BUFFALO, N.Y. — As Banditland prepares for Saturday's home opener, we are celebrating a connection between Buffalo lacrosse history and an old west classic.
You may remember him as "Tonto", the Lone Ranger's trusted companion, but Jay Silverheels travelled a long path to get to the silver screen. It was a path that began not far from here and ran right through Buffalo. Silverheels was born Harry J. Smith, on the Six Nations Grand River Territory about an hour and a half over the border.
Smith was an avid athlete, a golden gloves boxer, but the sport that got him the attention was box lacrosse. He played for several professional teams, including one right here in Buffalo. They played in the old Broadway Auditorium, which is now the Broadway highway garage for the Buffalo Department of Public Works.
Smith excelled during that time, even gaining his nickname "Silverheels", because of his white lacrosse shoes that he won in a tournament. It was another tournament in Los Angeles that attracted the attention of Hollywood.
Brantford, Ontario author and historian, Zig Misiak, explains, "Silverheels had the attributes, athletic, loved horses, and so crossing the border again is where things opened up for him from lacrosse."
Misiak wrote what he believes to be the first, and possibly the only, biography of Jay Silverheels, titled "Tonto, The Man In Front Of The Mask".
He had the help of Silverheel's nephew, Steve Smith, in chronicling Harry Smith's upbringing and struggles with being stereotyped as he climbed from model, to stuntman, to extra, to speaking roles.
Misiak takes the reader back to when Silverheels came home in 1957 and was the Grand marshal of a parade through Brantford. It was also a parade that Misiak attended and even got an autograph from Jay's mother.
Another memory from his childhood was going to the Capitol Theater in Brantford to see the early Lone Ranger movies. Seeing as there was no cinema on the Six Nations, he says many from the territory would also attend.
"When they saw this they'd say, 'Uncle Jay was up there and he was saying something in the language'," Misiak said.
The indigenous members of the audience were then treated to the show within the show. As Tonto spoke native tongue on screen, Misiak recalls he was actually speaking jibberish sentences in Mohawk.
"The beaver was turned upside down and ran into a tree. You know, you're looking at a guy and thinking he's saying the bad guys are just over the hill. You know, and they'd be laughing. and they'd be the only ones laughing," Misiak said.
Silverheels' movie career spanned from 1937 to 1973. During his career he made it into the Brantford Sports Hall of Recognition, his portrait hangs in Shea's Performing Arts Center as part of the Western New York Entertainment Hall of Fame and he has a star on Hollywood Boulevard. In 1997, he was also inducted posthumously into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame.