Alfred Jacques, Onandaga stick maker, kept the door open
Nathan Abrams
Special to ICT
Ganoñhsahgaeoñh, Alfred “Alfie” Jacques, Turtle Clan from the Onondaga Nation, passed on June 14, 2023. Jacques was a fixture in his community and was widely respected as the world’s foremost wooden lacrosse stick maker. He spent his life honing his craft and sharing his love of the game. He was 74.
Jacques worked out of a shop in the backyard of his childhood home on the Onondaga Nation territory. The cement brick walled shack, built by Jacques and his father Lou Jacques in the early 1960s, was where he worked and welcomed visitors who came from all over to watch and learn from him. It was home to sticks at various steps along the nearly yearlong process of splitting, steaming, bending and carving, some of his own self-designed, handcrafted tools and equipment, and his cats, Obama and Michelle.
A typical day for Jacques began in the kitchen of the house just up the hill for coffee with his sister Freida Jacques. The two story house, which Freida now lives in, was also built by their father Lou and mother Ada when Jacques and Freida were just kids.
“He would come here around 8:30-9 a.m. He’d sit in this chair, and I’d sit there, and we’d have my coffee and he’d tell me stories and talk to me and tell me jokes,” Freida said.
Freida Jacques said Jacques had always been funny. She remembers him as something of a prankster in his youth, though never mean spirited.
“He was always a jokester, somebody who would make faces in the mirror,” Freida Jacques said. “He did enjoy a good laugh.”
When Jacques was around 12, he needed a new lacrosse stick. Freida said there were other stick makers working on territory at the time, but money was tight. Jacques’ father Lou had worked as a carpenter, and so the two of them decided to make his new stick together themselves.
“Alf says they made several lousy looking sticks,” Freida said, “but they learned on it, and they learned how to make a really good stick.”
The two of them built their shop in the backyard and dedicated themselves to stick making, learning by trial and error over years. At the height of production in the early 1970s, they were making and selling as many as 12,000 sticks annually. These numbers dropped dramatically when plastic sticks entered the scene and demand for traditional wooden sticks decreased.
Ganoñhsahgaeoñh, Alfred “Alfie” Jacques, had a deep respect for his materials, and knew when and how to cut a properly aged hickory tree for his sticks. He believed that the energy and medicine in the tree would be passed on to the player using it. He died on June 14, 2023. (Photo courtesy of the Onondaga Redhawks)
Despite the decline in sales, Jacques and Lou continued their work. As he learned and developed his skills, Jacques also welcomed people from the community who took an interest in their work.
“He always would make time to talk to anybody who visited and that was really something everybody enjoyed,” Freida Jacques said. “The fact that he would give people time and talk and give them stories about his experience.”
Parker Booth, Eel Clan of the Onondaga Nation, was an apprentice of Jacques since 1993. He recalls meeting Jacques as a child at the longhouse and telling him that he too planned to become a stick maker. When he was 15 years old, he began his apprenticeship by sweeping the floors and carrying the heavy shagbark hickory logs from the woods back to the shop. Over decades, Parker became versed in Jacques’ process from tree to completed stick.
“He told stories about when they would go up north and ask questions when they were first learning, guys would shut the door on them,” Booth said. “He was willing to share because he was on the other end of that at one time. He was trying to learn at one time.”
Jacques was a lifelong learner and never stopped refining his process and stick design. He had a deep appreciation for the time and attention required in working with his materials. Jacques would often say that every step along the way has a purpose to the end product. Parker points to the offset head and cowhide catgut wall as just a few examples of the attention to finer details that set Jacques’ sticks apart, even as synthetic materials have increasingly dominated the game.
“He’s been doing it so long - I mean he was cool before it was cool,” Booth said. “Everybody else was saying, ‘Ah those are no good, plastic’s the way to go, you’re never going to use those again.’ I heard all those sort of things and he kept it going.”
Ganoñhsahgaeoñh, Alfred “Alfie” Jacques, created many of his tools, such as this metal bending form, uniquely for his process. Jacques died on June 14, 2023. (Photo courtesy of the Onondaga Redhawks)
Jacques was a craftsman all his life. As a child, he learned basketmaking from his grandmother. He worked for many years as a machinist, producing rocket engine parts on manually operated machines. His craft in the shop was not limited to lacrosse sticks or to hickory wood. He produced corn soup paddles, snowsnakes, bark rattles, and various kitchen utensils from ladles to peanut butter jar scrapers. Freida Jacques said Jacque was a skilled cooking and enjoyed discussing recipes with people when they bought these kitchen tools.
