They broke into the old woman’s house and found bloody rags on a table. Theyapproached her at the funeral. “You’re nothing but a witch!” the bereaved father shouted. “Now I know why you go to funerals. Admit it!”
She burst out crying. “I never hurt the children. I gave their hearts to my friend after they were dead. My friend in the ground was my friend in life, and she makes luck for me now. I’d starve without her.”
“You should have told people you needed help,” said the father. “You can do without luck like that. Go home, and give up this business.”
A witch doctor made a charm above the heartless child so that she might rest in her grave. The witch woman died not long after, so maybe her time was due. And maybe only the power of the spirit witch had kept her alive that long.
The Swig of Flying
(Seneca, Early Twentieth Century)
One young Seneca man was visiting another at his cabin. The two were enjoying a summer evening and discussing a couple of ladies they hoped to know better. One of them mentioned the fine opportunity the evening’s dance at the Tonawanda Reservation Long House could provide, ten miles away. Neither of them had a car, and it would all be over by the time they could walk there. The host went to his cabin and brought back a reused wine bottle. “Take a sip of this,” he said.
Both took swigs of something that tasted like sweet wine. After putting the bottle away, the host trotted down the dirt road in the direction of the Long House. His guest followed. Soon both were running in great, effortless bounds. Thirty, forty, fifty feet. Tracts of road and trail flew under them with every stride. They tossed their heads and laughed. The sky above them hurtled by.
In only minutes, their airy courses glided to a walk. Lights and music came to them from the Long House and reminded them where they were heading. Just as they entered, the guest cleared his throat and coughed. He got a shock. Red light glowed in his cupped fingers as if a fire inside him shot light through his mouth and nostrils—one of the traditional giveaways of the Iroquois witch. Folks sure to know what it meant would be inside the Long House.
“I wouldn’t do that in there,” said the owner of the magic wine, and his guest nodded. They had a good time, but as the night came to an end, the guest was starting to wonder if he had been made into a witch for good. He was happy to findwhen he left the dance that the effects of the flying liquor were barely noticeable. His strongest cough made no more than a spark, and in another hour, he was all the way back to himself. Still, he stayed a long way away from that witch-Seneca ever after.
WITCH CHILDREN
Belgian ethnologist Frans Olbrechts (1899–1958) spent time among the Cherokee of North Carolina and reported on a strange custom in 1932. Some Cherokee families chose certain children, often twins, to be witches. They were brought up specially, undergoing a sort of life initiation supposed to endow them with supernatural abilities. The most critical period of this training was the first fortnight of life.
Infants so chosen were given no mother’s milk for their first twenty-four days. They were fed only the white liquid of corn hominy and only at night. No strangers were allowed to visit them.
Once this three-week cycle was over, the parents of these witch children never worried about them, even when they didn’t know where they were. It was presumed that the children could take care of themselves. Even in infancy, Olbrechts reported, “whatever they think happens.” Throughout their childhood, their constant playmates were the Little People, usually invisible to everyone else. By adulthood, they could fly through the air, project themselves underground, walk on sunbeams, and take the forms of certain animals.
Olbrechts wondered openly why anyone would want to add to the number of witches in the world. He sounded, though, as if he had become a believer. When these witch children grew up, he reported, “They are most annoying individuals. They always know what you think, and you could not possibly mislead them. What is worse, they can make you ill, dejected, love-sick, or dying merely by thinking of you in that condition.”
The Cherokee are linguistic cousins of the Iroquois and once lived near the Tuscarora in the Carolinas. When the Tuscarora came to New York, some Carolina customs surely came with them. Our confidants have been ominously quiet about practices among the Iroquois that might be related to this.
The Hair-Bone Token
(Seneca, Early Twentieth Century)
A strong young man got sick, and no one knew what was wrong. He saw doctors, took medicine, got rest, and got worse. By the time he quit work and went to stay with a friend, he was in bed most of the day.
A witch doctor from the Tonawanda Reservation made a potion of unspecified stuff and put a poultice of it on the sick man’s belly. Calling for quiet, he covered it carefully with rags and moss and sat back to wait. Those who touched the mass said it felt hot.
In a while, the sick man groaned, as if something was being drawn out. At a moment he seemed to be waiting for, the witch doctor grabbed the poultice, ran to the kitchen, and dumped it into the ash pan of the stove. He rummaged around in it and pulled out a small sharp bone wrapped in a white hair—a traditional witch token. Jaws dropped. The healer communed with the quirky object for a while and ventured that a certain neighborhood widow was behind the witching. Friends and family had a hard time with this. “She calls every day to
