Maxie Jim
The study of The Martial Arts was life long work and was a passion of mine. I had become a Master when I received my 8th Degree Black Belt. There was no more material to learn of my system, so I decided to resurrect how my Native people would have fought against their adversary in the 1800's. I was already proficient with weapons like the knife and clubs, but wanted to add the obvious weapon from our heritage, the bow and arrow. While doing research on the Internet and later collaborated by interviewing many elders, I discovered the blowgun was used wildly by many of the southeastern tribes. My ancestors came from Mississippi, but were later removed against there will by then President Andrew (Asshole) Jackson. He alone should have been held accountable for the destruction of thousands of Native American. Against laws and treaties in place, they were moved against there will to the land west of the Mississippi, called Indian Territory, now known as Oklahoma. Because of his instance to remove the Indians, he has become the most hated President by most Native Americans. I didn’t like Jackson either.
I learned the Choctaws were excellent farmers, and were skilled hunters. There use of the knife and the bow and arrow were legendary, however they were also skilled in the use of a blowgun. A skilled hunter could kill small game more than eighty feet away. I was a natural at the bow and arrow and was pretty much self-taught. As a young boy, my father taught me how to craft a fine bow and how to use the weapon. The blowgun was more mysterious, because I could not locate anyone who knew anything about the weapon.
After hundreds of inquires, I discovered an old Choctaw name Maxi Jim near 90 years old in a little town east of Durant, Oklahoma. The people in the area called him Chata Jim. Chata is the native Choctaw word for Choctaw. I visited with him one Sunday afternoon and he kindly invited to spend a week with him and his family. He lived with several of his children who were in there 50's and late 60's. The front room had the usual linoleum floors, and the kitchen floor was covered with wide slabs of rough pine lumber. But the other half of the house had no floors at all. An iron wood stove was located in one corner of the room. The iron wood stove was very much like the one my family had used when I growing up as a young child. We did not have dirt floors in our home, but I had seen this first hand when I was about 12 or 13 year’s old. Our family would load up in the old Oldsmobile, and travel to a small town east of Atoka, OK, where my family attended church for the weekend. Many of the housed there had dirt floors. It’s amazing how clean you can keep a dirt floor, if you sweep it several times a day. The old Choctaw daughter, reminded me of how my mother used to cook on that old wood-burning stove. She would make fresh homemade biscuits and Indian fried bread, three times a day. She knew how to make Pachofa, an Indian dish that consisted of cornmeal dumplings with pinto beans mixed in. It was served in it’s natural gravy and the aroma of it took me back to another lifetime when my Mother used to prepare the same dish for our family. Another Indian dish from my past that I had forgotten was Banahaa. It was made from boiled squirrels and hominy. I must have gained ten pounds while I was there.
Chata Jim taught me how to split bamboo, hollow it out and put it back together. He spent hours teaching me how to make the darts. The old Choctaw was amazing, even today how accurate he was with the weapon. If he could see it, he could hit it. He was the master of this weapon. I did not look forward to leaving him and his family, for because of his age, I knew I would not see him again. He was from another time and place, and so much information would be lost by his passing. I respected him and his wisdom and honored the knowledge that he was able to pass on to me. I thanked him for his hospitality and brought my crude weapon back to Dallas. After years of refinement to the weapon, I became very skilled with the weapon myself. I felt fulfilled, in that I was able to link up with something from my past heritage and bring it back to life.