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 man 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’show 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
