Iroquois Supernatural: Talking Animals and Medicine People

by Michael Bastine

  The couple consulted the medicine man. Their little son was at peace, he told them, with the Good-Minded Spirit who had decided to break the power of the snake of Green Lake for good. He needed their help, though. Could they draw it into the open by making offerings of sacred tobacco from a high point above the lake? This they did. The water dragon reared and roared, and the Good-Minded Spirit made his appearance. It went under, never to resurface.

  The Onondaga name for this lake was surely a reference to this legend: something like Kiayahkoo, meaning “happy with tobacco.”

  SQUAKIE HILL

  (Seneca Country)

  Squakie Hill is a ridge in Letchworth State Park just north of the village of Mount Morris. It’s a place of mystery—sacred, for one thing. It hosted the White Dog ceremonies that some whites were allowed to witness. When the Seneca dispersed for their reservations in 1827, Squakie Hill was the site of their farewell dance to their ancestral valley, the Genesee.

  The hill had a reputation for trauma and witchery, too. It was dimly remembered to have been a concentration camp for captives. Squakie could be an Anglicization of the name of a nation the Seneca blamed for bringing witchcraft among them. The name could be derived from Kahquas, the name for the Neutral Nation, rumored to have lived there once. It could also come from that of the Sac, or Sioux (the Fox nation), some of whose members may have settled here as prisoners. All this could account for the hill’s occult legacy. (Magic is typically the resort of society’s underdogs: slaves, servants, and the dispossessed.)

  Even the “ancient mysteries” connection comes in at Squakie Hill. Seneca old-timers were sure that a mystery population, possibly even pre-Columbian whites, lived here before them, speaking a different language. The Great Slide of the Genesee River took place nearby in 1817, and a bank-side burial mound spilled non-Native bones and goods into the drink. Odd stonework found at the top of the hill in 1915 was sensed to be Hopewellian and even much like the oddities at Bluff Point. One of our confidants reports handling an ancient European-style sword taken from Squakie Hill.

  The UFOs seem to hone in on Squakie Hill. A local confidante tells us of the mid-1970s UFO sighting by a scout troop camped on Squakie Hill and even provided the names of the investigating New York state troopers. This sighting was far from the first. In fact, while the UFO business might seem a high-tech matter to its believers, its connections to other paranormal phenomena are solid. As if they navigate New York by its watery alleys, the UFOs like the long north–south lakes and river channels: the Niagara, the Genesee, the Seneca, and the Hudson.

  At least the appearances of Iroquois supernatural bogies have been reported at Squakie Hill. Doctor Seaver’s Life of Mary Jemison mentions it as a traditional home to the Great Flying Heads. The Seneca always figured the hill was haunted because the witch John Jemison—Mary Jemison’s serpent-blood-sipping son—was bushwacked there in 1817. Jemison had killed two of his brothers on Squakie Hill, and his two murderers took their own lives there as well. With that pedigree, it ought to be haunted.

  Squakie Hill today is partly wooded parkland with a couple of roads. Its rolling terrain and the occasional grove make for short sight lines. It can be gloomy. Wiccans go there, we hear, to celebrate their rites, maybe tapping John Jemison’s indignant power. Many a Letchworth camper has reported apparitions that could be the altered animal forms of Iroquois legend. Are they shape-shifters, ghosts, or the ghost forms of a witch? It would be no wonder either way on Squakie Hill.

  FORT HILL AND BLUFF POINT

  (Seneca Country)

  Shortly after the American Revolution, the whites moved en masse into central New York. The landscape itself attested that the Iroquois were not the only people who had lived here. Some of the most problematic earth-and-stone constructions ever discovered in the Empire State were in Yates County around Keuka Lake.

  Keuka Lake is shaped like a big natural Y with the forks to the north. In the middle of the forks is a V-shaped high ground called Bluff Point. Some of the most spectacular vistas in New York state are to be had from atop this promontory. Man-made spectacles even more unique could have stood until the middle 1900s.

