What do the Ha Che Cha Gi of Hapkido, the Tendangan Ular Sanca of Pencak Silat, and the Heel Kick of Pananjakman have in common?
Well, mostly everything.
How do they differ from the Wuh'pi'ta'pu'ni' Su'an'ni'ru of the Plains Tribes or the Tomahawk Kick of Lumberjack scrums?
Well, that is the subject of today's sermon.
We open with an anecdote to illustrate one of
today’s two points.
Two trappers, one old, one young, wound up
hunting and travelling together for a season. The younger respects the elder’s wisdom
and know-how and keeps an avid eye on all that he does. He treats this season
as one of intensive study. He watches how the old man cuts for sign, where he
places traps, where he skips traps in areas that seemed fertile ground at first
glance. He even subtly tries to imitate the old man’s series of odd rolling movements
that he performs after he alights from the dugout canoe and just before they
head off to trail game. In short, whatever the old man does, he does. He has a thirst
for knowledge.
But in the beginning, he asks few questions, a
bit of pride and all that.
As the relationship matures, he ventures
questions and receives cogent and canny answers about reading sign, choosing
camps sites, hiding your own sign, and myriad other things. Finally, one
morning after a long trek through a snowclad coulee, the two are going through
their pre-hunt ritual of slow rolling movements.
He finally asks, “So, is this series
of movements something you picked up from your time living with the Crow?”
The old man answers, “No.”
“Is it a bit of
tolling to lull game?” [See this blog for the
lowdown on Tolling and another version of today’s lesson on misinterpreting.]
“No.”
“Then, if you don’t mind
me asking, why do we do this?”
“I have bad hips; I
don’t know why you do it.”
And that slight moral reveals one side of today’s
combat lesson.
The young trapper was smart and attentive, but
perhaps so tunneled on his own cache of knowledge and looking for significance
in everything he sees, he rendered labels and meanings where none might exist.
What does that have
to do with lumberjack savate?
Lumberjack savate, may not mean savate at all.
Or it might…
Regarding frontier fighting we must never
forget that we are receiving testimony from witnesses seeing things through their
own cache of experience [or inexperience.]
Say, we are backwoodsmen with a knowledge of
what savate is, and know it is of French derivation. If we come across
Quebecois speaking lumberjacks who let some kicks fly during a scrum, we are
likely to report it as, “Ah, I am seeing the
French influence. They do savate.”
Could be….
Could also be, we are seeing the influence of
a Cornish miner who drifted North to chop wood for a season and in the midst of
a fight he tossed in some traditional purring kicks. Others saw it worked and
they did it too.
Could also be, we are seeing lumberjacks
adding the kicking aspects they saw amongst Cheyenne, Chippewa, and other tribes with their own variant of
kicking “games.”
Could be, two lumberjacks got into a fight,
one threw a chance kick and then the other did too and our observer, says “Aha! French influence. Savate!”
It is often the witness that gets to label
what he sees, rightly or wrongly. Perhaps we will come across the diary one day
of a venturesome Chinese man who left his family in Hunan to come to the States
to work on the railroad. He witnesses a lumberjack fight, observes the kicking
and records, “These woodsmen know
kung fu.” [Not an unsound proposition considering the
mingling of populations, but you get my drift.]
We must recall that friends of Texas Ranger
Frank Hamer assumed he learned savate because of his propensity to kick. They
assumed Savate because, well, savate has kicks. They had read or had heard of
savate and put two and two together.
The reference point creates the definition.
But the definition may be wrong.
According to Hamer himself, he just kicked
because it worked, he didn’t know a thing about savate.
Like the young trapper we must be wary of
making broad or concrete connections where none may exist. Things are often far
less “formalized” then we may think, particularly in the time period we are
focusing on and in such remote pockets of lineal influence.
Yet another reason why, “Oh, lumberjack savate? Cool! If I study today’s
savate I’m in good company.”
Yes, perhaps, you will be in good company, but
don’t assume too much from a small amount of evidence.
Often what is around today, says more about
today than it does yesterday.
The story often takes more digging and, in
many cases, is more interesting than that first glance.
Which brings us to our newest project…
The
Black Box Project #37: Lumberjack Kicking- The Tomahawk, Haft, & Poll Kick
from A-Z
We delve deep into three fearsome lowline tools of the
Frontier Breed.
The DVD/Print Syllabus covers—
·
The How’s and Why’s of the Tomahawk Kick,
the six targets from the historical record.
·
The Haft Kick and its single target so you
don’t get “Dustered.”
·
The brilliantly sneaky Poll Kick.
We then move on to
22 Drill Combinations Integrating Bareknuckle & Kicking
·
Then we move
inside the Clinch for 6 more drills that run the high and low lines.
And Ground Dog Scufflers, we have you covered with how
these striking tools were used in the horizontal terrain with 6 more drills
that put the “F*&^ you up!” in ground-fighting.
It can be had in the month of November
for the discount price of $55 S&H included [$65 International.]
Black Box Members, you get your
usual Deep Cut Brotherhood Discount of $26.50 Domestic/$36.50 International.
At the end of November this volume
goes to $75.
Wanna be a Wolverine of the Woods?
For information on The Black Box Brotherhood Frontier Rough n Tumble Fighting Cadre
Our podcast Mark Hatmaker: Rough nTumble Raconteur
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