Let us speak now of Indians. Okay, an Indian who began as a member of the Ottawa and Ojibwe tribes and somehow ended up in San Antonio overseeing traffic on Loop 410 Northwest. His name was once Chief Pontiac, but people who work under him (literally under him) just call him "The Chief." The Chief's closest friend these days is an employee at Superior Pontiac-GMC-Hyundai named Speedy Gonzalez who's known the Chief about 30 years.

"He is a landmark," Speedy told me. "People call about a car and we just tell them, 'you know, where the big Indian is.'" Speedy (named Pedro, but he goes by Speedy), went to work for Red McCombs back during Hemisfair days in the late 1960s. Back then Red sold Fords and the Chief worked for a local family named the Halffs on Broadway downtown at Superior Pontiac. Sadly, the Chief had enemies in those days--almost any time you looked up at his reddish-tan chest you'd see an arrow or two protruding from it. Even after he first moved to Loop 410 almost thirty years ago the unwarranted attacks continued, but that has finally come to a halt. "Four-ten is so busy, police would see you if you pulled over and stopped to shoot an arrow," Speedy pointed out. So The Chief's enemies have returned to their wigwams for now.

He also isn't quite as, well, Indian as he used to be - "when he was brown," Speedy said, "people would call and complain about discrimination, so about seven years ago a sales manager decided to paint him pink." So today The Chief's racial identity is a bit ambiguous. Perhaps, an onlooker might think, an Anglo simply dressed up as an Indian and posed for the sculpture, except even the most pale-faced of Anglos would have gotten pretty tan by now, standing bare-chested in the sun every day for thirty years.

My curiosity about The Chief was rekindled by the recent bankruptcy of General Motors and the announcement that the Pontiac line of cars would be discontinued. With no Pontiacs, was it possible that Chief Pontiac would be coming down soon at Superior? "Our Indian is going to be there," Speedy Gonzalez assured me. "A lot of dealerships have to use flagpoles or balloons to get people's attention, but The Chief is a landmark - you can't get a better landmark than that." As the receptionist told me when I first called Superior, "It won't go away unless Red [McCombs] says it goes away." And why should it? The original Chief Pontiac, as I mentioned, was a member of the Ojibwe tribe, whose people lived on the shores of, yep, Lake Superior. So even without the Pontiac nameplate, Superior and The Chief have a deep connection.

And Speedy will stick around, too. He's 66 years old now but has no plans to retire. After all, that makes him 323 years younger than the original Chief Pontiac, who gained fame by attacking the British troops at Detroit in 1763. "Gotta keep going, brother," Speedy says. "I need to pass down the wisdom. These younger troops are always coming in wanting to reinvent the wheel." Even if the wheel is no longer attached to a Pontiac, Speedy and The Chief will remain.

One last thing--a subject too delicate even to talk to Speedy about. From a certain angle, it appears The Chief's buckskin breeches have broken open and--well, it was an object of much hilarity in the days when The Chief was downtown more than thirty years ago. But let's hope we're all more mature now. And if not, you just have to stand on Manitou drive at sunset and look up...

2 Comments

bbk08 said:

His "Little Chief" is hanging out! Classic!

September 8, 2009 10:46 AM

james said:

I remember the Indian and the arrows sticking out from his chest, we use to count how many arrows he had in him when we passed by him at 410 @ Broadway. he will always be a land mark to San Antonio.

October 28, 2009 2:22 AM

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