  On behalf of the Smithsonian Institute, a couple of detailed (for the day) studies were made of the monumental Bluff Point stonework. In 1880, the father-son team of Dr. Samuel Hart Wright (1825–1905) and Professor Berlin Hart Wright (1851–1940) surveyed and mapped the fourteen-acre site at the summit of the promontory. The son revisited them in 1938.

  The Bluff Point ruins were a set of low stone ramps and marking stones that might have suggested archaeoastronomy to the two men, had the discipline then been understood. The stones and their placement were so bizarre as to be indescribable. We can only suspect that a lot was stripped away before the first studies were made. The rest was taken for road fill and even building foundations in the later twentieth century.

  Ten miles to the north and clearly visible to the Wrights from one of Bluff Point’s pillars was an elliptical earthen structure often called Fort Hill. The Old Fort in Sherman’s Hollow was 545 feet long north to south and 485 feet across, enclosing ten acres. Its dirt embankments were 4 feet high and 10 across a century ago, and they had probably settled quite a bit.

  Fort Hill may have been aptly named. There were twelve breaks in the walls where gates, presumably wooden ones, could once have been, and it had a spring, which would have been vital for withstanding a siege. Near it is a tall hill with steep sides, nicknamed the pinnacle. Smoke signals or fires from this spot would have been visible at Bluff Point, implying line-of-sight communication with a sister settlement, part of the reason we profile them together.

  There are many Fort Hill place-names in the eastern states. A military use was surely made of some of these virtual henges or ring-ditch earth circles, but they may not be only what they seem. Many may have been places of ritual and commemoration. A deep, wide trench ran around the inside of Bluff Point’s bookend earthwork. In essence, Fort Hill’s moat is within, which implies a ceremonial use, possibly a water barrier to pen in the spirits summoned until their eventual release.

  Historic Native American groups in this part of New York were not thought to build elaborate stone-and-earth structures. The influence of the mound-building Adena or Hopewell cultures of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys may be seen in the Yates County sites. It was known that their influence extended into western New York.

  Other curiosities were found at both sites. A hundred yards southeast of the Fort Hill enclosure was an ancient graveyard in which skeletons had been buried seated, facing south back toward Bluff Point. There is talk among Yates County historians about a bronze sword taken from a nearby mound. Only two Native American cultures were known to be working in bronze before the Europeans came, and neither was in North America. The ground around Bluff Point was reputed to have disgorged other out-of-the-way artifacts, some implying a Mesoamerican influence and others—bits of iron—ancient Europeans.

  Many are tantalized by the prospect that a mystery community may have settled this region, a possibility that Seneca historians do not discount. “We’ve kept the tradition that we had visitors from other parts of the world,” DuWayne Bowen told me in 2003. “The idea is nothing remarkable to us.”

  One thing that may be remarkable is the way white supernaturalism gathers around these ancient sites. Fort Hill in Sherman’s Hollow is a short walk from the home of the mystical community of Jemima Wilkinson (1752–1819), the Publick Universal Friend, in a town even called Friend. And all the evidence we have implies that as long as both these sites were intact, they were folklore batteries. Howling ghosts, mystery lights, and buried treasure were rumored of both sites.

  “These were old, abandoned places that have always been mysteries. Everybody’s trying to figure out who did them and why,” said Michael Bastine. “I think if I sat down with some tobacco and asked for some more information, I’m pretty sure it would come with time.”

  THE VALLEY OF MADNE
SS

  (Seneca Country)

  They say the word kanakadea means “where heaven and hell meet earth.” Whatever that might point to, the Kanakadea Creek valley holds two New York colleges, SUNY Alfred and Alfred Tech. The region has another nickname, more direct and more sinister: the Valley of Madness. It points to the sense of an age-old suspicion to this valley that may predate the Iroquois. The lore doesn’t let up there.

  An ancient Seneca burial ground is reportedly covered by the Alfred campus. They talk about it being a more recent battlefield, possibly from General Sullivan’s Revolutionary campaign. People hike and hunt in the woods and report strange “things” in the trees at dawn and dusk, strange sounds at dawn and twilight, strange images at the eye corners. After dark, some say you can see spectral figures carrying their dead to the sound of deep drumming. Something must be behind it all.

