The precontact Iroquois had to kill animals to live. Without the life of the animals, they would have had none of their own. This led to a mix of admiration and pragmatism. Life was revered, even as it was taken. It was not to be taken needlessly. It was also believed that each animal in the woods had something vital to teach every human.
All Iroquois nations have animal clans, and everyone born among them or adopted into them belonged to a clan. All Iroquois nations have three clans in common: wolf, bear, and turtle. Other clans varied by nation, with the Onondaga having the most (nine), and the Mohawk and Oneida having just the basic three. The animals are based on their domains: the earth (bear, wolf, and deer), the water (beaver, eel, and turtle), or the air (snipe, hawk, and heron). Clan affiliation is always matrilineal, determined by the mother; if you don’t know your ancestry, or no one knows it, you are automatically one of the turtles, sort of the default-clan for the Iroquois. As if the spiritual bond between human and animal could even be physical, it was considered a sort of incest to marry within a clan, even of another nation. Eel Clan Cayuga were uncomfortable with the idea of marrying an Eel Clan Onondaga.
Undoubtedly, this clan affiliation was another bond of unity among the Iroquois nations. Seneca Turtle Clan members would fall in quickly among Oneida Turtles. It also encouraged good behavior. Showing cowardice or scurrility was letting down one’s clan, as well as one’s family, village, and nation.
There was, of course, a lighter and highly imaginative side to this. Members of these clans were thought to represent or take on some of the traits of the totem animal. This led to a host of associations and supplied the lifelong fodder for quips and routines. “Come in if you’re fat,” a member of the Wolf Clan might call at a door upon which someone had knocked.
This clan thing is still a factor. Most Iroquois even living off the reservation know their clan, and they act accordingly. Mohawk members of the Bear Clan do not kill bears. The fine Buffalo State College scholar Bill Englebrecht (author of Iroquoia) heard of a Turtle Clan member who stopped his car on the shoulder of a highway to carry a turtle safely across.
While the Iroquois we’ve interviewed don’t directly believe in reincarnation, so strong was the theme of identification with the clan animal that it might be presumed to go on into another life.
Ron Schenne of West Falls remembers visiting the Canadian Six Nations Reservation as a kid in the 1940s. His dad had become friends with Chief Jamison, and whenever they visited him, they brought him American coffee and hot dogs, which he much preferred to what he could get locally. The chief ’s son Arnold was about Schenne’s age, and the pair used to hunt together. The shooting could get a little wild. “You know, when you’re a kid with a gun, you shoot at anything,” said Schenne.
At his Erie County home raptors were considered a nuisance, and Schenne was paid to shoot them. It was a reflex to pop one in a tree. While he and Arnold were out hunting, they spotted an owl in a nearby tree. Before he could fire, the son of the chief reached over and flipped the barrel up into the air. The shot soared into the sky.
“That could be my grandfather up there,” said Arnold. His father’s father was of the Owl Clan.
THE TENDER OF THE FLAME
The old Iroquois hunted to live. They loved life, though, and had a code by which they took it. Their tales tell us that living according to this code both took and gave great virtue and displayed such respect that even animals destined to lose life were grateful to humans.
If there was a single thing that set mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) on his course, it was an Iroquois story often called “The Grateful Animals.” Campbell was spellbound by the theme of the hunter chief killed by humans and rallied to life by animals. Though he had killed many of their brethren, each animal of the wood mourned him like a sibling, each giving something of its nature to bring his body back to life. Maybe they still have their ways of showing appreciation.
A Story in Himself
Every spring, the men of a western New York family fish and camp in Quebec above the Kahnawake Reservation. By 1998, their guide had become a trusted friend. He’s a story in himself.
A completely self-sufficient woodsman, he lives only with his pet companion, apparently a full-blood wolf. He makes the money he has by leading tours and selling tools and jewelry made from natural products. He barters for all else. When he takes people on tours, they abide by his almost religious code: Take only what you’ll eat or wear; leave nothing but footprints. It isn’t for everybody. Many a tour he cuts short because some high-rolling slickers can’t learn respect. Once he pointed a raft of them toward land and told them to take their money and get lost.
Every day of this trip, a father and son went out with their guide on the lake in kayaks, catching their dinners and brooding into water and sky. Often they were so far apart as they fished that they couldn’t see each other. Always they left a huge, slow-burning fire by their campsite so they could find it. This beacon was vital. Evening comes early that far north, and even April is winterlike. A night without shelter was a life-or-death situation.
As they met in their kayaks at the end of one day, they realized that they could hardly see the fire they had left as a beacon. A faint snow in the air was almost a mist, and the fire seemed likely to go out before they reached their cabin. They paddled desperately toward their last glimpse of it, to no avail.
They met a mile from shore and agreed on a plan to find what was left of the fire. The father would paddle well to the left of their last sight of it; the guide was to head right. Then both would cruise along the shoreline back toward the middle. The youngest would head straight toward it. Coals could still be glowing, and whoever came near might rekindle a beacon. Still, they didn’t have much hope. Land, water, and sky were a marginless twilight.
