Iroquois Supernatural: Talking Animals and Medicine People

by Michael Bastine

  If you or someone you know happens to be suffering from a curse, knowing who your attacker is can be very helpful. That way you may be able to handle things on your own. As we’ve seen, you might be able to buffalo that witch into dropping the business.

  It might sound easy at first. Most of us have a real small list of people who might be both mad at us and magically inclined. But it can take a long time to spot a pattern in a wave of disasters and come to the conclusion that something magical might be involved. And just because you’re suffering from a curse doesn’t mean you’re the real target.

  You see, Iroquois witches don’t always hurt their intended victims, at least not at first. Some of them work toward their targets by knocking off the people they love, thus making them suffer the more. Fiendish and clever. Think of it as a national refinement.

  ARTHUR C. PARKER ON WITCHCRAFT

  Arthur C. Parker stated in 1901 that no understanding of his own Seneca people was possible without taking into account their belief in witchcraft. No matter how reluctant they were to admit it to anyone they didn’t trust, many Seneca of Parker’s day still dreaded the evil art. It didn’t matter whether one was a traditionalist, a Christian, or a follower of Handsome Lake. There was no general agreement on the origin of the craft and its entrance into Iroquois society.

  Some Mohawk claim that witchcraft was introduced to them by members of an Algonquin-speaking nation whom they had taken in. Some Seneca trace theirs to the Nanticoke Nation, which the Seneca adopted—if not the Eries or Kah-Quas (Neutrals), nations they absorbed or displaced. The Onondaga fought wars with the fierce Andaste Nation, suspected of being a race of enchanters. The Tuscarora came to upstate New York with occultism, which was possibly influenced by the traditions of African slaves in their North Carolina home.

  In Europe, there is a similar pattern of a dominant society associating traditions of magic with a culture it has supplanted, repressed, or absorbed. Every tribe or nation that migrated to or invaded the British Isles—Celts, Romans, Saxons, Normans—attributed occultism to those it displaced. Occult traditions are also found among marginalized groups within a society or among immigrants who bring occult traditions with them.

  The gypsies have always been the wizards of Europe. Occult and mystical traditions came to imperial Rome in waves from its provinces. Voodoo came to the American colonies with displaced Africans. Still, the tradition of witchcraft seems so entrenched in Iroquois culture that it’s hard to believe all their customs could be imports.

  In Parker’s version of The Code of Handsome Lake, the Longhouse prophet was so ruffled by witchcraft that it became his personal quest to warn all the Iroquois against it. Handsome Lake begins one of the sections of his Code by noting that the Creator was unhappy at the piles of dead, all people killed by the actions of magic, and in particular, charms. The prophet forbids all types of magic. In doing so, he describes a few spells:

  If someone dies keeping a secret from you, you might discover it by sleeping on the ground with a handful of dirt from the person’s grave under your head. If everything goes right, the dead person will reveal the mystery in three successive visions.

  The Iroquois were great runners who could send messages one hundred miles a day along their upstate trails. A man hoping to be a runner might keep a bone from the grave of a famous runner in his belt. Most celebrated Iroquois runners were said to carry such charms.

  A warrior could protect himself from ambush by making three cuts in the back of his neck and rubbing them with an oil made from the scalps of enemies. The cuts would heal into three white, protruding scars. If an enemy came up from behind, these queer tattoos would tingle.

  At least two Iroquois nations, the Seneca and Onondaga, held the belief that an exact number of children is predestined to every woman. These children, they believed, were fastened within each woman on a vinelike runner they called the string of children. The Creator, who made life so that it should live, was distressed when people interrupted the natural process, hence the prophet condemned abortion charms and potions.

  The most effective charm for getting rich is the tooth of a niagwahe, the demon bear.

  One thing the prophet failed to add is that attempting to get a tooth off one of these critters is the most effective charm known for committing suicide.

  Parker’s observation of the two styles of Iroquois magical practice may illustrate the traditional distinction between the magician/ witch and the sorcerer. As Peter Partner observes in his book about the Templars (The Murdered Magicians), the sorcerer—like Shakespeare’s Prospero—needs book and staff. Keeping a sorcerer away from the magical tools and techniques takes away all his or her power. You can let one of these off with a lesson.

  But the old kind of Iroquois natural witch or magician is a far more dangerous figure. The magician/witch is inseparable from his or her power. You are only safe from one of these characters when he or she is dead. Thus, for the old Iroquois, there was only one solution to a danger like this. It was extreme.

  ONONDAGA WITCHES

  (Syracuse-Oneida, Nineteenth Century)

  Artist and folklorist De Cost Smith (1864–1939) was born in Skaneateles, New York, and spent time at Onondaga in 1887 and 1888. He heard enough about witchcraft to inspire an article, “Witchcraft and Demonism of the Modern Iroquois.” Smith was familiar with rumors about a double execution for witchcraft at Oneida in 1825. He was shocked to hear that an old man suspected of witchcraft was ambushed and shot to death on one of the Canadian reservations as recently as the 1880s.

  “What did the man’s friends do about it?” Smith asked those who told him.

  “Nothing,” was the reply. “They thought he had been at that business long enough.”

  “And the white people?”

  His Onondaga friends shrugged. “They didn’t know about it.”

  A middle-aged Onondaga man told Smith about an old reservation woman he had thought for years to be a witch. Once, as he was going home around eleven at night, he came around a wooded hill and saw the woman ahead of him on the same trail. Her long hair kept her from seeing him, and he decided to slow down and play it cool.

  He caught an eyeful. With each breath she took, many-colored flames blew from her mouth, licking the locks of her hair. The display even lighted her way. He followed till she neared a certain longhouse used for national councils. As if sensing she was being followed, the old gal ran around the building, came to a long log home said to have housed a couple of witches, gave a last huff and puff, and disappeared within.

  The Onondaga Reservation quarries used to have an odd geological feature called the Cat Hole, a slot in the rock said to be the dumping place for the bodies of executed witches. The bodies needed special treatment. You didn’t want to bury nonwitchy folk on top of them. The witch bodies might bear toxic charms. You didn’t want to live near the dead bodies, either. As with radioactive waste, you wanted generations ahead to know where the bodies were buried. Onondaga Reverend Albert Cusick (1846–?) knew a man whose sister was killed for witchcraft and dropped into this space.

  In his book Onondaga (1849), white historian Joshua Clark (1803–1869) tells us of four women accused of witchcraft in 1803. One confessed, repented, and was spared. Two clammed up and were killed. The fourth admitted her guilt, was taken to the top of the hill east of the Castle, killed with an axe, and buried among the rocks.

  Ephraim Webster (1762–1824), first white settler on Lake Onondaga, believed there could have been something to witchcraft. He testified to having seen the marks of the fingers of a phantom strangler on the neck of a victim who died overnight. He also heard about a serious witch-incident from before the whites had settled. It started in a big Onondaga community that may already have been cursed.

  During the 1696 invasion of Quebec, governor Frontenac burned and dispersed the villages on the east side of Onondaga Creek. The Onondaga returned and rebuilt many of these, including one on the flats east of Jamesville. An old ma
n of this community claimed to have gone for an evening walk and been sucked into an immense cavern lit by countless torches. It was a gathering of witches and wizards. They ejected him quickly. They should have done the same with his memory.

  The next morning he told the story to the chiefs and led them about the village pointing here and there at people he said he had seen in the witches’ cave. Hundreds of the accused may have been executed; others were driven off and became refugees. The incident sent shock waves throughout the Confederacy. The Onondaga Nation nearly came apart. The village was abandoned for good around 1720. Heaven help whoever lives over the site of it now.

  Onondaga Reverend Albert Cusick was a confidant of white historian William Martin Beauchamp, to whom he reported hearing about fifty witches who had been burned to death near Onondaga Castle. This may be part of the case reported by Webster, above. According to Cusick, the witches were sort of an occult mafia whose secrets no one could reveal and then expect to live. These witches could turn into foxes and wolves and run quickly through the night, all the while accompanied by flashes of light. They could fly in the forms of turkeys or owls. They could blow hair and worms into people they wanted to curse. If they were stalked, chased, or surprised they could turn themselves into stones or rotting logs and be completely hidden.

  The Midnight Service

  (Onondaga, Traditional)

  Three Onondaga siblings were especially close. Their parents had died when they were children, and they’d been brought up with their late mother’s cousins in a village somewhere near today’s Syracuse. They were all teenagers when the oldest took to his bed with an illness so strange and unexpected that his brother and sister sensed witchcraft. The younger brother set out to investigate.

  As a boy he’d heard rumors about one old woman in the village. Someone said they’d seen her breathing fire one night as she walked. One afternoon, he sidled up to her and commenced an indirect conversation that went nowhere. Finally, he told her he wanted to be a witch. She looked him over without much enthusiasm.

  “I hear there are such things,” she said, “but you better be real serious about what you say.”

  He assured her that he was and looked at her steadily. She looked back as if reading him. Then she gave him a special look. She opened one of her eyes wide, rolled it back in her head, looked away quickly, and wiped her nose.

  “All right then,” she said. “Go home and point your finger at your sister the instant you see her. In a while she’ll get sick, and in days she’ll be dead, but that’s how I’ll know you mean business. If you don’t do it just like I tell you, you better point the finger at yourself, because what’s coming to you will be worse.” She told him where and when to meet her next.

  The lad didn’t believe his finger could be loaded, but he had no intention of trying it out on anyone he loved. On the way home, he pointed high into the trees, heard a squeak, and jumped when a squirrel flopped at his feet. Then he told his sister the whole story. She went along with the plan and pretended to be sick. Soon the whole village was talking about her illness. The witch must have smiled.

