Missy Hendricks’ (Apache) first race was a 5K through the mountains on the Mescalero Apache reservation with her dad more than 20 years ago. They woke up before sunrise and drove 100 miles from Las Cruces. Mescalero is on the eastern shoulder of the Sacramento Mountains Range and is about 10 degrees cooler. The cold morning air stands out in her memory as she recalls waiting at the starting line, gripped by nerves.
“I remember being afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it, that I just wouldn’t be able to do the mountains,” Hendricks told Native News Online.
She focused on keeping up with her dad.
“I just followed my dad, like, tried to stay with him, and then, like, I got that runner’s high,” she said. “I felt so good, and I thought, ‘I love this.’”
Now, two decades later, Hendricks is preparing to run the 130th Boston Marathon. She never imagined that running on the rez with her dad would lead her to run beside elite athletes in the world’s oldest marathon.
“I just never thought I’d be good enough. So why even dream that big? “I always think back to myself as a little Native girl who thought that she was never going to be seen or ever be in these spaces like that,” she said.
Native History in the Boston Marathon
The Boston Athletic Association started the race in 1897, a year after the Olympics held its first marathon event. The 26.2-mile-long course has remained largely unchanged since 1924, when the starting line was officially moved to Hopkinton, a small town a marathon’s distance east from Boston. One of the most celebrated events in sports culture, the draws tens of thousands of runners and around half a million spectators.
Native people have been part of the storied race since its early days. Mohawk runner Bill Davis placed second in 1901; six years later, his protege, Tom Longboat (Onondaga), won first place, beating the record by 20 minutes.
In 1936, Ellison Brown’s climb over the leader in the final miles led to the “Heartbreak Hill” nickname on the Boston course map. That win qualified the Narragansett runner to compete with the U.S. Olympic team in Nazi-occupied Berlin, Germany. He won the 1939 Boston race in 2:28:51.
Festivities this year will officially display that history during a panel discussion hosted by the Ohketeau Cultural Center and the Boston Athletic Association. Native runners slated to speak include Carissa McKinney (Mashpee Wampanoag), Kristen Wyman (Natick Nipmuc- Hassanamisco Band), Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Whetstone (Lakota), and Thawn Harris, a Narragansett runner also related to Brown.
Even so, the race only allowed male competitors for its first 75 years. Katherine Switzer made history in 1967 when she registered under a pseudonym and completed the marathon, despite a race official repeatedly assaulting her by grabbing her and trying to pull her off her course. Five years later, Congress passed Title XI, ending sex based discrimination in sports and officially opening Boston to women.
Mi’kmaq Nation member and elite runner Patti Dillon is considered to be the first Native woman to run the race, placing second three years in a row from 1979 to 1981.
‘It’s in our DNA’
Many Native tribes’ cultures have historical roots in running.
According to Indian Running: Native American History and Tradition by anthropologist Peter Nabokov, running was vital to survival, transportation, and communication, with some tribes having networks of dedicated runners to cover long distances to carry messages.
“My people ran everywhere,” Hendricks said. “You read about stories where they’d run at least 100 miles a day. They had their messengers before horses were here; that’s what we did. We ran, and we knew exactly where the water would be and how far we could make it. For myself, running feels spiritually grounding.”
Runner and member of the Miami tribe Molly McGuire, agrees.
“It’s in our DNA,” McGuire said. “For Native people, it brings us back to a time when running was all we did; it was part of our daily life. Now, it’s healing for the generational trauma we carry.”
McGuire is also running Boston; both women are participating in the race as part of Team Native Women Running (NWR), a nonprofit that elevates the representation of Native women runners by covering race entry fees and travel costs.
Founded in 2022 by ultra runner Verna Nez Begay (Dine), NWR has sponsored (how many) women in races across the globe.
“For me, running has always been about community,” Nez Begay said. “I’ve lost my three siblings and my parents, and that is such a shared experience with a lot of Native women. That comes into play; every race I run is dedicated to my family members. It’s a healing tool.”
Miles of prayer
Diné runner Angel Jim (Black Sheep Clan, Bitterwater Clan) will be running this year’s Boston Marathon to raise money for the Joe Andruez Foundation, a Massachusetts-based non-profit that provides financial relief to cancer patients and their families.
For Jim, running is a ceremony in which she offers her prayers as her feet carry her through the first miles.
“When I start my run, I start my prayers: ‘please watch over my mom, my sister, my children,’ I’m sending all that out to my people,” Jim said. “Whatever I’m dealing with in life that is causing stress and anxiety, it somehow works its way out during the run. When I’m finished, I’m tired, but I’ve also got a clearer mind, and I know what direction I need to head.”
Boston will be Jim’s first marathon. Her sister, who works for the Joe Andruez Foundation and has specified Boston, encouraged her to sign up for it.
“She told me, ‘When you go to a marathon, it really feels like the world is unified for a couple of hours.’
‘If she can do it, I can do it.’
As Hendricks prepares to hit the course on April 20th, she reflects on a childhood spent running alongside her dad, who worked two jobs and went to school.
“Running was a way I spent time with him,” she said.
Today, Hendrick’s dad lives with Parkinson’s disease, a progressive nervous system disorder that affects a person’s ability to control their movements.
“I would give anything to go back to those days to run with him,” she said.
She hopes that her own running journey, which took her from the reservation to Boston, will inspire young Native girls to see themselves running on the world’s stage.
“I hope that some little girl can look up to me and say, ‘If she did it, I can do it.’” she said.
