Thomas Charles Cogwagee Longboat was the son of George Longboat and Elizabeth Skye. Born on July 4, 1886, he was of the Onondaga Nation from Six Nations Territory.
In 1905, as a teenager he won the five-mile Victoria Day race at Caledonia, Ontario. Longboat won the 1906 Hamilton's Around the Bay road race, the oldest road race in North America event, by more than three minutes. In 1907, he won the Boston Marathon with a time nearly five minutes faster than the previous best. He represented Canada in the 1908 Olympics. His status as a racing celebrity was solidified in 1909, when he won the world professional marathon championships at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
At the age of 29, he set aside his athletic career to enlist. As a dispatch carrier with the 107th Pioneer Battalion in France, Longboat ran messages and orders between units. He also kept in competitive form by racing in inter-battalion sporting contests, many of which he won.
The famous runner was wounded twice during his time of service. Once he was mistakenly declared dead in the battlefields of Belgium, after being buried in rubble as a result of heavy shelling. He survived the war and returned to Canada in 1919. He served as a member of the Veterans Guard in the Second World War while stationed at a military camp near Brantford, Ontario.
Tom Longboat died in 1949 at the age of 62. He is a member of the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame and the Indian Hall of Fame.
