For 57 Years, This
Man Has Crafted Wooden Lacrosse Sticks By Hand
by Matthew Gutierrez
- Senior Staff Writer, The Daily Orange
Alfie
Jacques crafts wooden lacrosse sticks in a barn on the Onondaga
Nation reservation. (photo by Alexandra Moreo - Senior Staff
Photographer, The Daily Orange)
As steam formed inside a rusty oil tank, Alfie Jacques crafted
wooden lacrosse sticks at a barn down a dirt driveway on the Onondaga
Nation reservation a few miles south of Syracuse University.
The tank in question measures a few feet wide and about 8 feet
long. Its temperature was set so high that steam shot out of the
1,000-liter drum filled with water. Jacques, 69, stuck a piece of
wood into the tank, pulled it out and bent it.
"This boil starts steaming like hell," he said. "The wood doesn't
just bend. You have to muscle it."
A few dozen logs sat under a tarp on the grass behind Jacques.
About 15 yards away is his barn, home to what he believes is the
best stickmaking in the world. The air smelled of wood. There is
no plastic, no music, no TVs, no signs of assembly-line production.
There's just Jacques, his wood, his equipment and his devotion to
a technique a way of life that has lasted nearly six
decades. It has spanned the United States and Canada, and created
more than 100,000 one-piece wooden lacrosse sticks, each made by
hand.
Kevin
Camelo | Digital Design Editor
Seven days a week, 40-something weeks a year, Jacques wakes
up at his Fayetteville home and drives his red van to a spot on
the Onondaga Nation reservation that doesn't show up on Google Maps.
He opens up shop, crafts some sticks and locks up in the evening.
It's a no-frills operation that begins with selecting the best shagbark
hickory trees and ends by fusing a message onto the stick, along
with a trademark stamp. The inscription is often custom, especially
if the stick serves as an award or gift. A stick he recently made
reads: "Leader, friend."
"This is the Creator's Game," he said. "It's a lot more than
people think. People think of the Native American as a savage, godless
creature that's out to kill people. They say we're poor, uneducated,
on a reservation, totally controlled by the white people. That's
how they like their Indian. We're always fighting against that kind
of prejudice. So we embrace one another and the game of lacrosse."
Because of an extensive drying process, each stick takes 10
months to make and sells for about $350. Yet he maintains a drive
for his craft because for Native Americans, lacrosse is sacred.
Men are put to rest in a casket with a lacrosse stick.
Many of his sticks are made for people living on the Onondaga
Nation reservation, where lacrosse is used to heal and lift the
spirits of community members.
"Lacrosse is who we are as a people," Jacques said. "And this
is the mecca of lacrosse. People come from all over to watch the
old Indian guy make lacrosse sticks."
Alexandra
Moreo - Senior Staff Photographer
His shoulders, fingers, wrists and back hurt after he logs six-
to 10-hour days. Jacques said he makes about 200 sticks per year
now, down from about 11,000 in 1972. In the 1960s and 1970s, he
made sticks for many Syracuse, Cornell, Siena and Cortland men's
lacrosse players. He learns more about the stick creation process
every time, and often tells people who buy his sticks that they're
"the best stick I've ever made."
"Each stick is a work of art," said Jacques' sister, Freid.
"He never hurried up so he could make more and make a lot of them,
so he could make more money. That's never the purpose. It's to make
an excellent stick."
Since many traditional stickmakers have died or retired, Jacques
is running one of the last old-school stick-production joints in
the country. He works in a shed with a few lights, alongside cats
named Obama and Michelle, on a wooden bench he built with his father
in 1969. His father, Louis, introduced lacrosse to him, setting
him on a path to become a star at nearby LaFayette High School.
In the decades since, when traveling to games and conventions,
he's had a front-row seat to the rise in the game, which he correlates
with the rise in plastic heads. He maintains an appreciation for
the innovations that drove a stark decline in demand for wooden
sticks. He has no hard feelings, because he said it's what brought
lacrosse across the country and world.
"If we had relied on Indians making wooden sticks," Jacques
said, "the game wouldn't have grown as big, as fast."
The Syracuse men's lacrosse team has not visited Jacques' workshop,
he said, but visiting teams sometimes do on their trips to play
the Orange. Notre Dame and Virginia have watched him make sticks.
Last year, UVA head coach Lars Tiffany looked back to his time growing
up on a ranch in LaFayette near Onondaga Nation by
busing his entire team to Jacques' barn. Players packed into a back
room.
"The Onondaga Reservation reminds us all of the beauty of this
game," Tiffany said. "Alfie's stick-making is at the core of lacrosse."
Alexandra
Moreo - Senior Staff Photographer
The foundation for the best-quality lacrosse stick begins about
a year before it's even used in a game. Tree selection is not paramount
Jacques said all steps are integral but finding the
right tree is make-or-break. The living nature of the tree is believed
to transfer into the lacrosse stick and the person using the stick.
A bad tree makes it impossible to construct a stick, said Jacques,
who surveys forests in the LaFayette, Cortland, Cazenovia, Ithaca
and Oswego areas.
There can be no knots or limbs for the first 3 meters. The tree
must be at least 100 years old. Each log costs about $50. Sometimes,
he'll pick five hickory trees out of 200. He cuts them down himself,
and he brings seeds and plants new trees.
Then Jacques splits the tree into eighths using a wooden mallet,
axes and wooden wedges. He uses a knife made in 1832 and
passed down to him by his father to remove bark and to carve
the stick to its final form. He straightens the handle, balances
the piece and puts final trims on.
There is no playbook or measuring tools, just his own estimation
that comes from 57 years of experience. The drying process alone
is about six months. He completes each stick by sanding it, burning
his logo, dating and stamping.
As a large green belt-sander hummed last week, Jacques sat on
an old wooden bench and carved a stick. He paid special attention
to how the knife traveled. He explained that you don't just pull
the knife along the wood. A defining characteristic of a good stick
lies in the handle. Don't minimize the handle.
"It's therapeutic," Jacques said. "You have a wood stove on,
pot of coffee, just make chips all day. When you're done, the floors
are covered with chips. It's a relaxing thing to do. Everything
you do in this work has purpose to the end product. There's no gravy.
You don't just cut for cutting sake. You cut with purpose. You saw
with purpose, carve with purpose, drill holes with purpose."
Alexandra
Moreo - Senior Staff Photographer
Since then, a lot has changed. The game of lacrosse has blossomed.
Many fellow stickmakers have died. Lacrosse fans have come from
far beyond the edges of Onondaga Nation for his sticks. As the internet
boomed, he never felt the urge to have social media or advertise
on a website. There may even be a few thousand more sticks in his
future, though he looks forward to scaling back in retirement.
His sticks, at that workshop at the bottom of the hill, have
remained a constant through it all.
"This is what I live for," he said. "This is what I can do all
of the time, every day. This is my life."
Canku Ota is a free Newsletter celebrating Native
America, its traditions and accomplishments . We do not provide subscriber
or visitor names to anyone. Some articles presented in Canku Ota may
contain copyright material. We have received appropriate permissions
for republishing any articles. Material appearing here is distributed
without profit or monetary gain to those who have expressed an interest.
This is in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.