  Allegany County historian Craig Braack observes that the folkloric bedrock here is shifty. For one thing, there’s no earthly peculiarity about the region of Alfred University. It’s a creek valley, but not with a dead end. While you can’t rule out scouting and skirmishing, there was no battle here in 1779 nor at any point in Sullivan’s campaign. Native American burials are possible anywhere in New York state, but Braack doesn’t know of any in the town. There were, however, ancient earthworks in the region. Visible from Braack’s Belmont office is a house situated on top of a mound. Bones were found when its foundations were laid.

  We’ve heard it suggested that the Valley of Madness, like much other Alfred folklore, is the invention of college pranksters, possibly no older than the 1970s. The cycle indeed has a murky feel, and we often see that the mere hint of such is enough for skeptics to declare victory and stop questioning. A rumor cycle so strong and prevalent about one of the stops on the Forbidden Trail—to come—at least deserved a mention.

  THE HILL AND THE STONE

  (Oneida Country)

  Primes Hill is about six miles south of today’s town of Oneida, at the heart of the Oneida Nation territory. It had held an Oneida village, including a two-acre, twelve-foot-high, double-walled fort that could have sheltered twelve hundred people.

  The Oneida needed their forts. They had sided with the colonials in the Revolution, helped turn the war, and been relatively abandoned by the young United States. They had also earned the outrage of the British-allied Mohawk, who burned and sacked a pair of Oneida forts. Oneida lash-backs took out three Mohawk forts and drove the survivors into British-controlled Canada. Many Oneidas relocated to a reservation near Green Bay, Wisconsin, still a center of Oneida culture. By the early 1800s, the New York Oneida gave the appearance of a shiftless, beaten people with little purpose or cultural core.

  In 1813, Thomas Rockwell bought one of the first farms on Primes Hill. His new tract held the former Oneida Council ground and Council Rock, which, so far as any whites of the day could discern, was the Oneida stone. This object is interesting.

  The Oneida are the People of the Standing Stone. Though a mighty tradition has developed about their national symbol, it may not have been just figurative. There appears to have been one central “true” stone and a host of lesser ones, one to each Oneida village. It’s as if this original stone, should one exist in reality, was a big emanator of orenda from which all the others drew their power.

  Early New York ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793–1864) visited Primes Hill in 1845 and was most impressed by the view, at the top of the highest point in the Oneida Creek valley. A beacon lit here would be seen a long way. Schoolcraft found it the focal point of some elaborate white folklore, chiefly of the “ancient mysteries” school. The evidence of battlefields and reports of very large human skeletons—common rumors about upstate New York—got them speculating about metal-using giants and a prehistoric culture clash. Human giants are associated in legend with ancient power sites all over Europe. Primes Hill, site of the fabled stone, was surely one of them.

  So far as he knew, Schoolcraft was looking at the stone that clear day in 1845. He was impressed mightily by the view and his romanticized notions of the site, but he was let down by the stone itself. In Schoolcraft’s sketch, this object, set heavily in the earth, is far more of a quadruped than a bipedal standing stone.

  It’s no wonder Schoolcraft might have been let down; these mythic relics on all the continents can seem humble to whites, raised on grander and more recent monuments. But there is mystery about the Oneida stone. Other sources describe the original as a slender, crystalline sevenfooter sounding suspiciously like a European-style menhir.

  The Primes Hill site was surely still holy. William M. Beauchamp’s confidants remembered scenes from their childhoods, of small groups of Oneida, foreigners in their own lands, drifting about looking for seasonal work like today’s migrant laborers. Twice a year they returned to Primes Hill and camped within easy walking distance of the Council Grove. They never bedded down too near the stone, people recalled, and they only approached it at night. A woman remembered spying on them as a child and observing some “strange rite” by the stone.

