Northwestern State and Stephen F. Austin first met on the gridiron on Nov. 7, 1924. It was the second season for the young Lumberjacks against a Demons program that began in 1907. What followed was a natural rivalry for two schools 110 miles apart that have seemingly been connected since the towns were first established. 

The two schools consistently met on the field from November 1924 through 1946, outside of 1929, when the game was held in late October. The series was paused from 1946 through 1955, when the rivalry was played in September or early October.

That changed in 1984 when the game moved to Thanksgiving weekend and coincided with the final week of the regular season. Over time, the game became synonymous with other well-known rivalry games on Thanksgiving weekend, including Harvard-Yale, Ohio State-Michigan, Alabama-Auburn, and Texas-Texas A&M.

Then, the world shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The Lumberjacks chose to play a reduced fall schedule, while the Demons decided to play during the Spring 2021 season, thus pausing a rivalry that had been played for 46 consecutive years.

By the time the Fall 2021 season began, the Lumberjacks had departed the Southland Conference for the Western Athletic Conference.

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The rivalry added a new chapter in 1960. Legend has it that the schools agreed the loser of the 1961 contest would provide wood from one of its nearby forests to be carved into a trophy. 

The Demons won 35-19, and SFA provided NSU with a 2,000-pound black gum log. The intent was to pay tribute to the Native Americans who first settled the region and provided safety for the early Spanish and French colonists who settled in the English-speaking towns of Nacogdoches and Natchitoches.

According to writers of that era, the Caddo chiefs were master diplomats. They protected the immigrants from the Apache and Commanche warriors to the west and the Natchez from the east. The Caddo chiefs were also credited with settling disputes between the inhabitants of the two cities when their native lands were at war with each other.

Northwestern State gave the log to wood carver Harold Green of Logansport, Louisiana. Legend has it that Green spent 230 hours carving the trophy. Initially, the 7-foot-6-inch statue of Chief Caddo weighed 400 pounds. Over time, the wood dried out and eventually weighed 320 pounds.

However, the rivalry pause due to the global pandemic coincided with the end of the Battle for Chief Caddo. Tamara M. Francis, then chairman of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, sent a letter to the presidents of Northwestern State and Stephen F. Austin in November 2020, asking them to discontinue exchanging the trophy because it “stigmatizes the Caddo people and our culture as the romanticized savage or as a people who war and fight amongst themselves perpetually.”

The NSU Student Government Association issued a resolution requesting Chief Caddo be discontinued in April 2021. There was never a formal announcement or ceremony to retire Chief Caddo, who remains in a secure location at SFA after the Lumberjacks won the last Battle for Chief Caddo, 32-20, in 2019.

During the Chief Caddo era, NSU held a 32-21-1 advantage over SFA.

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“They retired Chief Caddo – that’s another conversation for another time, but we need to play for something,” SFA head coach Colby Carthel said during a recent interview.

Despite being in separate conferences, NSU and SFA committed to continuing the rivalry with a game in Natchitoches in 2023 and a return trip to Nacogdoches in 2025. Carthel tried to initiate a conversation with last year’s NSU coaching staff about replacing Chief Caddo but was met with mostly silence. So Carthel decided the Lumberjacks would bring a trophy to the game last year anyway and transported an 8-foot pine log donated by GNS Lumber in Nacogdoches to Turpin Stadium. The players placed the log underneath the goalpost.

“By golly, if we won the game, we were going to carry it off like the victor, and if we lost the game, we were going to leave it there,” Carthel said. “We won and carried off a wet pine log that felt like it weighed twice as much as Chief Caddo.”

The Demons endured a horrific end to the 2023 season, canceling five of their final six games. Head coach Brad Laird submitted his resignation in late October, and Blaine McCorkle was named head coach in late November. Carthel spoke to McCorkle about finding a replacement for Chief Caddo and realized that McCorkle was “all in.”

The two head coaches bounced ideas off each other during meetings over the spring and summer. Carthel told McCorkle about the log SFA took to the game last year, and the new Demons head coach went to work. McCorkle was adamant the new pine log was used for the new trophy, and he made the first scratch drawing on a piece of paper in his office. He texted Carthel a picture of the drawing, and the design process was underway.

The coaches focused on having the trophy give a “tip of the cap” to the old days of the rivalry while adding a new flavor – like making it a reversible trophy with the same dimensions as Chief Caddo.

“This sucker is replacing a big piece of history between the two universities, two regions, and two states,” Carthel said. “There’s a lot that goes into this, and a lot of people tune into the game every year. From now on, they will be tuned in to see who takes home this trophy.”

Still, the coaches were surprised to see one of the drawings they sent back and forth as the image used in the stories released by the athletic programs. The graphic in the Lumberjacks release had SFA at the top, with NSU facing down. Northwestern State reversed the graphic in their release. It is a rivalry, after all.

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Carthel and McCorkle had a design in mind. Now, they needed an artist. Carthel began searching on Google and found himself going down “rabbit holes” before he found some work Della Meredith had carved for a client in Timpson. Meredith immediately put Carthel’s fears at ease.

“This is a huge project, and it’s very daunting to me. I’m a football coach, and I’m wondering how in the world we’re going to pull this off,” Carthel said. “She was very matter-of-fact and seemed at ease with the project, so that helped me feel better.”

