The largest and oldest arts and crafts store on Six Nations of the Grand River near Hamilton, Ont., is celebrating its 65th anniversary on Aug. 3.
Iroqrafts, founded in 1959 by Buck and Bunny Spittal, still has no website but has grown substantially from its original one-room plywood shop on Oneida Road.
William Guy (Buck) Spittal was a white man from London, Ont., who lived on the reserve. His wife Myra (Bunny) Spittal was Cayuga from Six Nations.
Their son, Nyundio Spittal, said the nicknames came about “because Dad was making money and mom … she had a brace on her leg so she’d hop, I guess — so Buck and Bunny. Buck’s Bunny.”
Beloved in the community, Buck had an entrepreneurial spirit and saw a need in the community. The store sells both craft supplies and crafts.
Nyundio started working at the store when he was just nine years old. He remembers when his father started bringing soapstone into the community around 1970.
“He got guys working with soapstone and that helped a lot of guys who were on leave from their jobs,” he said.
“A lot of guys were let go during winter time maybe from their union jobs or construction jobs and then they get on the soapstone and that helped them get through the season or year till the next time they get back to work.”
Nyundio said this also created several exceptional carvers in the community.
Bunny died in 2018; Buck in 2021. Today, their daughter Nandell Hill runs the store, now much larger than the one her parents opened.
She said at one point, Iroqrafts had well over 300 soapstone carvers. She said they’re down to just three with old ones passing on, new industries and more people getting an education within the community to earn an income.
Reprinting history
Iroqrafts was also well-known for the publishing series called Iroquois Reprints. Many obscure academic publications by anthropologists like A.C. Parker, Horatio Hale and William Fenton — rich with Haudenosaunee history and tradition — were reprinted and sold at Iroqrafts.
“We still need our oral tradition, of course, and that’s exactly what [Buck] thought back then, because a lot of the books that he reprinted were out of print,” said Hill.
“That’s one of the main reasons I believe that he wanted to reprint all those titles, to have that information out there.”
In a Facebook post honouring Buck in 2021, Dakota Brant from Six Nations of the Grand River wrote that he designed Iroquois Reprints to be as inexpensive as possible.
“He made these extremely valuable and inaccessible publications affordable and easy access,” the post read.
“Buck never tried to be a rich man; his payment was knowing our people had access to our knowledge.”
Go-to place for beads
One of the more popular items the shop sells are cornhusk dolls, like those Angel Doxtater from Six Nations has made for Iroqrafts since she was 12.
She said before Buck helped create demand in Six Nations, they’d have to travel as far as New York state to sell their cornhusk dolls for income.
“[It was] Buck that got me going because he ordered a dozen dolls off me,” Doxtater said.
“I was like, ‘Really? OK.’ It gave me initiative to go harder with them …. There was a reward at the end of the work.”
She said when she finished the order, her mom took her to the United States for some back-to-school shopping.
Doxtater said in the ’60s, Iroqrafts was the only local craft store for people who needed materials for regalia and to make crafts to sell on a burgeoning powwow trail.
“It was the go-to place for the beads and leather sinews, like stuff you couldn’t find anywhere,” she said.
“It was almost like the Amazon of craft stores back then.”
Doxtater said she remembers playing outside with her cousins while her grandparents would be inside buying supplies.
“We’d come back from a powwow; my grandpa would have money to restock,” she said.
“So Monday mornings it was going down to Buck’s, right, to restock on hair clips and bone ties and bone beads and sinew and leather and all that stuff and then it would be a week of craft making and then off to another powwow.”
Ian Wright, owner of the Snow Goose store in Ottawa, has been a longtime wholesale customer. His father knew Buck and bought wholesale from Iroqrafts.
“You just don’t have a business that runs that long and in good standing without the respect on both sides,” he said of their relationship.
This year, Hill said they’ll be celebrating the anniversary with a sale and some Haudenosaunee delicacies.
“We always have our corn soup cooking over the iron kettle outside,” she said.