The son saw nothing when he was a hundred yards from shore. He cruised back and forth along the waterline and was about to double back again when he saw the flare of a fire.
Shocked and gladdened, he drove his kayak toward it. He was not mistaken. The fire was roaring in surges and then falling dim as though an invisible bellows was at work. When he got closer, he spotted what could have been a human figure beside it, arms and body heaving, fanning it with a cloak or blanket so cumbersome that it could have been bear or buffalo hide. The figure’s size, build, and long hair made him think of a woman. He called out with a laugh.
As he neared shore, though, their savior drew back. As she left the glow, he thought he saw the forms of waiting animals, escorting her into the trees and darkness.
The youth whipped the blaze into an inferno, and his father and their guide soon found it. He told his story. The father was amazed; their guide was mighty quiet and didn’t say much about what he was thinking. He went to bed early.
Late that night, the young New Yorker saw the guide and his wolfy friend go out, as if for a rite or meditation destined to be private. It was hours before the pair returned, and nothing was said about it in the morning.
The Men by the Fire
Early one Sunday evening in August 2004, a young East Aurora man drove by the lakeshore not far from the Cattaraugus Reservation. A few hundred feet off the road, he saw the glow of a fire and human forms around it. He followed a couple of sets of tire tracks in sandy soil through the grass, hoping to see what was going on.
A dozen Seneca men between seventeen and forty sat around the fire, drinking a variety of their own spirits. They greeted Ken when he pulled up, and he decided to visit. He brought some of his own Scotch whiskey from the car, and the ice seemed fully broken when an observation of his sent a laugh around the circle. “Ken-man, you’re cool,” the oldest of them said. From then on he was Ken-man.
Ken thought he was fitting in, but soon noticed that most of the laughter and conversation came from the older fellows. He couldn’t help but study one young longhair who’d said nothing since he arrived. A lean fellow with the graceful build of a boy, he couldn’t have weigh
ed a hundred forty pounds. He fell in upon himself, shaded his features in his mane, and muttered.
Soon he glared at Ken whenever he spoke as if he had no right to have an opinion, join a laugh that circled the fire, or share the lakeside air. Once he spat after Ken said something, and others spoke to him in Seneca. He said something short back and looked at Ken.
“We having some kind of problem?” Ken said. The young man rushed at him, and the two clashed chests in the glow. Ken’s weight threw the lad back. The oldest of the men, the one who had first used the name Ken-man, said something sharp to the young fellow.
“What’s wrong with you?” said Ken. Others tried to hold the whooping, snarling lad, gaining frenzy with each second like a Scandinavian berserker. The young Seneca fought through the arms, closed in again, and clutched with fingers like claws. There was something more than crazed about him. It was hard for three men to hold him. In the struggle, his torso showed. (“Talk about a six-pack, he had a twelve-pack,” Ken said later.)
A brawler himself, Ken had been the aggressor against bigger men. Something in that moment was terrifying. “What’s wrong with you?” he said. “I’m not fighting you.”
“Run, Ken-man,” said the oldest, struggling. “Get out of here! He’s proving himself on you.”
“Run!” yelled others. Ken strode quickly to his car. A shadow fell near him as his hand was on the door. He spun, lashed out, and landed a perfect right to a jaw.
It was the young Seneca. Sense left the astonished eyes while still open.
Not every man gets all his weight into a punch. Ken is one of the ones who can do it. That tag should have dropped anyone for hours. Still, the blow felt odd. The young Seneca’s jaw had felt like something fixed to a leather saddle. The body had none of the give of other bodies he had struck and fell to the sandy soil tense like an animal’s.
Ken started the car and was turning onto the path when something pounced on the convertible roof, seeming to grab it at four points like a lioness tackling a buffalo. It had to be the young Seneca, trying to tear through the top.
Ken backed up, stopped, and turned, tossing the body over the side. He tore down the trail that he thought was the way he had come in. It was not. It actually went along the beach, curved a mile around marshy woods and thinned till it was invisible. The car hit something sandy and slowed. Ken got out and stood in the headlights, studying the situation. A shadow came out of the trees fifty yards off and flowed toward him.
It was the young Seneca. He’d run a mile or more in three minutes through black woods and come into the headlights, shirt in tatters. He bounded toward the car.
Ken started rocking and flooring his vehicle. Just as the young Seneca reached for a door, one of the wheels caught traction and spun the car onto hard dirt. Ken took off, leaving the young Seneca running again, watching his form recede in the glow of the taillights. It took a surprising time to be clear of him. He came to a paved road that led to Route 5 and made it away with no more incidents. He woke the next morning with a swollen hand and a knuckle that would turn out to be broken.