  In a gesture intended to convey inclusiveness and respect, something taken publicly to represent the Oneida stone was moved to Utica’s Forest Hill Cemetery in 1849. In the century-old photograph, it doesn’t look anything like either Schoolcraft’s sketch or the natural obelisk others described. The whole situation leads many to wonder if the Oneidas said everything they knew to the whites. In 1974, this object, too, came back to Oneida land and rests today quite close to their casino—Turning Stone—which may even be named for it. But obviously its former Primes Hill site was still sacred to the Oneida of the middle nineteenth century, and we wonder if the stone itself was the whole point of the thing—or if another one is out there.

  KINZUA

  (Seneca Country)

  Because of repeated flooding of towns and cities downstream—like Pittsburgh—the Kinzua Dam was authorized in 1963. It backed up the Allegheny River, turned a valley into a lake, and flooded loads of Seneca history.

  Somewhere under the Allegheny Reservoir is Cornplanter’s grave, a simple tree under which the old warrior was buried in 1836 at the age of one hundred. Probably only the Seneca knew which one it was, if it was still standing, but what a tragedy it was for them to lose access to it. Cornplanter’s village and Handsome Lake’s vision site were here as well, now under water.

  It’s hard for non-Iroquois to appreciate the anguish this caused the Seneca. All through the cycle of protests, lawsuits, and construction, the whole region was a zone of psychic folklore. Phantom horses, fabled bogies, and even the archetypal Great Snake of the Allegheny were spotted, as if the unrest among the Seneca had sprung their supernatural circus. Even High Hat, the cannibal giant in the Abe Lincoln stovepipe, was reported, and sometimes by white construction workers. The place is still spooky, a zone of paranormal folklore of most imaginable types: mystery lights, UFOs, mystery critters, ghosts.

  Two of the most-talked-about aspects involve the water. Salamanca historians tell us that not too long ago, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers divers didn’t finish the underwater part of a dam inspection. Shadowy shapes buzzed them by the dam wall, many of them bigger than human size. The divers surfaced and refused to go back under. Surely these shadow figures were natural critters like lake sturgeon or muskellunge. They can grow . . . almost that big.

  THE GREAT FALLS

  (Seneca Country)

  Waterfalls are sacred all over the world. There is only one this big—Niagara Falls—and its creation was an act of fury.

  The geologists tell us it was a single cataclysm, an ice block of the melting glaciers that let loose the water of a vast prehistoric lake, shearing the Niagara Escarpment into the tortuous form we have today. The old Iroquois thought it was made by the death rolls of a titanic serpent, caught in the open by a Thunder Being and fried with a single bolt. Everywhere, though, the Great Falls of Niagara are counted as something special. The first whites who saw them just st
ood and gaped. No wonder: The area is packed with vision sites.

  Goat Island just below the great falls is joined to the American side by a small bridge. To the Iroquois this was Turtle Island, named for their image of the world as a great body resting on the back of a primal turtle. It was sacred to them as an omphalos, a world still point or navel. Their shamans prayed and sacrificed here over the graves of great warriors. At its western edge are small islands, the Three Sisters, one of them three hundred yards from Horseshoe Falls.

  Anyone who doubts the falls’ reputation should remember the famed harmonic convergence, almost single-handedly launched by art historian Jose Argüelles, author of a series of books mixing Mayan mysticism and New Age thinking. On August 16, 1987, the planets fell into the shape of a double triangle or Star of David, and a metaphysical Woodstock was proclaimed. Seven global power sites were chosen for the first dawn of the New Age. Among the elect: Machu Picchu in Peru, the Great Pyramid in Egypt, Stonehenge in England, Mount Olympus in Greece, Mount Fuji in Japan, the banks of the Ganges in India—and Niagara Falls in New York state.

  Buffalo mystic Franklin LaVoie observes that waterfalls are symbols of the dissolving process in alchemy, thus purifying in emotional senses. Niagara Falls are for lovers and newlyweds: The falls’ energies dissolve rigid patterns in lives. They can be a new start in relationships.