Iroquois Supernatural: Talking Animals and Medicine People Read online

  The Iroquois have their own traditions, of course. National and religious creation tales feature them sprouting right out of the ground or from a single hill. Those are widely regarded as mythical. As for Iroquois storytellers, their only conflict with the archaeologists may be one of timing. The Iroquois carry tales of distinct nations wandering into ancient New York from other parts of the continent, usually the Northeast, the Southeast, or the Great Lakes. There are faint traditions of an old home in the American Southwest. This seems the least likely legend to be directly true; however, we think most of the ancestors of today’s Native Americans came from Asia. Thus North America was populated by groups migrating from the general direction of the west.

  Even the pros admit that the choice between evolution and immigration is too simple. The real answer might be a mix of all factors: in-place development, new cultural influences, immigration, and at least one X-factor. (The Iroquois always seem to toss you one of those.) All everyone agrees on is that by the sixteenth century, the Iroquois were a political union of New York nations, sharing language and many other aspects of culture.

  THE LEAGUE OF SIX NATIONS

  According to legend, for many centuries the Iroquois nations had no sense of kinship. They warred with each other continually. Then an Iroquois, possibly Mohawk, chief had a vision of a mighty tree that never lost its leaves, with Iroquois people sheltering under its boughs. His message of unity was not readily taken, and this visionary chief, usually called the Peacemaker, had many adventures as he spread his word. Eventually the five original nations accepted his guidance and banded together. Strong and supple like the fingers of a hand, their Confederacy had flexibility and reach. It could also draw together into a fist for attack or defense.

  Some Iroquois historians set the Confederacy’s founding date between 900 and 1450 CE. A few white historians place it as recently as 1600. What’s clear is that by the time the Europeans were settling New England, this was the strongest native power on the continent.

  Though the Confederacy was never a big body by the standards of the Old World or of Central and South America, it had an impressive form of representative government based not on cultural or ethnic factors, but political ones.

  The semiofficial fracturing of the League came during the American Revolution. When the British and the colonials split, the Six Nations were understandably confused. To which set of English-speakers had they sworn their oaths? They covered the holy council fire at Onondaga, meaning that each Iroquois nation was free to decide for itself. Most Oneida and Tuscarora sided with the Yanks. The other nations went with the British. The first blows one Iroquois nation had struck at another in centuries came at the Battle of Oriskany in 1777.

  In the 1970s, a renaissance of Native American self-awareness and political power brought the League back into closer communication, and many other nations came with them. The League may never again be like it was, but the world around it has changed—and for the better—due to its influence.

  THE LONGHOUSE

  The Iroquois called themselves Haudenosaunee, “People of the Long House,” and many today insist on the term. To those who think we should have used it instead of “Iroquois” throughout this book, we should explain. The term Haudenosaunee has not been used much in print until recently, and its spelling is still variable. There are four centuries of references to the Iroquois. Our point in commemorating these Longhouse Folk is lost if our readers don’t know who we are talking about. We should talk about the structure that is the source of their name.

  Big stone buildings were nonexistent in the Northeast before the whites came. Most Native North Americans lived in single-family structures like teepees or wigwams.

  A characteristic feature of Iroquois life was the use of rectangular, multifamily dwellings called longhouses. Wood framed and walled with skins and bark, these longhouses surely developed in response to the cold winters of the Northeast. Some longhouses were 100 feet long, 25 feet high, and 20 feet wide.

  Families lived in close quarters in the longhouse. A central aisle usually ran through them, and people slept on hammock-like bunks on each side. At the center of the longhouse was a fire pit. A hole in the roof above it let out the smoke and fumes. This fire was the center of cooking, warming, socializing, and teaching. An entrance was usually at each end.

  Longhouses weren’t intended to be permanent. Most Iroquois communities picked up and moved to another site within their national territory about every seven years. They had to. Their subsistence crops of corn, beans, and squash—the Three Sisters—exhausted the soil after a few seasons, and the fields took years to recover. Structures like long-houses have been found among other societies of the Northeast, but they are separate from the concept of “the Longhouse” found among the Iroquois.