When he reflects about that night by the fire, he remembers things the commotion distracted him from noticing. Some of the other men, too, fell silent and lolled back. A time or two he thought he saw a pair of canines gleaming in the light and something clawlike in the position of a hand. What would have happened if he had stayed? Some nights he wonders if the dark form could still be running and if it will someday find him.
Granny Wolf
Mike Bastine remembers a woman, an old storyteller from Allegany, who knew someone who could shift her shape. It was her grandmother.
When she was a girl, she used to like sleeping over with her grandmother, but many a time she woke late at night with the feeling she was alone in the house. When she checked it was always true. Where had her grandmother gone?
When she was older, she tried to stay awake to see her grandmother come back. She never succeeded, though once near dawn she heard someone come in and go straight to her grandmother’s room. That afternoon as she played with the other children, she found wolf tracks all around her grandmother’s house.
One night when she heard the sounds of her grandmother leaving on the other side of the house, she looked out her window. She believed she saw the form of a wolf lope off through the moon shadows into the trees.
One morning a short time later, her grandmother didn’t get up. The girl found her in bed with a wound in her leg. There was blood leading from the window to the covers.
“Don’t worry, dear, I’ll be all right,” said the old dame. “I just need to rest awhile.”
The girl asked about her leg. “Darn it. I was walking in the woods and there was this sharp stick out. Got me right here. I’ll be all right.”
The little girl took a breath. “Uh, Grandma. . . . One time when you left at night I’m pretty sure I saw a wolf run into the woods. I’ve been meaning to ask you about that for a long time.”
At first the grandmother dismissed the matter, but the girl wouldn’t let it go.
“I always knew you were a smart little girl,” she said. “Well, I have to tell you something just for you. You’re right, honey. There have always been some of us who’ve gone around like that at night. I’m one of the only ones I know any more who still does it.
“But that’s how I keep an eye on the neighborhood and make sure everything’s all right. You can’t go all over the yards and woods like that like a person. I make sure people are treating each other right, and if I have to get involved, well, I do it my own way. Sometimes I wonder why.”
She groaned. “That old Mr. Jamison would just drink all his money away and there’d be nothing left for the family. Somebody has to scare him into keeping home at night. Mary Snow is out at all hours with her boyfriend and just about anything could happen to those little kids of hers if somebody didn’t keep an eye out. And if Davey Green ever hits his wife again, he has to know something’s coming for him.
“Now this story is just for you,” she finished. “If this got out and around in the community,” she shook her head, “it wouldn’t be good. It wouldn’t be good at all.”
She rolled over and groaned. “That’s all for now, honey. I have to get some rest. You run home and tell your mom to come over later. Boy, it’s lucky that darn farmer’s such a bad shot, or he’d have got me for good.”
The Dog and the Wolves
A Seneca man and his dog lived in a cabin far from a village. They got along well and fairly with each other, certainly no worse than people and dogs ought to. One evening, the dog ran into a pack of wolves outside the house.
“We’ve been watching this place for weeks,” said the leader. “If you know what’s best for you, you’ll ditch this guy now. We’re coming back tomorrow night to knock him off when he brings in the water. Then we’ll eat up all his game. The same thing will happen to you if you get in the way.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t try any of that,” said the dog. “You know, that guy blows smoke and fire out of his lungs every night. You want to mess with a witch like that?”
“You are some kind of a liar,” laughed the head wolf. “Still, it’s worth a look, if he can do a thing like that. But don’t forget what I said. If we catch you here tomorrow, you’ll get the medicine he gets.”
“Don’t forget what I said,” said the dog. “Make sure you’re watching tonight around sunset. That’s when he shows off his power.”
All went as the dog expected. That night the wolves returned, looked in on the cabin, and saw the man enjoying his pipe, apparently breathing fire. They presumed him a great wizard and took off running. His dog sleeping comfortably at his feet, the man never knew of this.
We should always be good to our dogs. We will never know how many times they have saved us.
THE ANIMALS TALKING
While you’re waiting to hear from the supernatural talking animals, Mike Bastine will tell you it’s important to listen t
o the natural ones. You shouldn’t need to be a medicine person to hear them.
“It kind of started with the geese,” he commenced in a recent talk. “When I grew up, in the spring and the fall you’d hear them migrating. You’d look up in the sky and they were the tiniest little dots. So high up in the air. Now they’re flying just over the tree line. And they’re everywhere. Those Canada geese, they’re a nuisance. You can walk right up to them.
“It surprises most people to find out that coyotes live around us almost everywhere. They are the shyest, most secretive animals. You only see them when they get hit by a car or when they’re mangy and they’re almost dead. Even then you might not know it. They look so much like dogs. Coyotes are getting aggressive out West. I’ve heard of it happening around here.
“And there’s the red-tailed hawk. When I was a kid, if I heard the whistle of one of those, I’d run out and try to find it. You couldn’t get within half a mile of one. Today, they just perch there on a telephone pole and look at you. You can get right under one.
Iroquois Supernatural: Talking Animals and Medicine People Page 30