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So Long, Buckshot! 

(Written on the day after his funeral)

by Katie Lacey

(as published in the Okanagan Historical Society's 14th Report, 1950, pp. 141)

Yesterday in Keremeos we said, "Good-bye" to an old friend--a man who had many friends, as the crowds who followed him to his last rest testified. The warm spring sun shone down on the quiet Similkameen Valley where he had been born eighty years before and whose every nook and trail he knew so well. Only the passing of an old-timer, such as he, could have brought out the kind of people who filled the little church and overflowed to the street beyond. Truly it was a cross-section of the early life of the district in that simple gathering

Old and young, they were his friends and all faces reflected their sorrow. There were fine business suits and the last word in spring styles, and there were faded cotton shirts and patched jeans, coats and shawls that had lost track of style these many years, beaded buckskin and gaudy handkerchiefs. All present had come to pay their last respects to a tillicum who always had a kind word for everyone, and who was at home with them no matter what their walk in life.

And on that last ride to the small cemetery that nestles at the edge of the range he loved so well, where many more of these old-timers sleep, and over a road he had travelled with his saddle-horses throughout the years, even the familiar trees along the way seemed to be nodding a kind farewell. In the long procession there were big cars and small cars, 1949 and 1929 cars (some even older), following him to his final resting place.

Around the family plot we gathered:  his old friends and new, hunting and fishing friends, town and country friends, Indian friends and white friends. And, so, we said, "Good-bye" to "Buckshot". May he find good hunting and many beaver where he has gone.