By HDN Staff
HAYS Clarence Basil Cuts The Rope, 64, died Wednesday, March 29, 2000 at a Great Falls hospital of congestive heart failure.
Wake services will be Saturday and Sunday at St. Paul's Mission at Hays with the Rosary at 7 p.m. Sunday. Funeral Mass will be 11 a.m. Monday at St. Paul's Mission with burial and Military Honors in the Cuts The Rope Family Cemetery south of Hays.
Adams Funeral Home of Malta is in charge of arrangements.
Cuts The Rope, the son of Frank and Matilda (White Plume) Cuts The Rope, was born on April 12, 1935 at his parents' log cabin in Hays. He was an enrolled member of the Gros Ventre Tribe.
Cuts The Rope attended the Mission School in Hays. During his school years, it was well known by his peers that he had a natural artistic ability.
After graduating from high school, Cuts The Rope attended Haskell Indian School at Lawrence, Kansas. In the two years he spent there, he was involved in exterior and interior painting as well as professional sign making for local businesses in the Lawrence area.
Cuts The Rope served in the U. S. Army for two years and was honorably discharged in 1959. During his time of service in a mortar battery unit he served with the 24th Infantry division and the 11th Airborne division in Munich, Germany. His paratrooper wings were his most prized achievement in the Army. He later married Margaret E. Hickey, his wife for 28 years. They made their home in Hays.
Cuts The Rope was a self-taught professional Native American artist. He maintained the "Cuts The Rope Gallery" in the original log cabin where he was born, just off route 66 in Hays. He and his wife attended art shows in Montana, Washington and North Dakota while putting on local showings of his art at the Cuts The Rope Gallery. He has sold his art throughout the state of Montana as well as many other states in the United States, Canada and Germany.
Cuts The Rope enjoyed telling comical stories with his close friends, spending time with his family, the out doors, his cattle and horses.
Cuts The Rope was preceded in death by his parents, brothers Jimmy, Andrew and Frank Cuts The Rope, father in-law John Hickey of North Adams, Mass.; sisters Esther Doney and Virginia Cuts The Rope.
Survivors include his wife, Margaret Cuts The Rope; sons Catcher of Hays, Jauquene Paul of Great Falls; daughters, Delina of Hays, Thelma and Edna of Kansas; sisters, Cecelia DeCelles of Fort Belknap Agency, Hazel Doney of Hays, Ida Doney of Fort Belknap Agency, Theresa Werk of Hays, Philomene Hawley of Hays; three grandchildren; numerous nephews and nieces.
