Handed Down - Nevada Arts Council

1990–1991
Horsehair Mecartys:
Larry Schutte and John Schutte
Families are central to the perpetuation of traditional
skills, and many an art form has been passed from
parent or grandparent to child for generations. With the
rapid change and unprecedented mobility of modern
life, however, such continuity is increasingly rare, so it
is always encouraging to see a family that is sharing a
heritage in concrete ways.
Larry Schutte is a buckaroo now working near Tuscarora,
although he has worked all over northern Nevada
and in Idaho. About a dozen years ago he got interested
in twisted horsehair ropes called mecartys, from the
Spanish mecate, and got Bill Kane, another cowboy on
the Spanish Ranch, to show him how they were made.
Larry says Bill “showed me his knowledge but made me
search and dig and exasperate myself for eleven years,
trying to be absolute in the craft. But it’s like the violin,
it takes all the time you give it and needs more. Sometimes
I’m outwitted, but making ropes of horsehair is
my therapy.” Today Larry’s ropes are acknowledged as
some of the finest in the West, the most ‘alive,’ and he is
constantly experimenting with new color combinations
and gradations.
Larry’s twelve-year-old son John has grown up in
the ranching life and rides and ropes alongside his father.
He has also taken an interest in making mecartys
and had already assisted with hundreds of ropes before
becoming involved in a formal apprenticeship. As Larry
says, “He has excellent capabilities in all things, and
shows a weakness for using good-feeling hair ropes.”
As with so many traditional arts that make use of
available natural materials, mecarty making involves
a long process of acquiring and preparing the basic
fiber. Larry gets sacks of horse mane hair (which is
softer and easier on the hands than tail hair) anywhere
he can, often trading a finished rope for it. After the
hair is washed it must be ‘picked,’ or pulled apart into
separate fibers that lie in all directions. Usually this is a
time-consuming hand process, but Larry has devised a
machine with a rotating drum and teeth that pick and
separate the hairs. A newspaper-sized sheet of picked
hair is then rolled into a bun, from which the hair is
fed to make the strands. A small electric motor turns a
hook that twists the hair, and the rope maker feeds hair
from the bun, backing up as the strand lengthens. Four
separate strings are twisted, each more than double the
length of the finished rope, and then they are twisted
together in the opposite direction in pairs. The resulting
two long strands are doubled to make four, which
are twisted again to make the finished rope. By using
different colored hair in one or more strands, or parts
of different strands, an amazing variety of stripes and
gradations can be achieved.
John has already had one of his ropes exhibited at
the Cowboy Poetry Gathering, and shows every sign
of continuing to carry on the family tradition, both as a
mecarty maker and as a buckaroo.
Larry and John Schutte with their mecartys.
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