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About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 4, 2007)
News from Inchon Country P^ge 6 Spilyay Tymoo January 4-, 2007 W ÊÊÊÊÊKÊÊKKKÊÊ Oklahoma Native draws on tribal tradition SCH ULTER, Okla. (AP)— Inside every bois d’arc tree, a longbow is waiting to emerge. Knowing how to craft one is easy compared with coaxing the bow out o f the tree, says Mike Berryhill, a Muscogee (Creek) Indian who has made longbows, used to shoot arrows, in the tra dition o f his ancestors for de cades. “A bow has to have heart,” he said. “Bois d’arc is a wood with heart.” In the days when the Creek people roamed their Georgia homelands, before their forced removal to Oklahoma, hunters used longbows exclusively for sustenance, Berryhill said. “This is who we are; it’s a part o f our culture,” he said. “Nowadays, we are taught how to make a living, and th a t’s good, but back then it was sur vival, pure and simple.” The Creek elder estimates that he has made dozens o f In dian longbows in his lifetime. He got acquainted with, and then consumed by longbows at the instruction o f his grandfather, Jo e Berryhill. “I was about 8 when we sta rted b ein g around longbows,” Mike Berryhill said. “I ’ve been involved with mak ing them ever since.” Many types o f bow makers exist, and they come out o f the woodwork for frontier oriented events, Berryhill said. He usu ally attends gatherings wearing his tribe’s traditional attire. But bowmaking the Creek way is a dying art form, he said. “This is something I want to teach young people,” he said. “Still, it’s hard to get them inter ested in it because it’s such a time-consuming process.” Berryhill must cut and cure the wood b e fo re m aking a longbow. D epending on the wood, weeks or months can pass before a bow can be finished. He has made bows out o f lo cust, elm and hickory, but he prefers bois d’arc. “I don’t see my part in it as any special thing,” he said. “The real deal is being out there and listening. I sometimes feel like I can hear when it’s time for me to start working on a bow.” First, the right piece o f wood must be found. Berryhill has spent many hours tramping through acres o f bois d’arc trees to find a potential longbow. The tree is not cut down; only a branch is removed. “I try to waste nothing when I take a piece o f wood,” he said. Once he finds the right tree and branch, timing is everything. The old-timers theorized that the moon has a say in what time o f the month a limb should be removed. I f it is cut down when the moon is too full, the wood is apt to be weak. Cold weather is the best time to cut, because the tree’s sap has drawn down to its roots. That makes the wood easier to work with, Berryhill said. “I t’s the gravitational pull. The moon is very powerful, but we’ve lost our ability to realize that and use it for our benefit,” he said. “Som e white bow m akers will say that it doesn’t matter when the wood is cut, but I don’t agree.” Berryhill calls himself a tree- reader, likening trees to humans. Each has attributes and weak nesses, but appearances can be deceiving, he said. “We both come from the Earth,” he said. “We also have different characters and colors. Like wood, some people are easy to work with, while others are gnarly.” The attributes o f a bois d’arc bow are obvious. One o f the longbows on his living room wall— a handsome, richly dark ened instrument about 5 feet long— glows with a soft luster, but it has not been stained. Berryhill makes arrows, too. He uses river cane, which he says seems made for arrow-making. But river cane is becoming harder to find locally, he said. His arrows either are fitted with pre-made ends from kits or he makes the points out of bois d’arc. Turkey feathers adorn the oppo site end. He puts his arrows into a quiver that he tanned himself. The quiver smells faintly o f smoke and holds more than a half-dozen arrows. A bou t 90 p ercen t o f the longbows Berryhill makes are for non-Indians who wish to own a real Indian bow, he said. People have paid him as much as $375 for his bows, but he also has given them away as gifts. “Sometimes I ’ve made bows that I couldn’t part with, maybe because a part o f me goes into them,” he said. “I f you think about it, almost every culture on Earth at some time or another has used the bow and arrow in their history.” M em bers o f o th er area tribes also make longbows. The