WHEN I WAS AN INDIAN BOY A twelve year old boy can be anything he imagines!.....Thats what led me to become an indian boy in the summer of 1959. Id read a lot of books from the school library about our local indian heritage and one book in particular caught my attention. It was a book about how to make all sorts of native apparrel......so pretty soon I had facsimilies of an assortment of things; moccassins, breech cloths, wrist bands, necklaces, head band with chicken feather, bow, arrows, quiver, and tepee.......later I built a wigwam. My pride was the bow.....made from a hickory sapling strung with a hemp string! It had plenty of power and performed well...with the arrows fashioned from creek cane......fletched with chicken feathers...and iron nail points. I cut the heads off the nails and slipped them up into the reed shaft below a node so that the impact wouldnt drive the nail up into the shaft too far...and after splitting the end of the shaft where the nail-point went in....I tightly wound them with thread, fishing line, or sometimes with stripped dynamite wire. I could get 20 to 30 shots with each arrow before it eventually drove the nail end through the node, and rendered it useless to stick into anything. My favorite target was a big bulls eye that I drew on the west side of the barn with a charred end of wood from the wash-day fire. The arrows stuck really good in the soft chestnut boards of the barnside. The chicken feather fletches on the opposite end of the arrows were usually Dominecker hen feathers which I split with my always sharp Barlow pocket knife, and wrapped on with thread...string...fishing line, and glued with Elmers when I had some. I wore the bullseye out and it really thrilled me to see a dozen or more arrows sticking in it. I fashioned the quiver for the arrows out of Levi cloth from an old pair of worn out jeans. The mocs were made from the hide of a young steer that wed slaughtered. They were really rough to the eye and barely resembled anything that looked like the real thing....but....my imagination more than made up for my shortcomings of fashion and to me they looked any way my imagining said they did. The tepee was mostly cardboard.....tacked to sapling poles and plenty big enough for one boy to dream in. I made a necklace of crinoid fossil beads Id found around the place.....strung on a leather shoestring. It was pretty cool. Wish I still had it.......though I do have one that I made just like it.....best I remember. I had a real tomahawk axe head that Id found up in the long hollew, and I put my own version of a handle on it. I snuck around with all that garb on and was seldom seen by any of the family...due to my stealth. My favorite place to go was to the top of the neighbors ridge. No one ever went there cept me and I could be alone in my fantasys and be an indian boy! One time I took all my clothes off and ran stark-indian naked through the trees...silently whooping like crazy and feeling strangely free and wonderful. I found the remnants of a split-rail fence up there and spent many-a imagination session wondering about it......who built it...what for...and when? It had to be at least a hundred years old. One time I was helping mama on wash day. I built the fire under the tub out by the wood yard and fetched water from the little rill that ran out of the long hollow, and once I got the galvanized tub filled and the fire burning hot....I got my bow and arrows and commenced pelting the bulls eye on the barn. Mama was setting sweet potato plants in the garden patch on the other side of the barn....un-be-knownst to me. She was doing that while the wash water was heating up. Sometimes I liked to shoot an arrow up into the sky just to watch it disappear from sight.....though I would calculate a descent trajectory so I wouldnt lose my arrow and I always aimed it so that it would land in that garden patch.....Id listen for the thud-stick of its landing while going to retrieve it. Well...I sent one streaking out of sight and started walking to where I knew it would land. I heard the thud........then eerily like a siren...I heard one angry mama start going off......hollering!!!!...hollering for me!!! I must say......I was scared to death that shed been hit.......but thank God...she wasnt. The arrow had missed her by inches and was sticking straight up in the soil right beside her! Well ...it was goodbye bow.....goodbye arrows. She bade me come to her......she snatched my bow and arrows and madder than a wet hen....she stomped to to the ...by now...roaring fire underneath the wash tub, and stuck them into the fire! Whew!...Normally she would have whipped me for something like that.....but she apparently saw how scared I was about nearly killing her that she forgave me on the spot and simply scold-hugged me. She didnt have to say another word and didnt. It was a while before I was an indian boy again....... ....but...just being an ordinary boy wasnt bad. 1/4/15loneyfredhutchins akathescholarfromtheholler
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 21:08:35 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015