest appearances as a runner in the 1935 race, Brown arrived in an outfit sewn together from one of his mother's old dresses by his sisters and worn sneakers that were falling apart.

By 1938, he had officially become a fan favorite, as perhaps the most exciting, unorthodox and colorful character in the Boston Marathon's history.

In the 1938 Boston Marathon, Brown was leading on what was an unseasonably warm day when midway through the race, he ran off the road, waved to the crowd and jumped into Lake Cochituate to swim and cool off.

Brown was also seen arriving shortly before the start of the 1939 Boston Marathon eating hot dogs and drinking milkshakes just before the race; he claimed that he had missed breakfast.

Most sports writers of the time period when Brown first started running competitively would use racist language, such as describing him as a "penniless redskin who would rather fish than work.

However, amidst whatever confusion and circumstances there may have been, he was killed when a van hit him outside a Westerly, Rhode Island, bar.

There is an annual Mystic River road race named in his honor in Mystic, Connecticut, every fall as part of a conference commemorating past Native American runners of the Boston Marathon and to acknowledge the history and significance of running in many Indigenous American cultures.