Cherokee N ation has named several o f its longbow makers as living art treasures. Archers from that tribe, as with the Creeks, fashion their own bows. Both tribes use them to hunt game, from which they will take meat and native medicine. Berryhill hopes someday to teach his 7-year-old grandson how to use and make Creek longbows. The youngster has not shown much interest yet, but Berryhill holds out hope. There’s still time, although he laments the passing o f tribal el ders who take their knowledge, such as bowmaking, with them. “Bows are a lot like Indians, in my opinion,” he said. “They both have resiliency.” Las Vegas hero travels home to reservation SH IP R O C K , N.M. (AP)— Inside the First Wash Christian Church, where thin wooden walls only soften the howl and slow the chill o f a fierce wind, the preacher’s booming baritone raises biblical chapter and verse in English and Navajo. T h e stren g th found by Stanford Washburn and other homeless men to lift a 5,000- pound Cadillac o ff a young girl in North Las Vegas is “evidence o f the supernatural, o f the hand o f God,” Pastor William Dou glas Lee says. It is days before Christmas. Washburn, warmed a bit by a pot-bellied stove in the room, listens as one parishioner after another acknowledges his hero ism o f Nov. 25. “W e’ve been praying fo r Stanford,” says church secretary Cecelia Bidtah, who invited him to the service. “He’s been gone for years, but we always prayed for him. He’s had a rough life because o f the alcohol. Maybe now w hat he has done has changed that behavior.” What Washburn did was help save the life o f a 9-year-old child he didn’t know. Robyn Rubio is alive today, healing at University Medical Center in Las Vegas from a bro ken pelvis and other injuries, because Washburn and several other transients did the seem ingly impossible. The girl’s con dition has been upgraded in re cent weeks from critical to good. She was struck by a Cadillac when she broke away from an adult relative and darted into Las Vegas Boulevard in a working- class North Las Vegas neighbor hood about 4 miles north o f the glittery Las Vegas Strip. The one-eyed Washburn was with at least three other home- less men drinking nearby. He saw the vehicle strike the girl and drag her underneath for nearly 50 yards. The men ran toward the girl. Washburn yelled to lift the car. The men dropped cans o f malt liquor and hoisted the vehicle o ff the child’s body. Washburn believes the other transients, who ran away as po lice approached, may have had warrants out for their arrest. P olice said the 66-y ear-o ld woman driving the car was not at fault in the crash. Clasping his hands in prayer in the Sh ip ro ck chu rch , ■ Washburn wears a sweatshirt, three coats, two pairs o f pants, two pairs o f socks and black shoes. He wore m ost o f the same clothes while living in a vacant desert lot strewn with old clothes, dead rats, plastic bags, cigarette butts, beer cans and wine bottles. T he 48-year-old Navajo, a Self-described drunk with three grown children and a 2-year-old grandson named Ra Shawn, re turned to the Navajo Nation after an anonymous benefactor read about his role saving the little girl’s life. The man, in Florida, con tacted North Las Vegas police and offered to pay Washburn’s way home to his family in New Mexico for the holidays. The trip took almost 20 hours by bus, Washburn says. It was not easy. “I had the worst hangover o f my life, and Greyhound lost my luggage,” he says. “That man sent me $250 for a bus ticket, clothes, food and a motel room, and I ended up with fewer clothes than I originally had.” Meeting relatives at the bus station, Washburn learned that three family members had died— including a 26-year-old nephew who he says either jumped or fell from an 80-foot cliff. Still, Washburn seemed rea- sonably content in church. He says, and his two grown daugh- ters agreed, that he has not touched alcohol since he arrived in New M exico on D ec. 8. Washburn also has a grown son, who, like him, is a transient. While his daughters work, he cares for his grandson, who of ten tries to peek beneath the patch over Washburn’s right eye. Sometimes he says he lost the eye from a firecracker. Other times he says he was hit in the eye with a stick. “I don’t want to embarrass my daughters or m other or frighten my grandson by drink- ing,” Washburn says. He sits in daughter Shonia’s apartment in Farm ington, N .M ., a city