Contents Title Page Introduction: The Iroquois Supernatural—Reaching Beyond the Sacred Chapter 1—The Longhouse Folk The Iroquois Origins The League of Six Nations The Longhouse The Nations Iroquois Languages Iroquois Religious Influences Into the Woods Chapter 2—The Witches’ Craft Iroquois Witches Two Kinds of Witches Spotting a Witch Getting to the Root of the Hex Arthur C. Parker on Witchcraft Onondaga Witches Mary Jemison on Witchcraft The Heart of a Black Bird Witch Bones A Witch’s Bag The Witch John Jemison Two Seneca Witch Trials Kauquatau Witch Children Chapter 3—The Witches’ Torch Witch Lights Anomalous Light Phenomena The Hills of Rochester The Lights of Oswego Bitter Indian Hill Train Tracks and Witch Lights The Hill of Dead Witches Onondaga Witch Lights A Metaphysical Contract Ghostly Walks and Phantom Hosts Joe Bruchac on Witch Lights Chapter 4—Medicine People An Aura of the Spirit Bear and Ted Witch Doctors Diviners of Mysteries Herbs and Healings The Seventh Son Medicine Bags Sabael and the Medicine Beads For the Unborn Children Mad Bear’s Method of Reading Weapons of Friendship House Clearings Chapter 5—The False Faces The Medicine Mask Society The Headman of the Faces Doctors and Doorkeepers Beggars and Thieves Opening the Eyes Masks and Museums Two Healers and the Masks Other Masked Healers Unmasked Healers The Call of the Masks The Good Crop Power People Ted Williams’s Tales of the False Faces Chapter 6—Supernatural War Directed Curses Calling the Ancestors The Liver Tree Curse The Dust Devil of Boughton Hill The Curse of the Bones Signs of Supernatural War Chapter 7—Power Spaces Witches’ Walk Hill of the Crows Green Lake Squakie Hill Fort Hill and Bluff Point The Valley of Madness The Hill and the Stone Kinzua The Great Falls Snake Hill The Angel’s Mountain Taughannock Falls Lost Nation The Dale Lake Eldridge High Rock Spring The Great Hill The Seneca National Creation Tale Ring of Honor Chapter 8—The Supernatural Zoo The Celts and the Iroquois The Fearsome Foursome The Stone Giants The Great Flying Heads The Vampire Corpse Super Serpents The Thunderers The Monster Bear High Hat The Legs The Mischief Maker Longnose The Giant Mosquito The Witch Hawk The Servers The Evil-Soul Gatherer The Underground Buffalo White Deer of the Genesee Chapter 9—Talking Animals Special Animals Witch and Shape-Shifter Changelings Shape-Shifters Altered Animals Animal Clans The Tender of the Flame The Animals Talking The Songs of the Dogs Chapter 10—The Little People The Wee Folk Three Nations Imparting a Ritual Nineteenth-Century Little People Two Nations The Fairy Fishers The Second Nation Lanes of the Little People The Djogao Skull Fairy Trees Chapter 11—The Land of the Elders The Old Spirits Five Iroquois Motifs The Haunted Battlefield Rogers Island The Darkness on the Hill The Wailing Spirits The Ontario County Courthouse The Kicking Chief of Cooperstown The Five Ghosts of Red Jacket The Tonawanda Presbyterian Haunted Roads Delaware Avenue Black Nose Springs Road The Forbidden Trail 13 Curves West Road Route 5 The Spirit World I Feel My Friends Here Bloody Mary The Chief of the Blue Heron The Land of the Elders The Spirit Choirs Footnote Bibliography About the Authors About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company Books of Related Interest Copyright & Permissions Approximate Positions of Today’s Cities Niagara Falls Rochester Syracuse Oneida Saratoga Springs Canadaigua Auburn Buffalo Albany Ithaca Jamestown Salamanca Elmira Binghamton INTRODUCTION The Iroquois Supernatural Reaching Beyond the Sacred The Native Americans known collectively as the Iroquois have had an impact on world destiny out of all proportion to their numbers and territory. They have been deeply admired for their leaders as well as for their national character, their League of Six Nations, and their simple moxie, but they have had a hold on so many far-flung imaginations that isn’t easy to explain. People all over the world who have no particular interest in anything Native American have found themselves strangely haunted by these industrious, adventurous, mystical Iroquois. What could be the source of it? The Iroquois are unmistakably and for all time native North Americans, but they might be unique even among their native New York neighbors. Something drew these five, then six nations—the Cayuga, the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Seneca, and latecomers the Tuscarora—into a single distinctive unit, this outfit we call the Confederacy, the League of Six Nations. Enough books have been written about the character and history of the Iroquois. This book is devoted to the supernatural traditions of these first historic New Yorkers, from as far back as we can trace them, to the present day. Figuring out what to include in this book has been tricky. Where do you draw the line between miracle and magic? Between religion and spirituality? Between the sacred and the merely spooky? This book doesn’t try to choose. How could anyone? All religions are at heart supernatural. Throughout history most societies have had both a mainstream supernaturalism and others that are looked upon with more suspicion. The “out” supernaturalism is often that of a less advantaged group within the major society. What the mainstream culture calls “sacred” is its supernaturalism; terms like “witchcraft” are applied to the others. Someone’s ceiling is another’s floor, and one culture’s God is another’s Devil. To someone from Mars, what could be the objective difference? Although all Iroquois supernatural belief may seem “superstitious” or “magical” to some observers, Iroquois society itself makes its own distinctions between the sacred and the spooky. Still, one often overlaps the other. Dhyani Ywahoo, Mad Bear, the Dalai Lama, and Michael Bastine in Dharamsala, India, in 1980 This book is not about the sacred traditions of the Iroquois. It is a profile of the supernaturalism external to the religious material recognized as truly sacred. This is a book largely about the “out” stuff: witches, curses, supernatural beings, powerful places, and ghosts. It includes things on the spiritual side: healings, power people, visions, and prophetic dreams. Some of the material is historic, archaeological, and anthropological. Much of it is as alive and current as a paranormal report. Algonquin coauthor Michael Bastine and I have written this book from the belief that one of the world’s great spiritual traditions is that of the Iroquois, and that it’s been under the radar for too long. A broader familiarity with Iroquois traditions would help world spirituality—and hence the world. We also believe that the world might develop more sympathy for Iroquois causes if it knew the Iroquois better. The partnership between us is an equitable one. I did most of the book research and keyboarded the words. The voice of the narrative is mine. Michael, a highly respected elder, trained with many people mentioned in this book. Vast stretches of its words—and most of the wisdom—are his. MASON WINFIELD AND MICHAEL BASTINE 1 The Longhouse Folk You must forgive me, therefore, for not always distinctively calling the creeds of the past “superstition” and the creeds of the present day “religion.” JOHN RUSKIN, THE QUEEN OF THE AIR THE IROQUOIS In 1609 on the west bank of the lake named for him, French explorer Samuel de Champlain had the white
