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Dave Christensen ✆ buckskin@mtintouch.net Dear Family,   My 5th grade teacher just died at age 97.  He was a buckskinner too.  Several friends are writing about him on a web site and phoning each other in remembrance of him.  You may find my story amazing.  It directed my life and influenced my family’s.  For those not wanting to read a story, this is not important.   Love  David/Dad        AN ASTOUNDING STORY.  A Memorial to “Longbow” Safford.   Alton “Longbow” Safford was my 5th grade teacher in La Canada, California 1955.   My grandparents raised me on the stories of my ancestors who came from Kentucky to Oregon in wagon trains.  They lived among the Nez Perce.  My grandma wore some Indian clothes, and began teaching me Chinook Trade Jargon.   Being the first child in my family, I felt it essential that I did not let our history or our frontier ways vanish.  I wanted to be like my great grandpa hero, and asked for a buckskin jacket for Christmas.  I got some approval from the other kids, but Mr. Safford saw my spirit and praised me.  His support for me was so strong that I longed for the day when I would tan my own deer hides and make my own jacket.  It launched me on my life’s work of learning the tanning techniques from Natives all over N. American and Canada, and working with anthropologists and the major museums.    I lost contact with Mr. Safford after 5th grade.  In my early years I did not credit him with my life’s interest.  Young people think that they do everything by themselves.  But in my adulthood I looked at the steps that directed my life, and Alton’s impact on me was pivotal in setting my life’s course.  His validation of me was the moment that changed everything, and I was released to do what I was born to do.   In my early 30’s in Montana I was living off the land as a full time brain tanner.  I was frustrated with incorrect historic documents on how Indians tanned, because the observers writing the stories did not understand the process.  Historic literature is all messed-up, and the secrets are missing.   I remember one very powerful day.  An unforgettable day where my spirit was set free. During this day my imagination ran all over the place.  I was dreaming of any possible scenario that I could dream of, where someone had witnessed how Indians tanned before white contact, and their record was somehow made available to me.  I now see that this was actually a form of prayer where I invited unlimited possibility to happen.  My mind was out of the box, and it allowed me to connect with “infinite possibility”.   Three days later I got a very thick letter from California.  I did not recognize the name of the person.  It began like this:   “When I was a boy of 8 years old I lived on an Indian reservation in Oregon.  One day a very old Indian lady came to my home and said, ‘Come with me.  I am going to show you how we tanned buckskin before we had white man’s tools.  These methods are not used any longer.  I am the last one to know how to do it the old way.  And I want to teach you how we did this before I die, so that you will always remember how it was done.  Some day there will be a man that you are supposed to pass this information onto, so you must remember everything I show you’.”   The letter continued, “I have waited all my life and never found the person that I was supposed to share this information with.  I just saw in the Buckskin Report (magazine) that you are a brain tanner, and I thought you might be the person this was meant for.”   Enclosed was a letter of about 18 hand written pages with all the details I had dreamed of finding.  It had been written the day of my prayer.   The letter was signed, Alton “Longbow” Safford.  I thought… “Wasn’t my 5th grade teacher named Mr.Safford?  Couldn’t be.   I wrote him back thanking him, and it was my 5th grade teacher.  He had thousand of students since me, and had written me now knowing who I was.  He remembered me once I told him about my jacket.  He did not know that his affirmation of my interest had set my life’s course in motion.    To me Alton was the encourager of my soul.  He intersected my life in a pattern that was established in 1914 when he was 8 years old.  The intuitive Indian lady foresaw that he was to pass her knowledge onto me decades before I was ever born.  This sends chills up my spine every time I think about how long ago this was planned.    We were people who all followed our destiny.  I think that God may sometimes intervene in people’s lives to guide them; but if we humans are tuned-in, God can use us and he doesn’t have to use angels.  Alton performed the duty of a guiding angel in my life, as an obedient messenger from the Great Planner.   Alton and I shared a few Rondayvoos.  I enjoyed his wife Miriam too.  He gave me the support and affirmation that I never got from my own Dad.  And Alton loved my family.  We talked on the phone a little, but it’s been several years.    Alton did what he was born to do.  He kept alive the art of bow making. I was his student, specializing in brain tanning.  We were alike.  Alton was “tuned in”, and blessed many people in his very long and active life.   It is good to see that so many others loved him and saw how much he had to give.  Thanks for sharing.   Dave Christensen Big Timber, Montana       Alton camping at age 94. He died at age 97, still active.