We ask you to help us!
We implore your favor!
I have spoken.[[96]]
After the tobacco throwing ceremony the keeper of the rattles gives each person in the circle a large gourd rattle and then the lights are extinguished leaving the assembly in total darkness. The watcher of the medicine uncovers the bundles exposing contents to the air and as he does so a faint glow like a luminous cloud, according to the elect, hovers over the table and disappears. The leader or holder of the song gives a signal with his rattle calling the assembly to order and then begins to beat his rattle. The people shake their rattles in regular beats until all are in unison when the holder of the song commences the song, which is taken up by the company. “And such a song it is! It is a composition of nature’s sounds and thrills the very fiber of those who hear it. It transports one from the lodge back into the dark mysterious stone-age forest and in its wierd wild cadences it tells of the origin of the society, of the hunter in the far south country and how when he was killed by the enemy the animals to whom he had always been a friend restored him to life. It tells of his pilgrimage over plain and mountain, over river and lake, ever following the call of the night bird and the beckoning of the winged light. It is an opera of nature’s people that is unsurpassed.”
The first song requires one hour for singing. Lights are then turned up and the feast maker passes the kettle of sweetened strawberry juice and afterward the calumet from which all draw a puff of the sacred incense. Then comes an interval of rest in which the members smoke sacred tobacco and discuss lodge matters. The medicine is covered before the lights are turned up.
With a chug of his resonant gourd rattle the leader calls the people together for the second song which is wilder and more savage in character. The whippoorwill’s call is heard at intervals and again the call of the crows who tell of a feast to come. The whippoorwill song is one that is most beautiful but it is played on the flute only at rare intervals and then it is so short that it excites an almost painful yearning to hear it again but there is art in this savage opera and its performers never tire of it because it is wonderful even to them. During the singing every person in the circle must sing and shake his rattle; to pause is considered an evil thing. It is no small physical effort to shake a long necked gourd a hundred and fifty times a minute for sixty minutes without cessation. This I soon discovered when as a novitiate of the society I was placed between a medicine woman and man and given an extra heavy rattle. Every now and then a hand from one or the other side would stretch forth from the inky blackness and touch my arm to see if I were faithful and sometimes a moist ear would press against my face to discover if I were singing and listening a moment to my attempts, would draw back. The song in parts is pitched very high and it is a marvel that male voices can reach it. At times the chief singers seem to employ ventriloquism for they throw their voices about the room in a manner that is startling to the novice. At the close of the song lights are turned up and the berry water and calumet are passed again and a longer period of rest is allowed. There are two other sections of the song-ritual with rest intervals that bring the close of the song close to daybreak. The feast makers pass the berry water and pipe again and then imitating the cries of the crow, the ho-non-di-ont pass the bear or boar’s head on a platter and members tear off a mouthful each with their teeth imitating the caw of a crow as they do so. After the head is eaten each member brings forth his pail and places it before the fireplace for the feast maker to fill with the alloted portion of o-no‘´-kwa or hulled corn soup. When the pails are filled one by one the company disperses into the gray light or dawn and the medicine ceremony is over. At the close of the last song each one takes his packet of medicine and secretes it about his person.
The medicine song according to the ritual of the society is necessary to preserve the virtue of the medicine. It is an appreciation of the founder of the order and a thanksgiving to the host of living things that have given their life-power that the medicine might be. The spirits of these creatures hover about the medicine which they will not desert as long as the holder remains faithful to the conditions that they saw fit to impose when it was given to the founder. The psychic influence of the animals and plants is the important part of the medicine and when the medicine is opened in the dark they are present in a shadowy form that is said to sometimes become faintly luminous and visible. Members are said frequently to see these spirit forms, and sometimes not individual members only but the entire company simultaneously,—but I am now trenching on a subject of which I am asked not to speak. There are marvels and mysteries connected with the ceremonies of the Honotcinohgah, suffice to say, that white men will never know, nor would believe if told. The Indian has some sacred mysteries that will die with him.
Some one has suggested that Indian songs are not stable but vary from time to time, but this idea is at once dispelled when we see a company of fifty young men and old chanting the same song without a discord from night till morning. The song is uniformly the same and probably has varied but slightly since it originated. It is still intact with none of its parts missing, although the words are archaic and some not understood.
The medicine men teach that if a charm packet is not sung for at least once in a year the spirits will become restless and finally angry and bring all manner of ill luck upon its possessor. The spirits of the animals and plants that gave their lives for the medicine will not tolerate neglect and will relentlessly punish the negligent holder and many instances are cited to prove that neglect brings misfortune. The medicine will bring about accidents that will cause sprains, severe bruises and broken bones and finally death. I know of several persons, myself, who becoming Christians, have neglected their medicine. Whether the belief is true or not, some have certainly met with repeated accidents. In every Seneca settlement the story is the same and individuals are pointed out who having neglected their medicine have become injured or maimed for life. Should some member of a family die leaving his medicine its orenda will compel the person who should take the dead one’s place to respect its desires. I will relate one instance. When John Patterson the last holder of the secret died he left his medicine in the loft of his house. His son, a well educated man of wide business experience, one of the shrewdest men of the Seneca and a person seemingly free of superstition, thought that he would allow the medicine of his father to remain idle. He wished to have nothing to do with the old fashioned heathenish customs of his father. Indeed he did not take interest enough in the medicine to look for it. Several medicine sittings passed by and the man began to suffer strange accidents. One evening as he sat with his family on the veranda of his home (a modern dwelling such as is found in any modern town), the members say that he heard the medicine song floating in the air above him. He was startled and each of the family was frightened. The singing continued until at length it grew faint and ceased. Upon several occasions the family and visitors heard the song issuing from the air. Mr. Patterson sent for the leader of the lower medicine lodge, William Nephew, who asked where the medicine was hidden. No one knew but after a search it was discovered. Mr. Nephew ordered that a feast should be made and the rites performed. Then was the modern educated Indian forced to join the lodge and take his father’s seat. This story, of which I have given but the bare outline, is commonly known among the Senecas, Mr. M. R. Harrington, of the American Indian Museum, being perfectly familiar with the facts of the case which he took pains to learn while staying at the Patterson home. Howsoever this may be explained it is nevertheless considered one of the mysteries of the medicine and the instance is not a solitary one.
Few white people have ever been allowed in a medicine lodge and when they have been they have not seen to witness the ceremony in full. I know of only four who ever become members, holding the medicine: Joseph Keppler, the publisher, and Mrs. Harriet Maxwell Converse, George K. Staples, and George L. Tucker, with all of whom I have sat in the medicine lodge.