  The Longhouse is more than a signature building; it is the symbol of Iroquois identity. The inclusive, sheltering, protective image is a figurative way of looking at Iroquois society. Its physical form is even the outline of Iroquois territory in New York state.

  We doubt that UFOs were taking Iroquois elders on periodic sky rides, but somehow the Longhouse folk came up with a correct impression of the shape of their traditional lands. It’s a breadloaf across the New York map, a rough rectangle whose longest sides stretched from the Hudson to the Alleghenies. Lake Ontario and the Pennsylvania border formed the lines of its northern and southern walls. This geographical figure is remarkably close to the shape of the longhouse, and since the spots in the material longhouse had their traditional associations, the Confederacy’s five original nations were nicknamed by the position of their territories.

  The Genesee Valley Seneca and the Mohawk Valley Mohawk were Keepers of the Western and Eastern doors, respectively. Since the usual position of the firekeeper, storyteller, and teacher was by the fire at the middle, “Firekeepers” was one of the nicknames of the Onondaga, who held the center of Iroquois territory. Between the end and the middle in the material longhouse were stationed the children whose duties were to tend the fire. On the landscape-longhouse, these were the positions of the west-central Cayuga and the east-central Oneida, called “the Younger Brothers.”

  THE NATIONS

  The Iroquois nations spoke closely related languages. They shared customs, lifestyles, religion, and a body of cultural tales, as well as attitudes about the supernatural, the focus of our book.

  The Iroquois were adopting societies, bringing many non-Iroquois people—thus genetic and cultural diversity—into their villages. Before the Europeans came, these would have been Native Americans of all Northeastern nations. In historic times, many white and black Americans were taken in by the Iroquois, too. Newcomers became instant Iroquois. They were discriminated against in no perceptible ways and were judged solely by the contributions they made to the society. Some of the great leaders in Iroquois history have been of mixed blood. It could well be that this unusual inclusiveness plays some part in accounting for the Iroquois mystique.

  The formation of the League brought the separate nations into closer contact. It all melded into something we might call, without stereotyping, the Iroquois character. Some sign of that character may be found in the League’s tribal names.

  Celtic tribes often named themselves for animals and trees. The Brannovices may have been Folk of the Raven. The Chatti were the Cat People. The Eburones were People of the Yew. Some Germanic tribes named themselves for weapons. The Franks were known for the francisca, a short-handled throwing-ax and close-quarters weapon that was probably the model for the tomahawk. The Saxons’ namesake was the seax, a long-handled bowie knife.

  The Iroquois nations named themselves after things of the earth: hills, swamps, stone. We’re not sure what this may say about them, but it could symbolize their spiritual rootedness in the New York landscape. No wonder it ached so much to lose their lands.

  We tend to think of the Iroquois League as a single entity. Never forget that these are six nations with histories and
identities as distinct as those of England and Italy and they bear examining this way. Let’s start with what may have been the first nation, the Onondaga.

  The Onondaga

  The Onondaga’s upstate homeland lies between Cazenovia Lake and Onondaga Creek. Today’s city of Syracuse is their heart center. Like their western neighbors the Seneca and Cayuga, they hunted as far north as Lake Ontario and as far south as the Pennsylvania state line. Their name for themselves—sometimes written as Onotakekha—means, roughly, “People on the Hill.”

  The Onondaga have a tradition that their nation is the mother of the rest of the Iroquois. In that sense, the Onondaga are the proverbial turtle of the nations, the base of the Iroquois world. They hold the center of its territory.

  In one of the nation’s origin traditions, the Onondaga once lived near the St. Lawrence River. Weary of wars with a much bigger society, they came to their historic home centuries before Columbus. Archaeological evidence may back the Onondaga; some of it suggests the midstate influx of an Iroquoian population from northern New York. Others believe the Onondaga, like every other Iroquois nation, developed a cultural identity only after they had lived many centuries in New York.

