Holcombe Indian has anniversary, too

     That dam Indian usually nestled securely and warmly in his concrete teepee at Holcombe is half as old this year as the United States, and he doesn't even know it.
     In fact, neither he nor any other living soul knows just what day he was "born." All that is known of this nameless, ageless silent sentinel is that he came of age in 1876 when a crusty lumberjack of French descent - Jean Juvette - fished the Indian from the log-packed Chippewa River when the small Chippewa County community of Holcombe was known as Little Falls.
     Another sawdust city roustabout, a pioneer dam tender with the "untender" name of Luke Lyons, bought the big Indian from his lumber company for one dollar and made a man out of him.
     To this day, the big Indian has stood might tall around these parts. In fact, he has stood nine feet tall since the day Luke set him on his won two feet.
     Nature spawned this bronzed, likable old warrior from the past, but she also did the old chief dirt on more than one occasion.
     The big Holcombe Indian, still unnamed after a century, probably is the sole remainder of an age of greatness or shame, when lumber was king around these parts.
     As Juvette and a horde of fellow jumberjacks rode logs downstream that day 100 years ago, pike pole in hand, a straight log caught the eye of young Lyons who claimed it from among the thousands of other logs scrambles and sandwiched in the Chippewa's charging waters.
     Lyons forfeited what then might have been a day's wages (one dollar) and spent many months scraping, carving and whittling the big log down to size before the chesty Indian evolved.
     But from that day on, the wooden Indian became a legend, not for what it said, but simply for what he did best - he stood tall.
     Soon the statue became a legend - that it was the official guardian of the mighty Chippewa and her hard-working loggers.

Dam washed out

     This somewhat sedate life continued four years, but in 1880 nature, perhaps irate at what man was doing to the north country, transformed the normally agreeable Chippewa River into a churning, boiling madman. It took everything in its path, including the world's greatest wooden dam and its giant-sized guardian, sending both swirling downstream.
     An alert log jammer spotted the big Indian, bumping helplessly against other battered logs and sharp-skinned rhyolite outcroppings at Jim Falls, 20 miles downstream.
      The statue was retrieved form the unruly waters minus part of its left arm. But the Indian's friends spent many nights in camp patching him up and once again he was put on his lofty perch atop the dam after it, too, had been repaired. There he stayed for many years.

Yields to technology

     The wooden dam finally yielded to both nature and technology, and in its stead rose a new dam of 80,000 tons of concrete and a shiny new steel bridge. The big Indian was moved, lock, stock and loin cloth, to a structure of somewhat dubious status - a glass house on the new bridge.
     Once again hew was vulnerable to the fickleness of man and became a target of sticks and stones and gunshots. His glass house on more than one occasion was shattered by vandals, and soon he became shabby looking from this treatment.
     Holcombe's seemingly ageless veterinarian, Dr. Otto Rnger, was town chairman during the 1930s and 1940s when he made a controversial decision regarding the big Indian the town had come to revere; he presented it to Northern States Power Co. after the new dam was built in 1950.
     This incensed many local people, but the Indian could care less. His holes were patched, feathers preened, weapons restored, his body massaged with a new coat of paint, and he was carted by truck to his new home.
     Since then, hundreds of summer tourists visit this lumber age leftover, now sheltered from man and nature. He did leave his home on five occasions, though, during the past 30 years.
     But at some time during this bicentennial year, two old lumberjacks, long ago laid to rest, might look up or down, whatever their fates, and crack satisfying smiles. Old Luke Lyons and Jean Juvette, who have lived on in history thanks only to this mute reminder of a roaring past, may beam with pride and silently wish the hardy old chief a happy 100th birthday.

- Tom Lawin

Extracted from the Eau Claire Leader Telegram
Special Publication, Our Story 'The Chippewa Valley and Beyond', published 1976
Used with permission.