The next day the young man called his brother’s friends together and told them the whole story. It was not as hard as you might think to convince them. Many of them had their own suspicions about the illness. They went to the chief with a plan.
An elite group of warriors stayed ready in their homes for several nights. On the first twilight that people were spotted leaving the village, the warriors assembled. The sick man’s brother led them on a stealthy trek through the trails to the clearing in which his adventure had started. There the witches were gathered.
Still in their human forms, the witches were easy to identify. They were also distracted, listening to their officers and sages engaged in many a fine speech. Six Nations witches, it seems, love rhetoric, like all other Iroquois. Each warrior was able to creep up close to a witch undetected. The sick man’s brother took a place close to the orphan girl who’d helped him before.
The leader of the witches stood by the fire. “Enough of these reports,” he called. “To business. Where’s our new young friend, Owl Boy? We’ll have to settle for him soon. He may be able to recognize some of us.” There was a murmur of assent among the group, already mixed with a few half-animal sounds.
“But first I have to tell you something serious. If we were all to die today, not one of us would go to the Evil One who is our patron. Not one of us has done enough evil deeds. The Good-Minded Spirit would take us to him. Let’s vow, each of us, to leave here tonight and curse and murder at least one person apiece. Let’s start with that boy who has our fine owl hat.”
At that second, the lad they spoke of jumped up. “You don’t mean me, do you?” He took the hand of the orphan girl who’d helped him and hauled her out of the glow of the fire. Every witch took a breath to snarl or roar. Furry faces wrinkled, and fangs bared.
But before any of them could move, each warrior leaped from the darkness beside his appointed target and struck. Every witch fell dead. The men went back totheir homes, heroes, having saved the local villages more suffering than they would ever know.
The Witch of Otisco Lake
(Onondaga, Traditional)
A vain, pretty woman was the belle of the village. All the young men courted her, all but one fine hunter who didn’t pay her much attention. After a while, this was the only one she wanted, but he either minded his own business in life or went about with young women who were more grounded.
The pretty woman used a charm to bewitch him. It worked so well that he wanted to be with her all the time. Once the shoe was on the other foot, she put him off just as she had all the other young men. In a few weeks he was so thin, weak, and sick that his friends started to worry about him.
A couple of them took him to Otisco Lake, hoping to get him away from his worries. Still he roamed, wandering in the moonlight, moaning for the woman who had witched him.
One day, his friends took him on a lake cruise in a patched canoe. In the middle of the lake, it started leaking. The sufferer was too weak to paddle with the others, but he bailed water as fast as he could with a gourd dipper. In the middle of the lake the boat went under. The strong fellows took turns helping their witch-struck friend get back to shore, but he was unconscious when they reached land and lived only hours longer.
His best friend gave the death whoop when the small party neared the village. The people gathered, and among them was the witch, who gave a loud cry, ran to the body, knelt in tears, and confessed what she had done. The procession moved silently past her.
MARY JEMISON ON WITCHCRAFT
(Genesee Valley, Late Eighteenth Century)
The autobiography of Mary Jemison is a window into the Iroquois character. In its pages we meet people of deep virtue, true to the death to their own codes. We see harsh lives, nationalistic conflict, desperate brutality, and superhuman courage. We see people in times of change. We learn plenty about their supernatural belief.
The Seneca people Jemison knew may have shed their faith in some of the more exotic folkloric beings like the Giant Mosquito and the Legs. They had a little less doubt about the Great Flying Heads, sensing that they might just be getting rare. They hadn’t lost a shred of their faith in witchcraft.
Jemison’s Seneca believed that, next to their own Evil-Minded One, the world’s many witches were its greatest scourge. To them it seemed their duty to do whatever they could to destroy this dangerous source of evil.
A number of people presumed to be walking on the dark side got along fine within the community—as long as they didn’t go too far. Those accused of witchcraft were tried like those accused of anything else, and the Iroquois had an admirable legal system. There was no parole or forgiveness, though, for those convicted of practicing an art as dangerous as the dark one. The only chance was to make tracks, as many did on first hearing they were suspected. Others were hauled to trial before they could get away.
In her time with the Seneca in the Genesee Valley, Jemison could hardly recall a year in which she did not hear of at least one execution