  All Iroquois nations have legends of ancient wars, and the archaeological evidence suggests that there was pressure on early Onondaga territory. Many of the earliest Onondaga sites were fortified hilltops, indicating that the need for defense may have drawn them to unify.

  Located in the heart of the Iroquois world, the Onondaga may be the heart of Iroquois tradition. They were the Firekeepers of the nations in the symbolic longhouse that must always be kept in mind when thinking of the Iroquois. The Onondaga were culture preservers. They were holders of the Peace Tree, the white pine of the Peacemaker’s vision, under whose evergreen branches the Iroquois buried the weapons they had once used on each other.

  Many figures legendary to all Iroquois were Onondaga. The wizard king Atotarhoh (or Tadodarho, “the Tangled”) became the first presiding high chief of the Confederacy. Like Julius Caesar, his name, Tadodarhoh, has become a title. Hiawatha, the Peacemaker’s helper, may have been the most memorable Onondaga (though he’s sometimes claimed by other Iroquois nations). The unity of the Iroquois is symbolized by a wampum strip made in a pattern called Hiawatha’s Belt (shown on page 4 superimposed on the state of New York). Even the tomb of Prophet Handsome Lake (1735–1815) is in Onondaga territory.

  Because of early white settlement of the Syracuse area and the work of white historians like William Martin Beauchamp (1830–1925), the Onondaga are particularly well represented in the literature—as they are today by the young Buffalo, New York-based writer Eric Gansworth. SUNY Buffalo professor and “Faithkeeper” Oren Lyons and Buffalo State College professor Lloyd Elm are other Onondaga teachers of note.

  The Seneca scholar Arthur C. Parker wrote in 1901 that the Onondaga (with the Seneca) were the least “Whiteman-ized”—his word, our hyphen—of the Iroquois nations. By that we think Parker meant “assimilated.” Only the Iroquois can decide how right he was, but the Onondaga Nation has consistently refused state or federal grants that might compromise its independence. (Gifts from the U.S. government have been known to come with a sting, at least for Native Americans.) The Onondaga Nation seems to have served the Onondaga well. They’ve reclaimed much of their ancient territory near Syracuse.

  The Seneca

  The Seneca were the largest of the Iroquois nations and usually stereotyped as the most warlike. Though the Seneca core area was the lower Genesee Valley region around today’s Rochester, their sphere of influence was wider, including all of New York state west of Seneca Lake. Since the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, most Seneca have lived on three reservations in western New York, at Alleghany, Cattaraugus, and Tonawanda.

  These Keepers of the Western Door were the defenders of the western entrance to the Six Nations territory. They were major players during the colonial wars, including the American Revolution.

  The historic name of the Seneca—that of the Roman playwright—is not their own. The Seneca called themselves Nundawaono, usually taken to mean “People of the Great Hill.” The name that comes to us through the Dutch and French, who first heard of them from their Northeastern rivals, is A’sinnaker, usually said to mean “standing stones.” A’sinnaker is likely a corruption of a willful misunderstanding of the Seneca’s original name—thus an enemy sneer gives history its name for a most influential Native American nation.

  Onondaga tradition suggests that the Seneca may have been spinoffs of the Cayuga. In the Seneca’s own origin myth, they hail from a hill at the top of Canandaigua Lake. They may have given us more famous people than any other Native American nation.

  The fabled Peace Queen was a Seneca, as was the hero-trickster Skunni Wundi. The warrior Cornplanter (1736?–1836), Prophet Handsome Lake, and the orator Red Jacket (1750–1830) were illustrious Revolutionary-era Seneca. Mary Jemison (1743–1833), “White Woman of the Genesee,” was an adopted Seneca who declined several chances to return to the white culture. Attorney Ely Parker (1828–1895) was an aide to Union General Ulysses Grant and drew up surrender terms at Appomattox. His polymath grandson, Arthur C. Parker, was a scholar, folklorist, historian, translator, author, and the first New York state archaeologist.

