Handed Down - Nevada Arts Council

1994–1995
Shoshone Buckskin Tanning:
Edward McDade and Lyle Sam
The South Fork Te-Moak Indian Reservation at
Lee, about 20 miles south of Elko, is one of the
prettiest spots in Nevada. In the foothills on the west
side of the Ruby Mountains, it has plenty of water and
trees, good pastures, and spectacular views of the hills.
Edward McDade has lived there for over 40 years,
raising hay and cattle, sometimes working for other
ranchers, and wondering “how the government goofed
up and gave the Indians such a nice piece of ground.”
Edward is one of the few practitioners of the Shoshone
art of tanning and smoking buckskin, a skill he
learned from his wife Florine’s grandmother and has
been doing for about 15 years. He uses the hides to
make work gloves that are much in demand among
the South Fork ranchers. Because so few people tan
their own hides anymore, there is also a big demand
for smoked buckskin among women in town who make
moccasins, gloves, dresses and other items, and he has
no trouble selling any hides he has.
into the hide and allowed to dry. The hide is then rewetted,
and must be pulled and worked constantly until
it is dry, soft and white, a time-consuming process that
demands great patience. Edward says, “You can start
in the morning, about ten o’clock, and if it’s nice and
warm maybe it’ll take about four or five hours. When
it starts getting stiff, you don’t have it. It ain’t going
to come out no matter how hard you fight it.” In this
case, the tanning must be done again, sometimes several
times, before the hide is soft enough to use.
Edward’s apprentice was Lyle Sam, a native of Elko,
who started getting interested in the traditions of his
heritage in his mid-30s. He scraped and tanned several
hides, and helped Edward smoke a finished hide to give
it a golden color. For smoking, the hide is folded in
half and sewed together, leaving an opening so it can be
hung over a smoky fire of cedar. One of the lessons Lyle
learned while working with hides was to slow down.
“It’s hard to slow down to do it, because I was raised in a
hurry-up world, but this isn’t part of that world. You’ve
got to make time for this, not hurry up and get it done.
It’s not a commercialized product, it’s a traditional project
where it takes time to get it done, if you’re going to
do it right.”
Edward speaks for all traditional artists when he
says, pointing to the center of his chest, “It hits you in
here, don’t it? It gets you in your heart, that’s where it
comes from. Not just anybody can do it, cause you got
to feel it in here.”
Edward and Lyle work on scraping a deer hide.
As with many traditional arts, the preparation of
the materials takes at least as much time as creating the
finished product. In the first place, deer hides aren’t always
easy to come by, especially ones that have been
carefully removed so there are no holes or tears. The
hide is soaked in water for three to five days, and then
scraped with a drawknife to remove all the hair and the
thin layer of skin under it. The tanning process comes
next, using a mixture of brains (formerly deer brains,
but now more usually cow), soap and lard that is rubbed
Lyle Sam and
Edward McDade
admire a freshly
smoked hide.
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