Lumberjack “Savate,” And Sundry Things Violent by Mark Hatmaker

[The following is part of a loose series on Rough ‘n’ Tumble combat kicking starting with “Kicking in the Wild West.” Look for physical demonstration on upcoming RAWs.]


The Americas, particularly what were to become the United States, were a true melting pot of peoples, cultures, ideas, cuisines, manners, morals, mores, quirks and, to our facet of focus—combat stylings.


In any port-city you had vast influxes of all of these comingling into a motley stew and, of course, those intrepid enough to push further into rugged frontiers were likely, in many cases, hardy enough [or disreputable enough] to have more than a passing familiarity with the native cultures’ ways of throwing hands, feet, people, and weapons. Along the way they met other like-minded lusty, hearty, and ofttimes violently active souls.


This is how author Joseph Alexander Altsheler, writing in 1911 described the atmosphere of the port city of New Orleans, just after the War of 1812.


“The basis of the city was France and Spain, with an American superstructure, but all the materials had been bound into a solid fabric by their great and united defense against the British in 1815. Now other people came, too, called by the spirit of trade or adventure. Every nation of Europe was there, and the states, also, sent their share.”—The Quest of the Four


It is important to keep such mixings, minglings, and meltings in mind when we look at American Rough ‘n’ Tumble, indigenous arts, or frontier combat of any sort. Pure forms did not and do not exist under such roilings. Set schools, set academies, and, to be frank, set dogmas, set styles, tactics, and strategies inside the doors and under the roofs of designated gyms, lineage academies and salles de armes that espouse a particular school, are mere cultivated reflections of the actuality.


This unique mix of all was the original “Absorb what is useful reject what is useless” mindset. It was born of experiment and contact with rough people with rough edges, often honed in the rough out of doors.


I offer this to add perspective to how we are wise to view these original mixes. Simply because we see English boxing in the mix or, say, one of the numerous African arts that survived the tragic slave ships, such as the fearsome all-in Musangwe from the Chifude Valley, we are not to assume that merely in adopting these methods we have embodied what rough and tumble was then. Far from it. 


I also offer this so that we can get a handle on how hard it is to distinguish the arrow of causality and “heritage” in such a rolling boil of influences.


Case in point—Savate. 


We know we have a huge French influence in New Orleans and its surrounding regions. In prior work we referenced the presence of “foot duels” in the back-alleys in the early Big Easy.


So, are we to assume that any kicking or savate we see today is the “pure” form of yesteryear? 


Are we also to assume that by merely adopting today’s form of savate we have somehow captured “how it was done in the olden days”?


Before we do, consider this…we have evidence that kicking in close-quarters real-deal situations was part and parcel of a few west Texians repertoire. Some of the Wild West kickers were from the German settlements in East Texas [Braunfels comes up often.] In these cases, are we seeing a diffusion of French influences moving southward?


Possibly.


But, consider this. 


This is Alice McGrath writing in 1960 on a pragmatic rough ‘n’ tumble form of savate, not the sport-form. One hesitates to call it “street” due to the environment.


“In Canada, it is practiced by some French-Canadian lumberjacks as a means of self-defense. The use of savate has given the French-Canadians a reputation for great fighting ability in spite of the fact that many of them are relatively small in stature. The conditions of remoteness and difficulty of travel and communication did not favor the development of the sport phase of savate in Canada.”


So, here we have, again, French influence to perhaps, account for the not quite pure savate in the North, but is that all we are seeing?


We must keep in mind that many early coureur de bois [“Runners of the woods”], trappers, lumberjacks, and later Yukon gold rushers became “squaw men”, that is co-habited with Indian “brides,” or became adopted members of various Indian tribes. Some Northern tribes, the Cheyenne and Inuit among them, had tribal games and tactics that incorporated kicking. Is it French influence on the tribes, or the other way around? Or both.


Assuming only one arrow of cause to be true seems to demonstrate a poor grasp on the astonishing mix going on at the time.


Consider this.


We have references to Cajun-Kicking. Cajuns, being distinct from the Creoles of the cosmopolitan New Orleans, and, yes, both have a distinct French influence. But it is not the influence of the French that settled in New Orleans prior to 1812 that influenced Cajun-kicking. It comes long before that.


The series of brutal skirmishes in the Northern Colonies and French-Canada called collectively the French and Indian War [1754-1763] inspired many French woodsmen to get as far away from the strife as they could, so they floated down the Mississippi until there was no more Mississippi. Being a frontier people, they chose not to settle in the city but began dispersing throughout the swamps, bayous, sloughs, and backwaters of what was to become Louisiana and all of the Mississippi Delta.


So how do these people of French extraction become Cajuns.


Many of them settled in pre-war French Territory in Canada along the East coast in maritime provinces. Collectively, this area was called Acadia. These Acadians migrated down the Mississippi and Acadian, over time and to non-Gallic ears, became bastardized to Cajun.


So, with the savate lesson in mind, we have lumberjack savate in the Western portion of Canada. We have Cajun kicking in the Mississippi Delta, and we have émigré and creole savate in the port-city. We have heavy-booted Germans kicking each other in East Texas. We have cowboy booted Texicans kicking each other in West Texas. We have Indians kicking each other inside tribes ranging over the plains and into the Arctic.


The resources seem to suggest, that while all are kicking, there is something a bit unique about each and every one of these regional, cultural applications.



That’s the beauty of frontier fighting and rough ‘n’ tumble in general. It is perhaps the original hybrid, one forged not by theory or competing schools, but by actual men and women struggling to survive hostile terrain, hostile peoples, and hostile times. 


Keep that in mind when we mistake the civilized cultivated forms for the wild and wooly realities.


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