The most critical aspect of Meredith’s work to Carthel was her ability to carve and paint the log.

“One of the reasons they picked me is because I paint a lot of my carvings,” Meredith said. “Many people don’t paint them, and it’s kind of controversial because some people don’t like them painted.”

Unbeknownst to Carthel and McCorkle, SFA’s alumni office had contacted Meredith to begin work on some projects before being approached by the duo. The people at SFA already knew what Carthel and McCorkle were about to discover – that they had hired the perfect artist for this project.

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“I didn’t have to search for my passion,” Meredith said. “I always knew I was an artist.”

One could say being an artist is in Meredith’s blood. After all, her mother and grandmother were artists. However, being an artist was also somewhat of a necessity for Meredith. Her mother was a polio survivor but could not walk, which made painting murals difficult. Della began helping paint the top of murals for her mother at age 11.

Meredith was named the most outstanding student in fine arts at Pasadena High School before graduating with a degree in fine arts for studio arts from Sam Houston. She spent eight years teaching art in Humble and Splendora ISDs before leaving to start her own business.

Her initial plan was to follow in her mother’s footsteps and start a mural business. However, she fell in love with chainsaws and working with wood. Some have dubbed her the “Chainsaw Chick.” Her work can be found by searching Chainsaw Della on social media or visiting her website, ChainsawDella.com.

Meredith began with smaller sculptures like tikis, which remain her favorite to carve. Her work has been featured in multiple outlets, including an appearance on the Emmy Award-winning show Texas Bucket List. Some of her favorite projects have involved turning trees damaged by hurricanes into beautiful works of art.

The size of the project was not a concern for Meredith, who said her most extensive project was on an Air Force base on a tree damaged by a hurricane that was 20 feet high and 10 feet wide and took two weeks to carve.

While she admittedly has just a general knowledge of sports, Meredith is no stranger to works of art involving sports figures. She made a Houston Astros piece for United Tool and Fastener, and a Peyton Manning fan in Colorado asked her to carve a statue of the quarterback.

However, her statue of JJ Watt gained her the most notoriety to date. A friend initially asked Meredith to carve a tiki. But Meredith knew her friend was a big fan of Watt and eventually suggested she carve the Houston Texans standout. Watt quote tweeted a post about the carving and said, “There are some talented people in this world. That’s crazy!”

“That was awesome and surreal, too. I didn’t believe it at first,” Meredith said. “He’s so awesome, and I had read a lot about him because I wanted to know more about him as a person before I started carving. He’s a nice guy and really cool.”

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“I was a little surprised when he called,” Meredith said about her reaction when Carthel first reached out to her. “The head football coach was actually calling me, which was cool and surreal because he’s kind of famous.”

Researching every project is essential to Meredith, and Carthel ensured she had all the materials needed to learn about the history of Chief Caddo, including sending her pictures and measurements, as well as reading materials about the retired trophy.

In return, Meredith sent pictures of the trophy to Carthel and McCorkle throughout the process, and changes were made to the design as needed.

“The NSU at the top of their side was in orange, and there was a bit too much orange on their side, and purple is their primary color, too,” Carthel said. “We asked her to change it to purple. We made a few other tweaks as things went along.”

Meredith admitted to feeling more anxious than usual about the project before starting. Carthel gave McCorkle the choice of using the log used in 2023 or a different one. Understanding the tradition of the rivalry, Meredith knew which log she would use.

“Each statue has its own little personality about it. It has some type of energy to it, and this one already does, too. (Carthel and McCorkle) said I could use another log, but we needed to use this one because it already has a bit of history,” Meredith said. “The log is special because they used it as a trophy last year. Now, it will be more special with the school spirit attached to it.”

Still, using the log from 2023 created some challenges for Meredith, who used two different chainsaws to carve the trophy.

“The log has been sitting there for a while, and it’s heavy. I had someone help me stand it up, and the design has it flipped over for whichever school wins, so I had to carve half of it upside down because I couldn’t keep flipping the log,” Meredith said. “I had to disassociate, and instead of thinking about everything as letters and numbers, I had to think of them as shapes.”

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“There was a rivalry before Chief Caddo, there was a rivalry with Chief Caddo,” Carthel said. “Now there will be a rivalry after Chief Caddo with this new trophy.”

The new trophy is named “The Chief” to pay homage to Chief Caddo. While the new trophy remains unique and is the largest traveling trophy in college football, the rivalry between SFA and NSU needs a new name, considering they no longer Battle for Chief Caddo.

The two cities are nearly equidistant from Toledo Bend, which stands on the Sabine River bed at the Texas-Louisiana border. Hence, some have suggested naming the rivalry the “Shootout on the Sabine” or the “Sabine River Rivalry.” However, in another ode to Chief Caddo, maybe SFA and NSU can “Battle for The Chief.”

Whatever the rivalry is eventually named, Carthel and McCorkle are intent on returning the rivalry to the week of Thanksgiving since SFA has rejoined the Southland Conference. Carthel hopes the game returns to being played on Thursday night to maximize the opportunity to have the game featured on television networks.

As for the new trophy, there’s always a chance The Chief will appear on College GameDay like Chief Caddo did years ago.

“This carries on the same tradition as (Chief Caddo), and it’s a safer trophy in that it’s not a person or anything that will be offensive,” Meredith said. “This one’s special.”

Long live The Chief.