  A night or two later, the young man walked through the woods to the witch’s meeting spot. Well before he’d reached it, someone startled him by coming up behind him. It was the old girl herself. They walked together a while, and she startled him again: She took a run at a tree as if she were going to ram it, then leaped up and held to it as if her hands and feet were claws. What turned to look at him was a full-grown panther, spitting and snarling. Even in the dim light, he could see the fiery eyes, the gleaming teeth, and the muscles rippling beneath the furry coat. He stood his ground and looked at her evenly.

  She let go of the tree and stood again on two legs. “Scared you good, didn’t I?”

  “Not really,” the young man said. “Actually, I want to be like you. I want that power.”

  The witch chuckled. “We’ll see,” she said.

  They came to a clearing in the woods at which a number of people were gathered around a small fire. A kettle not much bigger than a cup hung over it, and a bundle of snakes dangled above, dripping blood, venom, and fluids. Faces glowing like goblins, people waited around it for the drops to mount and took turns passing cupfuls of the fearful brew. It was easy for the youth to pretend to drink and step back with others who had already sipped.

  Most of the folks were older men and women. Some were from his own village, and the lad was surprised by some of the ones he recognized. He decided that he wasn’t very good at guessing witches. He didn’t see any other males his age and figured that this might have been why it was so easy to infiltrate the group. They wanted young men.

  He noticed movement at the edges of the clearing. People’s forms leaped and cavorted out of the circle of light, jumping high like human grasshoppers. Others frittered in the trees like squirrels, and some even made leaps that became brief flights in and out of the clearing. Others changed more slowly.

  He’d been thinking about a girl he was sorry to see here, and when he saw her again she had cat’s ears. In another minute she bounded into the shadows like a mountain lion. Someone who had turned into a squirrel started chasing someone who’d become a bobcat. The antics ended in a wrestling match that had everyone hooting and snarling with laughter.

  Too fascinated to be afraid, the youth stood and stared. At first no one seemed to wonder why he, too, didn’t transform, but soon a couple came over to him. Their horns and feathers, he thought, concealed veteran witches, and he was terrified that they would know he hadn’t tried their potion. Then he noticed a handful of others still in human form, all of them young women and girls. He thought quickly.

  “I can’t turn into anything,” he said to someone next to him.

  “It’s hard the first time,” said an old man with drooping hound ears.

  A woman’s voice beside him said, “What would you like to be?” He turned and saw a squat pile of tusks, nostrils, eyes, and fur that he thought might have been a wild pig.

  “A screech owl,” he said. They greeted this with snorting and huffing that he took to be approval.

  “We’ve got just the thing,” said a man with stag antlers coming out of his long gray hair. Other mostly human folk went into the dimness and came back with a hat made out of a horned owl’s head. They handed it to him but told him to wait before wearing it.

  “When you put that on,” one said, “you’ll take the owl’s form instantly. You’ll fly like a bird. But if you don’t practice a bit before you put it on, you might kill yourself and take our hat with you.”

  “How do you practice being an owl?” the youth said.

  “Practice acting like an owl,” said a stag with the voice of an elder he knew.

  “Practice thinking like an owl,” said a girl still in her own form. “That’s what they always tell me.” The young man recognized her, an orphan being raised by a great aunt he’d seen around the fire earlier. He noticed how pretty she was.

  He started making the movements of the owls he’d seen: preening beneath his arms with his nose as if it were a beak, moving his elbows as if they were folded wings, turning his head sharply, even trying out a few screeches. There was howling around him that he took to be laughter. “He’ll be a boss witch once he gets going,” said a big dog.

  “Boss owl, anyway,” said a big old man with a panther nose and teeth.

  The meeting started to break up. The handful who had kept their human forms took separate trails into the woods, including the orphan girl who cast him a glance as she left hand in paw with a bear. Others went off as foxes, wolves, panthers, hawks, and owls. A handful of animals, people, and animal people still surrounded him, watching him curiously. He put on the hat. Its beak covered his nose. He looked through its eye sockets. The world changed.

  Before he knew it, he was flapping wings. In a few strokes, he was aloft, straight up through the trees, and then soaring and darting on the currents. At first he was ecstatic. The speed, the
wind! The moonlight silvering the treetops below! He could see in the darkness as if the moon were a sun. He saw the sudden movement of a small animal by a creek and could hardly stop himself from diving after it.

  But even after practicing, he was a beginner owl. It was hard to flap and steer, and he was not used to looking with those eyes. How different the world was through them, and from above! All he saw were treetops, hills, and creeks.

  In sudden terror of losing his way, he thought only to get back to his village. He flew in ever-widening circles from where he thought he’d started, hoping to spot the fires, rooftops, or fields of a settlement. He knew his village was the closest to the clearing from which he’d started, but how far had he flown?