Chickasaw bowyer’s art featured in ‘The Revenant’

This article appeared in the April 2016 edition of the Chickasaw Times

Chickasaw bowyer Eric Smith’s work makes a dramatic appearance very early in the Academy Award-winning movie, “The Revenant.” You won’t see Mr. Smith’s face on screen. It’s his work that makes a big impact. Mr. Smith made the arrows that slam into the fur traders’ camp as the Arikara warriors launch their violent attack.

Mr. Smith, of Lawton, Okla., also made the bows the warriors carry during several subsequent appearances in the film.

Governor Bill Anoatubby said Mr. Smith was helping revitalize an important part of Chickasaw culture.

“Bow making is an essential part of Chickasaw culture that has been passed down from generation to generation for centuries,” Gov. Anoatubby said. “It is gratifying to know that Eric Smith is practicing the craft he learned from his grandfather and passing that knowledge on to others.”  

The bowyer has been making Native American style bows and arrows for more than 30 years, shipping them to collectors, galleries and museums all over the world. “The Revenant” marks the first time he has contributed to a major motion picture.

He said he had turned down a previous request from a filmmaker. That filmmaker, he said, didn’t understand his commitment to authenticity. The makers of “The Revenant,” he said, showed more respect for Native American culture.

“What impressed me about the whole experience was they wanted everything to be historically accurate,” Mr. Smith said. “I had to respect this project because they were wanting to represent Native people accurately by using the right equipment, the right tools.”

In his quest for historical accuracy, Mr. Smith crafted the bows from Osage orange and black locust wood. He used dogwood for the arrows and pre-1900 barrel hoops for the points. Animal sinew and turkey feathers were used for the fletching.

Soon after that project began, he received a request to make bows and arrows for the upcoming HBO series, “Lewis and Clark.”

Mr. Smith enjoys working on the film projects, but he didn’t seek the jobs.

“It’s never been my goal to make bows and arrows for Hollywood,” he said. “And it was never my goal to make bows for people.

“But after I started making them, people would see my work and say, ‘I would like to have something like that, or my dad would like that.’ Then word kind of spread around so I started a website years and years ago.”

The orders grew and he began making bows and arrows full time. Since then, he has shipped bows to 50 states and 26 countries around the world.

That eventually led to the request to supply bows and arrows for “The Revenant.” Initially, he was somewhat skeptical.

“I received an email one day – I wasn’t sure if it was legit or not, but it said, ‘hey, we’re making a movie and we would like buy a bow and arrow from you to see it as a prototype.’”

After some discussion, he sent a bow and arrow representing the type used by the Arikara people in the 1820s. Working with assistant property master Michelle Hendriksen, he eventually sent 37 bows and 300 arrows to be used in the film.

It was a big order, but Mr. Smith was prepared because he cuts wood year round and had a stockpile of bow staves to work with.

He and his apprentice worked 10 to 12 hours a day making bows of Bois d’arc and black locust and arrows of dogwood for the project. After many of those long days, he would take his work home, often fletching the arrows with turkey feathers and animal sinew long into the night.

An Early Beginning

Mr. Smith started whittling on pieces of Bois ‘darc, he said, when he was only six. That is when his grandfather, Austin Dennis, began teaching him the art of bow-making. Mr. Smith made his first bow in 1984, at age nine.

“I was so excited,” he said. “I was nine years old and I set up a big box and pretended that box was a buffalo. I put that arrow on that bowstring and pulled it back and let it go and sent it all the way through that box. I was the happiest kid in the world at that moment.”

He continued to make bows and arrows. He also began researching the history of archery and the different bows and arrows made by Indian people.

He has made Chickasaw bows, as well as bows of sheep horn and elk antlers that may have been used by Indian tribes of the Northwest and other types of bows made by other tribes across the country. He currently specializes in making Plains Indian-style bows.

“Some people call and say they would like a Southern Plains style-bow, and they are usually talking about the Kiowa or the Comanche, but they could also be talking about a Sioux-style bow,” he said. “What people don’t understand – they think, if it’s a Sioux bow it could only be made from wood found in the Sioux territory, or if it’s a Comanche bow, it could only be one that was found in the southern plains in Comanche territory.

“I have to explain to people all the time that bow staves and arrow shafts and finished bows were money and they were traded. So, when you speak of the Plains bow, it is general. It is not that the Kiowa bow was made this way and the Comanche bow was made this way.

“It wasn’t just one design for one tribe that no other tribe used. Bows were also captured in war and conquest. One tribe copied off of another.”

During the time Osage Orange, also called Bois d’arc, was most common in the Red River basin, he said, bows made with the wood could be found as far away as North Dakota or Montana because of extensive trade between tribes.

Teaching a new generation

After years of making bows and arrows full time for years, Mr. Smith decided it was time to shift gears. In 2011, he accepted a job with the Bureau of Indian Education at Riverside School in Anadarko, Okla.

The last year he made bows full time before going to work at Riverside, he made 117 bows and more than 500 hand-made arrows.

“Finally, I just kind of burned myself out and the opportunity came for me to work for the Bureau and I took it,” he said.

Working at the school was a wake-up call for Mr. Smith. He had spent the better part of his life going to powwows, stomp dances and similar events where the majority of young people were interested in their tribal cultures.

“When you go to a boarding school there are some kids who speak their language and are very into their culture, but for the most part they aren’t,” he said. “So, it was a real shock to me. I thought our culture is going to die with this generation. It’s going to die and it’s going to be over with.

“The only thing that identifies us as who we are is our culture. Our language, our song and dance and when we lose that, we’re no different than anybody else. We’re just another group of people.”

Motivated to find a way to help young people connect their culture, he wrote a proposal to teach bow-making and archery history.

“All of us are from different parts of the country,” he said. “All of us have different languages, different tribal customs, different beliefs, different song and dance, but the one thing we all have in common is the bow and arrow. We all used bows and arrows.”

His class, as bow-making itself, helped students learn patience. He even took his students into the woods to cut the tree.

“We’re going to go out and we’re going to find the perfect tree, and it’s not going to be easy,” Mr. Smith tells his students. “This tree is not going to give himself up easily. We’re going to have to go out and look for it.

“We’re going to have to be really patient, because we’re going to cut this tree in half, then we’re going to quarter this tree and we’re going to split these quarters into bow staves. Then, we’ve got to put them up for a year, before we can even touch them, so we have to be patient.”

Every student who has taken the class has successfully made a bow and arrow, and the benefits of the class, he said, go much deeper. Many of the students have also taught younger relatives how to make bows.

“So this knowledge of making bows was spread and I know some of them taught their nieces or nephews, or little brothers or sisters,” he said. “So this spark that we ignited. Maybe it will start a fire and get our kids excited about being Indian again.

“What’s so funny is the boarding schools were made to take the Indian out of the Indian, when they were originated, but now they focus on the culture and tradition. The Indian school perspective now is ‘let’s get some of the culture back. Let’s teach them their culture.’ It’s completely turned around from what it used to be. And I’m glad to be a part of it.

“I am so proud of our Chickasaw people who have put our language down on video and DVD, and in books. They’re preserving our cooking and our pottery making and our art. I just think it’s our responsibility to preserve that in any way we can, because it’s who we are.”