So here I am, it’s Thanksgiving Night. Happy Thanksgiving to all!
There is no more opportune time to continue my story than tonight, a night in which we give thanks to everything that is good. And such is Sakawa.
When I last left this story Dr. Bob Miller suggested I contact his friend Harold Wadley (or Awi Egwa, his birth name) up in Idaho, a Native American who employs some of the same techniques with horses as Sakawa did. Having been born on the same reservation where my Aunt Amy had taught school, Harold Wadley would be– we hoped– a great resource in my quest to search for Sakawa, and to find out more about this wonderful lariat he had given me. Well, we still do not know what happened to Sakawa, but I thought it best to share with all of you Harold Wadley’s (Awi Egwa’s) response. And I quote:
“Greetings from Idaho, Dr. Dare Miller
Sorry about the delay in getting back to you but I’ve been looking for and found old friend St.Claire at Ft. Washakie. He is not in the best of health but still kick’n. He is Shoshoni. He is searching for me of anyone who might remember Sakawa or worked horses like he did. One major trainer there uses only the so-called modern methods and none of them live with their horses; not much better or different than all those today who see their horses on weekends or in an arena. St. Claire doesn’t have a phone so I went to the Rez Police figuring they probably knew him and they did! I also talked to the Arapahoe council member about Sakawa. Without telling them of your thoughts of possible pronunciation modification of Chiricahua they thought Sakawa was probably derived from that as they have always had some Apache families and intertribal marriages. The one lady thought it sounded like a Crow name but more likely a mispronunciation of Chiricahua who were noted horsemen, much more so than the Crow. Who knows, someone there on the Wind River just might find a trail back to Sakawa!
If anyone could determine the braid and twist of your rawhide left handed lariat it would be Dr. Bob Miller in my opinion as he has such insight to things of detail. This really comes out in his thoughts and teachings on horse behaviour. One of my Uncles was a left handed braider and roper. We always made the back-braid to the outside (left) when finishing his hondos. I still use one 31 foot rawhide lariat that my Dad braided some 80 years ago! I’ve got one that he braided for catching the running horses that is 82 feet and still as good as the day it saw sunlight. I’ll bet if you rub that lariat of yours real fast between the palms of your hands and then quickly smell it you will detect an aroma of smoke. We always smoked our ropes after stretching them in the sun. The fire has to be reduced to coals then the green bark and leaves or needles slowly, not thrown, onto the coals while the rawhide was rubbed with our hands whcih had to be held just so high over the coals to regulate the amount of heat reaching the rope. Our hands were the control because if it was too hot for our hands then it was too hot for the rawhide. This smoke of four different species of tree or probably sagebrush in Sakawa’s case was always used as four was medicine, not any other amount. Sakawa probably used sagebrush, junipter, mountain mahogany and willow. St. Claire said he didn’t know of anyone who still braided their own ropes!! So you have a double treasure indeed!
Those arrowheads are treasures too, if only they could talk. There is a trail that leaves out of the bottom of Jakies Fork that runs into the Wind a few miles east of DuBois. The trail climbs out of the bottom around the east side of Whiskey Mountain and heads for the Ink Wells and Dinwoody drainages that drop east into Ft. Washakie. Just as the trail breaks out on top with the rock bluffs dropping into Jakies Fork there was a line of junipter all wind gnarled all along the edge. One day I was riding Nugget, one of my Morgan geldings, coming North out of the Ink Wells in the middle of a snow storm and STRONG winds out of the SW. The wind was so gusty and revengeful that Nugget was keeping his nose close to the ground and my shoulders were burning from the wind popping the rain shelf that ran across the back of my slicker. When I saw the first junipter I headed for it and pulled up in a small depression so Nugget could get behind a junipter as I crawled over and sat under one and able to see down into Jakies Fork. As I pulled out the tail of my slicker to sit on I felt something different on the surface, just under the half inch or so of snow. As I brushed the snow away there shining like stars were chips of obsidian! It was actually more like a small pile, maybe three inches high and twice as much wide where some hunter had also pulled up at a logical place to get out of a storm and sat making arrowheads while watching for game. There were two trails that came out of the bottom of Jakies Fork that passed just under the line of junipters. I sat there wondering about the thoughts of the one who had made those chips. A few days later I was back through there, without a storm, and found other small mounds of chips. Some had pretty fairly completed arrowheads but were discarded. Who wants to risk hitting a deer with a rifle that has a bent barrell, so to speak! I never told anyone about them and maybe they still hold all the thoughts of the one who left them.
After reading your message and the thought about the sage chickens I even dreamed about them that night!! The roosters were drumming and Sakawa and my Grandpa were dancing around them! I could smell the sweetness of the sagebrush. I even have some sagebrush planted in the front yard (it doesn’t grow naturally in North Idaho). You take care and thanks for the memories. I’ll be back to you when St.Claire finds anything. AwiEgwa (Awi - deer,Egwa-great) or simply a great deer which is elk. A name given by an Uncle which I don’t normally use as people misuse or get the wrong impression of this “Indian thing” nowadays.”
Well folks, I have a lot more to say, but it’s Thanksgiving! Till then. -D.M.
Posted on November 22nd, 2007 by dogmaste
Filed under: Memoirs