TIFTON — Ocilla resident and master primitive weapons craftsman Jack McKey displayed his creations ranging from simple clubs and knives to complex bows and lances Mar. 9 at the Georgia Museum of Agriculture (GMA).

McKey is a Valdosta native but has worked all over the country while mastering his craft. He worked as a commercial fisherman in both the Gulf of Mexico and off the Alaskan coast, as a cowboy and an auctioneer, and even was hired to build canoes for a Ken Burns’ documentary about Lewis and Clark.

Through his time spent all around the country, McKey has met many tribes of Native Americans and has collected the necessary materials needed to make his creations. He’s self-taught and builds everything from scratch.

One of his key tools is a stone hammer which he has used since the 1980s. He uses his hammer for multiple purposes like driving teepee pegs and pounding sinew strands for other crafts.

McKey told the story about where he got the stone for the hammer in first place.

“One day, I had a colt out there that I couldn’t catch,” McKey said, “So I went and got a stone and chipped the groove all the way around that stone. I tied a piece of rawhide on that thing. Soften the rawhide a little bit. And I finally got him caught one day, penned him and hemmed him up and got him calm. I tied that on his front leg and I turned him loose. Every time I’d walk out there to him he’d take off. That stone would fly up, hit him in the belly, wrap around his legs, throw him on the ground, and I’d still just come walking. And it wasn’t long, boy, I mean just a few hours, I could walk straight up to that thing and put my hands on him anytime I wanted to. I left that stone on him for three days. He found out what walking meant. I told that colt I was too old to run and too fat to fly. I didn’t have time to chase him all over the world.”

A more extravagant build he demonstrated was his hunting quiver and bow case made from otter hide. According to McKey, “You don’t see these on TV very often because they don’t know what they’re doing.”

It’s a left-handed quiver built to draw arrows from the front rather than the shooter reaching over their shoulder. McKey says the purpose of a front-facing quiver is to be more discreet while hunting.

Towards the end of the demonstration, McKey said, “This is what the American government would not tell calvary recruits about,” as he held a horse lance standing at around eight feet tall. It was used by Native Americans against the United States Army and was based on the Spanish sword blade.

The art of building these weapons is a dying craft according to Betty McKey, Jack’s wife. She is a Tift County native and went to school at Valdosta State University and the University of Georgia. She has worked full-time as an educator to help support what he does because she believes the craft must be preserved and passed on.  

Betty was there to help keep Jack, who is 77 years old, on track during his demonstration and help organize the exhibit.

Tom Grant, associate professor of journalism at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, organized the event as part of a student-driven documentary about McKey’s craft and life. The event was meant to serve as a forum where people could come see his work, hear him talk about it, and ask questions all while Grant and his team of students film.

“There was a huge amount of interest,” Grant said. “Much more than we expected.”

The documentary is expected to be released in Spring 2020.

To close the event, McKey read “the only poem he’d ever written in his life” called “The Profit’s Grizzly.” It was written after McKey read an article published by his friend Russell Annabel. His article was about Native Americans made to leave their homes to make way for the construction of the city of Anchorage.  McKey knew of the situation well and spent time with the Native Americans there.

While reading the poem, he broke into tears.

McKey wrote an introduction for his demonstration that he decided not to read but when asked what he wanted people to take away from his demonstration today he pointed to his scrapped introduction.

He wrote, “There is no contribution or greater service to mankind than preserving, re-learning, and re-educating the achievements and contributions of one’s own cultural heritage, unless, perhaps, it is the sensitivity expressed by one culture to ensure the cultural survival of another.”