It’s a beautiful cloudy gray morning. We were blessed with soaking rains all night last night — not so hard that the ground couldn’t absorb it, but steadily enough that water is pooled this morning on harder surfaces. It’s desperately needed; the gap between end-of-summer monsoons and winter snows leaves earth and air alike here arid in the golden light.
For me, the morning strikes a deeper chord; the dawn sky was the soft dove color of cloudy autumn mornings in my own home as a child, the air clear, with just the slightest hint of cleansing water, a feeling, nothing tangible. Unrelieved sunlight is hard for me; I miss the soft, nurturing embrace of overcast skies, the protection and strength of the storm clouds.
It’s a feeling I associate with the colors and smells and textures of fall, natural and otherwise: red and orange and yellow leaves dancing on the wind; dried cornstalks and Indian corn in reds and blues and golds and fat pumpkins in the garden; the scent of wood smoke in the air; the shouts of my classmates from the swings and the slide, tumbling down the little hill on grass now stiff and brown; plaid skirts and warm knee socks; the red-covered Big Chief writing tablets for school that my five-year-old self somehow thought were made for me.
It was also the time of year that some of the boys disappeared for days at a time.
Hunting season.
And it was always the boys; never the girls (which annoyed me even then — I would never have been able to kill an animal myself, but I did learn to shoot a bow at age five). Some years, nearly all the boys in my class would be gone in a given week, spending time out in the already-not-so-wild areas, hoping for the chance to stalk a prize buck. Back then, of course, notions of licenses and permits were not so much a thing; the notion that perhaps the bagging of wild game needed to be controlled to preserve the ecological balance was only just beginning to take hold in some corners of the public sector. So, too, were school absences regarded as perfectly normal. A particularly conscientious parent might send a note with his or her son a day in advance to let the teacher know that he would be out with his father for a few days; probably at least as often, the note arrived a week later, after the hunting trip was over and the boy back in school. Or perhaps no note at all; father and son and other male family members and friends simply went and returned, in the normal course of things, and no one batted an eye.
Today, of course, there are calendared hunting seasons, and killing game outside of that period, or without the requisite licenses or permits or fees, can mean harsh penalties. So can unexcused absences. But hunting season is still a thing, both at home and here and elsewhere.
And among our traditional peoples on our own lands, hunting is still often done the old way.
Sometimes it’s for specific traditional purposes — cultural or spiritual requirements or duties. Sometimes it’s simply in tribute to the old ways — keeping the skills alive, and evening the odds for the animal. It’s a much more competitive undertaking, requiring much greater skill, to bring down a deer or an elk with a traditional bow and arrows rather than a high-powered rifle.
The men in my family never hunted. They hated the proposition, the killing, the gutting, the skinning and cleaning, the blood, and they were far too assimilated to feel any pull of cultural or spiritual obligation. Some of my cousins did, though, and no doubt still do. Wings has hunted traditionally, although not recently. Like many of the men here, he has his own collection of bows and arrows, knives and blades for skinning, and he knows how to use them properly. Friends have gone hunting in years past and brought back deer or elk for us, or ritually-slaughtered buffalo, and we treat the meat and the blood as the traditional blessings that they are. Such a ritual approach is not, contrary to what a pair of tourists in the gallery once informed me, something that makes us “terrible people.”
Cultural misunderstandings notwithstanding, one of the categories of art we’ve always carried in the gallery falls under the rubric of “traditional weapons.” Slingshots, hammers, tomahawks, axes, knives, arrows . . . and, yes, complete bow and arrow sets. The latter are often meant purely for display, or as toys for children, although I’ve noticed that they tend to attract (mostly male) children from 3 to 93. They’re carved and whittled from local woods, accented in bright colors and sometimes beads and a few feathers, and generally sold with two or three shafted but untipped arrows. But every once in a while, we’ll have the real thing on offer: full-sized, fully functional weaponry that is actually intended to be used.
Today’s featured item, pictured above, is one such example.
It’s actually a piece from Wings’s private collection. His brother-in-law made it years ago, and Wings bought it from him then. As with much of the Native art Wings has acquired over the years, he knows that he is only its steward for a time. It may go into his private collection initially, but that’s often only because he hasn’t yet adjudged it time to put it out there in the public market. And so it has been with Daniel’s bow and arrows and hand-made quiver.
From its description in the Other Artists: Traditional Weapons Gallery here on the site:
This traditional bow and arrow set, crafted entirely by hand by Daniel Marcus (Taos Pueblo), is fully functional as a Native weapon and a stunning work of art. Bow and arrows alike are carved and whittled carefully from local wood, shaped and balanced for use. The bow string is made the old way, of dried sinew, and each arrow is wrapped tightly in sinew to hold the points. Arrowheads are made of razor-sharp metal. The quiver is truly a collector’s item: Buckskin, tanned entirely by hand to a soft white color and buttery-soft texture, it’s made with natural fringes of twisted buckskin accented with old bronze beads. Length 41 inches (dimensions approximate).
Wood, metal, feathers, sinew, buckskin, metal beads
$850 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
As the description says, it is truly a work of art. That said, there’s nothing impractical about it in the least; it was created with the assumption that it would be used traditionally, and so the design aims for functionality rather than ideas of aesthetic flawlessness. But your average non-Native hunter would likely be more comfortable hanging it on a wall than actually using it; it’s much harder work and requires a truer aim and more physical adaptability than does a modern bow. But for those skilled in the old ways, it’s perfect for traditional use.
For the rest of us, it’s a work of art that is simultaneously a living bit of a very long and ancient history.
~ Aji