o f 40,000 people about 40 miles east o f Shiprock. Colorado’s rugged San Juan Mountains and the desert highlands o f Arizona and Utah are nearby. Washburn’s other daughter, Cherylene, says her dad had sweats and chills since he stopped drinking. “It hasn’t been easy,” she says. “But he knows that if he drinks in front o f us, he can no longer stay with the family. We have to worry about little Ra Shawn. My father obviously cares about his grandson.” Washburn’s return has been largely p o sitiv e, but it has strained the budgets o f his daughters, who live together. Shonia Washburn, Ra Shawn’s m o th er, w orks as a m oney counter in a casino. Cherylene works as a laborer. T h ey bou ght W ashburn clothes to replace the ones lost on the bus trip, then found it hard to pay the phone bill. Whether Stanford Washburn will rem ain sober when he leaves New Mexico is unknown. “I ’m going to go back to Las Vegas to check on the little Rubio girl in about a month,” he says. “And I can’t say whether I w on’t drink or not. I can’t make any promises. I often get depressed, and the alcohol helps me get through it.” Carefully listening to her son, Elise Washburn, who speaks N avajo, begins to talk. Washburn’s sister Daisy trans lates. “I am very proud o f my son for helping that little girl,” the mother says. “We have prayed for that little girl every day since we found out about what hap- pened. I want her to have a long life.” Washburn’s mother says she w orried consid erably since Washburn hit the road more than 20 years ago. But she says she believes his wandering spirit must be satisfied. He is known as “chief on the streets around Las Vegas, and “Fred” on the reservation, He generally supports himself through day labor jobs and sleeps outside, Every couple o f years he m ight call relatives. A fter stretches sometimes as long as seven years he returns to the reservation. Some family members, in cluding aunt Ruth Nez, don’t understand why a man with Job Corps training as a mechanic and who worked as a truck driver and handyman on the reservation hitchhikes all over the West and ends up homeless. An uncle, Roger Shaggy, wor ries that one day his nephew will be attacked. “There are evil people out there,” he says. “Stanford is a good man who would never hurt any one.” Washburn’s arrests largely have been for public intoxica tion. He says he also was caught driving while intoxicated. North Las Vegas police Sgt. Brad Walch became involved in Washburn’s welfare after the girl was inju red. W alch helped Washburn buy clothes, and tried to keep Washburn sober before his bus trip to New Mexico. “He’s always trying to help people,” Walch says. “He really is a good man.” Washburn admits he is a man o f contradictions. He says reli gion means nothing to him, then goes to a prayer meeting. He becomes depressed because he lives outside and doesn’t have a good job, then he says he doesn’t want to be tied to one place or work a long time at one job. Chief dies of injuries from auto accident SE A T T L E (AP) - A hereditary ch ief o f the Hoh Tribe has died o f in juries suffered in a traf fic accident on the Olym pic Peninsula, the Wash ington State Patrol re ported. Herbert Clyde Fisher Jr., 52, o f Forks, died at Harborview Medical Cen ter in Seattle, where he was brought after the col lision on U.S. Highway 101 about 11 miles south o f Forks. Fisher also was known as Chief Klia o f the Hoh Tribe, one o f the small est tribes in the Northwest with just 170 members. Fisher served on the H oh tribal council for many years and presided at numerous tribal events, including an August 2002 potlatch during the Tribal Paddle Journey, when as many as 45 tribal canoes visited the Hoh reserva tion. Fisher's sister, Mary Leitka, told the Peninsula Daily News o f Port An geles that Fisher loved to carve canoes and was part o f the Hoh Tribe's first Tribal Paddle Jour ney canoe in 1997. During this year's canoe journey to the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe's reservation in Auburn, Fisher taught people o f the Cowlitz Indian Tribe how to handle a canoe because it was their first journey, she said. Toys-Tools-Housewares-Clothing-Crafts-Gifts- Your Bargain Connection V A T Ö 1 Open Monday* Sat 9 : 00 - 6 : oo me c Happy New Y ear from the Outpost ^teost P LU S H B L A N K E T S LV O V ■ V? A S S O R T E D ST Y L E S *YOUFL CH O ICE* Toys-Tools-Housewares-Clothing-Crafts-Gifts-
