Peter Hawley Was `Grandpa' To Many, Led Sitting Horse Drum Group As Singer

Peter Hawley, born 74 years ago on the Rocky Boy Reservation in Montana, was a man of many names.

There was his Chippewa-Cree name, Pay-to-wao Peyasoo, noting the thunderbird's awesome power.

There was Hawley, for the father who disowned him because he was born with red hair and blue eyes - a legacy of a Scots ancestor.

There was also "Sitting Horse," for the uncle who helped raise him. There could even be "Sohappy," for the Yakama family who took in Mr. Hawley and taught him traditional ways during young adulthood.

But the name he has gone by since settling in Seattle in the early 1960s is "Grandpa." Children young and old flocked around him at home and at powwows.

"Everybody called him that," said his daughter Mary Ann Hawley of Seattle. "He told people to do that. He was always adopting people, then introducing them as `my new grandson' or `granddaughter.' He guided people to do the right things and think the right thoughts."

Mr. Hawley died Wednesday (Feb. 24) of cancer.

He tried to pass along what he'd been taught or what he'd learned by himself the hard way, as he said.

He could lead a powerful pow-wow invocation in his native Cree or in English. He could scold with a firm "Don't do that!" when respectful behavior was ignored.

But he also taught by joking. His "Sitting Horse Drum" group, of which he was lead singer and to which he welcomed people of all races, often reverberated with laughter when it wasn't performing honor songs or dance numbers.

Some of his happiest memories were of growing up on his uncle's ranch in Montana, riding his red-bay Appaloosa horse through the hills.

He put that riding experience to use as a bareback-bronc rider in Northwest rodeos and as a Hollywood extra in films such as Universal Pictures' "The Great Sioux Uprising" and "Pillars in the Sky."

He had worked at almost every outdoor job, from logging and fishing to construction and harvesting. At one point he "rode the rails," as he said, working at jobs throughout the United States.

But he settled in Seattle, which he called "God's country - a lot warmer than Montana in the winter."

Diabetes forced the amputation of both his feet, and alcoholism cost him two marriages.

But he turned his life around by returning to the powwow circle, and by following the Creator.

Mr. Hawley inherited Seattle Intertribal Drum in the 1970s. He changed its name to Sitting Horse in 1992. He became a fixture at Indian "Culture Nights" at Seattle schools and taught people about singing, drumming and life.

He felt his great accomplishment was his family.

"It's something that I guess the Creator has given to me because of how I was treated back where I come from - ridiculed for being a boy whose father didn't claim him," he told biographer Lee Micklin for her book "Born Cree: The Life of Peter Hawley of Sitting Horse Drum."

Other immediate survivors include his daughters, Leona Fernandes, Rose Hawley and Margarita Contreras, all of Seattle; Marilyn Isaac, Lytton, B.C.; Brenda Flach, Northwest Territories; and Radine Kirk, Warm Springs, Ore.; sons Dennis Samson, Seattle, and Richard Frank Hawley, Sumner; his brother, Charles Gopher, Rocky Boy Reservation, Mont.; his cousin, Barbara Eagleman; 24 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. His grandson Charles Blachford died in 1995.

Services begin at 10 a.m. today at Daybreak Star Cultural Arts Center, Discovery Park, Seattle.

Carole Beers' phone-message number is 206-464-2391. Her e-mail address is: cbeers@seattletimes.com