Who is ever sure what any apparition really is? Many a routine ghost may have been mistaken as the Virgin Mary by a Christian witness. Something about this “angel” scared Heavy-Dough out of going anywhere near it. Davey Roy set off down the path to finish bringing the cows home. In the morning, Davey Roy was found, pounded to death, on the side of the road that goes up Indian Hill.
Nobody knew of any enemies that Davey Roy had, and none had a clue whomight have killed him, evidently helped by the conjuring of supernatural apparitions. Late in his life, though, Ted Williams found a possible connection.
For some time, Ted had been keeping records of the lives of reservation folk so that they might be remembered when they passed away. In the 1960s, he was looking over his decades-old notes and spotted a reference to Davey Roy’s grandmother Emily Gossey. His recollection of her contained the cryptic comment that she had been engaged in a bitter, lifelong feud with a dreaded witch with the Tuscarora name of Kreegi(t)uh. Grandma Gossey must have been a power person herself, one who kept her brood safe while she was in the world. Was Davey Roy’s death the last act of the feud?
Big I’sic’s Desire
(Tuscarora, Early Twentieth Century)
Big I’sic was a large man, and he did justice to his meals. By his thirties, he was the biggest Tuscarora anyone had ever seen. He also had a secret crush on a woman on the reservation.
One day, Big I’sic spotted Asa Williams talking kindly to the object of his desire. There was nothing unusual about this gesture: Asa Williams was a shy homebody who talked kindly to everyone. But the sight of this filled Big I’sic with an impulsive rage. He quickly contrived a situation in which he and Asa worked with axes in the same wood. Asa and his head were separated before the third tree was felled. Big I’sic covered the body with trunks and branches, then went home as if nothing had happened—minus one imagined rival. But his victim had a brother, and Dan Williams was no gentle soul.
Like the Seneca John Jemison, Dan Williams was well-known as a healer. His expertise was prized in Native American circles, and he traveled widely dispensing it. But both he and the girlfriend who shared the family farmhouse had, like Jemison, another reputation. As was said of them both in direct translation of the Tuscarora phrase, “They know poison” (they were witches). This was a factor that Big I’sic had left out of his calculations, if any were made at all. They say love—if you can call it that—does that to many of us.
When it was clear that Asa Williams had disappeared, brother Dan got out the medicine and made a single potion. He poured the steaming mixture into abowl, loomed over it, draped a shawl over his head, and rocked and chanted for a long time. At last he gained one vision he was sure of: his brother’s head and body covered by branches. He found the body, arranged the funeral, and got the honoring and grieving done. The next step was finding the killer.
Big I’sic had seen enough of the medicine that could find a body that fast. Before the funeral was over, he took off for the Six Nations Reserve in Canada where at least one long arm—white American law—couldn’t get him. But Uncle Sam isn’t the only one with a reach.
Before long, Dan Williams had the killer’s name. Everyone knew payback was coming, one that was going to be greater than the crime. Dan Williams confessed years later to his cousin Ted that he had his victim on a leash, and he gave it plenty of snaps.
Big I’sic developed a psychotic addiction to food. The more he ate, the more he craved. Maybe his supernatural attacker had sent him the spirit of Sagodadahkwus, “He Who Eats Inwards,” the Seneca personification of gluttony. He died a ghastly death of self-indulgence and one with a distinction: He was the only Tuscarora Ted ever knew so big that he was buried in a piano crate. He never revealed the name of his secret love, even when he had nothing else to lose.
A Wayward Youth
(Tuscarora, Early Twentieth Century)
From his boyhood, Ted Williams remembers an older woman everyone called Cassandra. Who could forget her? She had her own style: high-top shoes, broad-brimmed sunhats, and flowery dresses that flapped in the wind. She lived with her daughter’s family on an old farm.
Her grandson was a lad nicknamed Less, and he was the man of the house after the early death of his father. Cassandra hoped that he would become something in life—a lawyer or doctor, perhaps. He had been taught well at the reservation school, but it could all change for the worse in his teens. There were obstacles and so many distractions for reservation youth.
The pivotal moment came when Less neared the legal age for dropping out. One day he announced that he was tired of school and didn’t see why he should keep going. His grandmother sent him with a note asking his teacher, Miss Felsy, not to let him flunk any more courses.
A few afterschool conferences took place, and something changed. Young Less started to like school and often stayed late to work on his grades. This was encouraging on the home front, but he was slacking on his chores, and one day the cows got loose because he’d forgotten to mend a fence. Gramma Cassandra hitched up a horse and buggy for the first time in years and took off for the school for a word with her grandson.
Ted Williams was on the scene as the grandmother drew up to the building and looked down into a window. Whatever she saw almost made her fall out