  Among recent Seneca spiritual leaders are the author and teacher Twylah Hurd Nitsch (1920–2007) and author and storyteller DuWayne “Duce” Bowen (1946–2006)—one of the few writers of any origin who has published still-living Iroquois folklore. But the image the Seneca may always leave to the world is that of the scrapper. In April 2007, Seneca Nation President Maurice A. “Moe” John was asked if things might turn rough if the state tried to collect taxes on reservation tobacco sales. “I hope and I pray every day that there will be no violence,” John said. “I can’t guarantee it. We are a nation of warriors.”

  The Cayuga

  The Cayuga have a penchant for picking up nicknames. Sometimes called People of the Pipe or Keepers of the Great Pipe, the Cayuga call themselves something similar to the name by which history knows them: Kayoknonk, or Gayogohono. The term might have meant “Where the Boats Are Taken Out” or “People of the Landing.” Others take it to mean “People of the Great Swamp,” since, according to the late chief Jacob Thomas, most Iroquois who visited the Cayuga came in canoes and looked for their settlements by following the marshy ground along the lake. The Cayuga (with the Oneida and Tuscarora) are sometimes called the Younger Brothers, probably to distinguish their position in the grand Longhouse that symbolizes Iroquois territory. The Cayuga’s turf lay between the central hearth (Onondaga lands) and the western (Seneca) door.

  The Cayuga lived on both sides of Cayuga Lake, and today’s city of Auburn is the nucleus of their territory. They hunted north all the way to Lake Ontario and south to the Susquehanna River. Conflict was common, too, during the Cayuga’s cultural birth. Many early Cayuga sites are high fortifications.

  In the Cayuga’s own origin legend, they followed their prophet Hiawatha from Oswego to Cayuga Lake, wandering the upstate woodlands like Aeneas after Troy. They had many adventures, including clashes with other nations and fearsome giant beasts. They surely impressed the Jesuit fathers, who described the Cayuga as the boldest, fiercest, most political, and most ambitious “savages” the American forest had ever produced. Memorable Cayuga include John Logan, the Revolutionary-era warrior whose monument stands today in Auburn, New York, and Peter Mitten, the twentieth-century medicine man mentioned a number of times in these pages.

  We wish the Cayuga had more to show for the grandeur of this legacy now. Approximately 450 Cayuga live on reservations, mostly in western and central New York. There may be 2,000 or so more across the United States. The Cayuga Nation still holds the traditional Council of Chiefs and Clan Mothers. Their chiefs sit on the Haudenosaunee Grand Council that meets regularly at Onondaga. The Cayuga own only two tiny pieces of their former land. They’re still pursuing their claims with New
York state, in which we wish them luck. On second thought, though, they’ve had a lot of luck, and little of it’s been good. Let’s wish them justice.

  The Mohawk

  The folk we call the Mohawk call themselves Kanyukehaka, “People of the Flint,” maybe because of the abundance of tool-making flint in their core area of the Mohawk and upper Hudson river valleys. Whatever its source, the name is a suitable description of the Mohawk character: ancient, unbending, sharp, with glittering highlights and hidden depths.

  The name Mohawk, as with the origins of the name Seneca, is a slur, bestowed by their northeastern rivals, who probably figured they could tell white people anything. The name might mean “people eaters,” in short, cannibals. We take this more as a sign of their foes’ dread than any direct proclivity.

  In the hairstyle named for the Mohawk, you have a hint of their reputation. Peeling a fully haired scalp off a corpse could be awkward. The ideal leverage, it was said, was given when a head was shaved but for a single narrow strip from forehead to nape—like a horse’s mane or the plume of a Corinthian helmet. The coif of choice for Mohawk warriors was a standing challenge: Come and get it. The tough part of getting the scalp, of course, was getting its owner dead.