Ted wondered what could have given Less’s grandmother such a start. He looked in the same window in time to see Miss Felsy stand up, straighten her clothing, and button her dress. Equally disheveled, young Less tore out of the school and after his grandmother. He had an expression, a flushed face, that Ted would not understand until he was older.
Less wasn’t back in school the next day. Miss Felsy left the school shortly thereafter. One day she just didn’t show up. Once Ted got to know the male teacher who replaced her, he asked about Miss Felsy. “She grew three funny warts on her face,” the man said. “She didn’t want anyone to see her. When they got out to about half an inch long, she had them taken off. Three more got growing in different parts of her face. The doctors couldn’t figure anything out about these. Now, how about that?”
Ted told the story to his father, Eleazar Williams (1880–1968), a celebrated medicine man. Eleazar sat him down. “Ted, Gramma Cassandra was worried that her grandson was going to run off with his teacher, and the farm and all her dreams for him were going to fall apart. She went to Old Shrinkable the witch and got her to fix the teacher. That’s one thing Shrink can do—put warts on you. But Old Shrink doesn’t work for free, and Cassandra and her daughter will be paying her off the rest of the way. I may have to put a stop to the cycle. It’s too bad we didn’t know about those potato eyes before this,” he concluded. “We might have done something to keep them from growing.”
The great healer reached into his medicine cabinet and came out with some dried squirrel corn, a northeastern herb with white heart-shaped leaves, which hepounded and made into a tea. “We’ll have a little ceremony just between us,” he said to his son. “This tea is really good for secret keeping. If either of us talks about this, those potato eyes will start growing on us.” When the mixture cooled, Eleazar and his son touched cups, met glances, and drank. Young Ted was terrified by the thought of those warts. This was one secret he was going to keep!
A couple of days later, Ted looked out the window and saw his medicine man father hop onto a horse. He had the expression of somebody off to do business. “Where you going?” Ted called out.
“Shrink’s place,” said the father. “Don’t forget about those potato eyes.”
Because nothing more was ever said about this, we presume that Old Shrink stopped demanding payment from certain people and warts stopped growing on others. We will never know whether Ted’s father was serious about the wart-growing potion. The tale appears in Ted’s book Big Medicine from Six Nations, which wasn’t published until 2005, just after Ted left this world.
3
The Witches’ Torch
The lights have been with us since the beginning of time, and they will be with us until the end of time.
DUWAYNE LESLIE BOWEN, ONE MORE STORY
WITCH LIGHTS
The strange, nocturnal lights known in Seneca as ga’hai—witch lights—are fixtures of Iroquois storytelling. Sometimes the lights appear as pale, slow-moving, head-sized spheres that, but for their variable hues, could be the lanterns of distant hikers. Sometimes these luminous balls swarm, drifting across the landscape like pastel balloons. Sometimes they seem atmospheric and even site-bound, rising like tallow marsh gas from invisible vents. Other witchy lights are dynamic, fiery, and even self-directed, hurtling through the treetops like low-level comets and coming to rest in dire places like graveyards, battlefields, or swamps.
In some tales, these flying lights are flares leading a witch or wizard to victims or targets. They might be static markers indicating the hiding places of charms or other treasures. If one springs to light by the course of your evening stroll, watch your step: Its controller is near.
The lights themselves are virtual characters in other tales, going through their impish, seemingly intelligent maneuvers to the amazement of human onlookers. Ones like these are more likely to vary in size, to flock in numbers, to fill a grove or graveyard, and dart or hover like hummingbirds. The presumption is that some supernatural being that inhabits or causes them might be out for a little fun with us. We’re surprised that these lights are not routinely associated with the Little People in Iroquois country. They were in Europe.
In the most developed stories, witch lights are regarded as alternate forms that witches take in order to travel. If you are near a witch light as it passes, you might see the faint image of a human face inside the sphere. It’s probably the countenance of a power person, living or dead, presumably the witch or wizard directing it. It’s best if it does not notice you noticing it.
Though unassailable in this form, called the witch’s torch, witches come back to their natural bodies sooner or later. If you follow one of these lights to its destination, you may see it snap out of existence. In its place will be the human you now know to be a witch.
Whites in the Northeast have been reporting these lights for centuries, offering no explanations for them in local folklore. The ga’hai are still seen with frequency about upstate New York, and by all types of people, especially in traditionally haunted sites and areas. In contemporary accounts, they seem to be simple paranormal phenomena, almost like spontaneous and unintelligent offshoots of the territory around them. Maybe this is what they really are. Though some fit the profile of the folkloric witch lights, others are surely will-o’-the-wisps or swamp gas. Their high-density sites are often on reservations, prehistoric ruins, battlefields, or