On top of his dedication to the craft of stick making, Jacques had been a skilled lacrosse player. He and his father Lou built a makeshift box in their backyard before an arena for play had been built at Onondaga. He played goalie for the Onondaga Warriors, coached by Lou. Jacques, alongside his brother Clyde and cousin Travis, was a member of the 1967 Lafayette High School lacrosse team which was inducted into the Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame as the 2006 Team of Honor. He was inducted into the Ontario Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 2011 and the Upstate Lacrosse Foundation Hall of Fame in 2014. He played at the professional level for the Syracuse Stingers in 1974. Alf was particularly proud to have served as general manager for the Onondaga Redhawks during their 2010 Presidents Cup championship season.
Jacques’ love for the game inspired him to become an educator and share his knowledge not only of the craft of stick making, but also the history and significance of the game.
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Robert Carpenter, founder of Inside Lacrosse Magazine and president of Tailwater Films, met Jacques while writing his book, “LACROSSE: North America’s Game.” He looked to Jacques as the foremost historian of the game’s Indigenous roots to provide this vital context. The two became fast friends, and Jacques joined Carpenter as he toured the book at signings and trade conventions.
From that point on, Jacques became a fixture at these sorts of venues. He traveled widely across the country giving demonstrations at trade shows and schools, and continued to welcome visitors in his shop. Jacques gave many interviews and was the subject of several video profiles documenting his process. He remained committed to sharing what he had learned, and now had the opportunities to teach the wider lacrosse world about the game’s history.
Alfred “Alfie” Jacques’s workshop often doubled as a classroom. Jacques died on June 14, 2023. He was 74. (Photo courtesy of Robert Carpenter)
Jacques was working with Carpenter on his forthcoming project, “Second Growth,” a film which seeks to shine a light on the ongoing stewardship of lacrosse by the Indigenous peoples from whom the game originates.
Jacques taught about lacrosse’s significance to Haudenosaunee people as a medicine game. In addition to his contemporary sticks, he created replicas based on antique Haudenosaunee styles dating back over a century. He also highlighted the array of stickball games which are prevalent among other Indigenous nations across the continent, and made sticks for play in these games as well. He had a reverence and respect for the history and future of the game.
“Those sticks would remain and those sticks would be a reminder to the people who owned them what Alf had talked about,” Robert said. “He just has countless sticks out there in the world that are planted in all these different locations like trees.”
Robert Carpenter interviews Alfred “Alfie” Jacques and New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Alf had previously repaired a wooden stick belonging to Bill. The legendary stick maker died on June 14, 2023. He was 74. (Photo courtesy of Robert Carpenter)
This past year, Jacques was the recipient of the 15th Spirit of Tewaaraton award for his life’s work. The 2015 Spirit of Tewaaraton honoree, Onondaga Chief Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan, called Jacques “a national treasure of the Haudenosaunee.” He was, and remains, an inspiration to his community and to Haudenosaunee people.
Rodney Haring, PhD, MSW, Beaver Clan of the Seneca Nation, is a stick maker from the Seneca Nation’s Cattaraugus territory. He has played lacrosse his whole life with a wooden stick. He never worked with Jacques directly, but as a player and a craftsman, Alf has always been an inspiration to him.
“He was really like the gold standard or the elder statesman of stick making,” Haring said. “He was the one that carried that knowledge for our confederacy.”
Rodney recalls crossing paths with Jacques at lacrosse games over the years and showing him the wooden sticks he had most recently made. Jacques always met him with a smile and the encouragement to continue his work. Jacques was a strong believer that there was no right or wrong way to make a stick, and supported other makers in finding their own way.
Haring owned a stick made by Jacques that he cherished and used for over a decade playing defense in the Can-Am Senior B Lacrosse League. He hung up the stick eventually and held onto it as a keepsake from the master carver. Jacques created objects of beauty. However, he made his sticks first and foremost to be played with.
When a young man from Haring’s community approached him to get a wooden stick of his own, Rodney decided it was time for Jacques’ stick to come out of retirement.
“Alfie would have said the same thing, these sticks are not really made to sit on the shelf or be a display,” Haring said. “They’re made to be played with. That stick’s purpose and enjoyment is to be played with and put into a game.”
“After the game they asked if they could buy it, and I said, ‘You just keep it as long as you play with it,’” Haring said. “And so that stick had a second journey with another family now. It’s in its right place.”
Jacques, through his work and through his teachings, continues to facilitate a love of the game for his people.
“He is truly part of Haudenosaunee history,” Haring said. “His name and his knowledge will be carried on for generations to come.”
He leaves behind a legacy not just for his outstanding dedication to preserving his beloved craft, but more deeply for his generosity of spirit.
“[Alf was] a good, solid, honest, funny, friendly person,” Freida Jacques said. “Just an all around good person.”
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