Toward the end of the meeting, the small shaman announced to them all thatone of the boys would become great. He walked over and fingered Joe’s long hair. Everyone—including Joe—was astonished. Some even laughed.
. . . and Trouble
There was turmoil on several of the reservations in the 1970s. A number of stories from the period feature medicine people or their tricks coming between the Tuscarora and the state troopers. Joe Anderson recalls a night from his boyhood during a period when twenty troopers camped in a trailer park on the Tuscarora Reservation.
The elders had been around that afternoon talking to all the families. “Tonight is one of those nights when all the children have to stay home and be quiet. Ceremonies will be held, asking for help.”
At one point in the evening, the troopers pulled out in a virtual frenzy, cruisers tearing out, one after another. It was as if war had been declared somewhere not far off, and they had all been called back to base. Or as if something had spooked them.
When things calmed down, the two sides started talking again as individuals, and word got out about how things had looked to the troopers. They had experienced such vivid phenomena—sourceless voices, ghostly pounding on the hoods of their vehicles—that they had fled en masse.
A Bit of Ritual Magic
There have been a couple of bouts of tension between the New York state troopers and the Tuscarora. By Joe Anderson’s own admission, in the mid-1970s he was a punk kid, getting into the booze too young and too hard. Walking home one night well into his cups, he decided to improvise a bit of ritual magic. Snatching up a stick, he jumped out into a dirt road in front of an approaching patrol car and pointed it at the driver like Harry Potter’s wand. He could well have been killed, but the vehicle sputtered to a halt as if the engine had died and the wheels had locked. The state trooper got out and pointed at him with an empty hand.
“Cut it out!” he yelled. “I know what you’re doing! It’s not called for! We’re not your enemies. This is just what we have to do. And it’s not fair, do you hear? So cut it out!”
Joe took off and watched from the house. Before long another state trooper showed up, got behind the stalled car, and pushed it out of sight.
Maybe Joe has a bit more clout than he knows.
One Girl’s Mojo
Ted Williams remembers another time when troopers in riot gear were lined up outside a construction site, keeping a mass of Tuscarora folk away from a building to which they objected. A little girl came out of the throng, ran up to the troopers, and tossed a rock at them. A handful of them took off after her. She ran behind the lines of the Tuscarora into a small replica stockade: a bunch of tall poles stuck in the ground in a circle with only one entrance. The inside of it was open space, but invisible from outside.
The troopers ran into this palisade and almost immediately came running back out. They ended up back in line with their buddies, talking animatedly. The girl came nonchalantly out a moment later and wandered back to the village.
“I found out later what they saw,” Ted told us. “It was a bunch of braves, warriors, with their guns drawn, surrounding that girl. And that’s why they took off running.”
Ted Williams chuckled when he recalled it. “That girl was alone in there. And everybody knows it.”
WEAPONS OF FRIENDSHIP
Over the years, Mad Bear Anderson had gotten himself a reputation as somebody nobody should mess with. It was as if a sense of fate or karma worked on those who tried to attack him.
There was the night a fellow Native American tried to shoot him, firing drive-by volleys at the famous fortified cabin. Those in the know have the feeling that no bullets would have hit Mad Bear, even if the structure was not so materially sturdy. It was as if Mad Bear’s own orenda was too much to overcome. The gunman ended up in a ditch, badly hurt.
Mad Bear’s style of personal defense seems so advanced and Zen-like that it’s off the chart. Whereas the most refined Asian techniques defend against forceful violence with some echo of the same violence, Mad Bear seemed simply to defuse the aggression. “He doesn’t put anything back on anyone. He just doesn’t receive it,” someone told Mike Bastine about his techniques.
There was the council at which an enraged Native American came at Mad Bear with a knife, drawing and charging too fast for any to intercede. Mad Bear opened his arms wide as if welcoming a long-lost friend. The would-be assassin walked into Mad Bear’s embrace like a mother surprised in her kitchen by a returning college kid. The knife edge slapped absently along Mad Bear’s back, and the attacker returned to his seat, blinking and dumbfounded.
“Don’t try that on your own,” said Mad Bear to his friends out of the side of his mouth. “Took me years to work that one out.”
HOUSE CLEARINGS
The Druids of Europe made a code language out of plants and animals. Every tree in the forest had a medical or ceremonial function, as well as a symbolic meaning. It was like that with the Native Americans of the Northeast Woodlands.
People were always calling Mad Bear to quell restless influences in their homes. He often used cedar for this, heating cast-iron frying pans, burning the shavings, and touring room to
