One example of a revealed religion which was originally transmitted in oral form and later written down is the Code of Handsome Lake. Beginning in 1799, the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake had a series of visions which provided the theology of a new religion. The Seneca are one of the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.
Handsome Lake was born into the Seneca Wolf Clan about 1735, a time when the Seneca nation was prosperous. He witnessed the loss of Seneca land and confinement to the reservation which led to the instability of the family unit, fighting, and alcoholism. In her biographical sketch of Handsome Lake in Notable Native Americans, Kay Floyd reports:
“This dismal situation was due, in part, to the basic incompatibility of the Iroquois social structure and reservation existence. The traditional religious rituals alone were inadequate to lessen the harshness of this situation. As a result, the Iroquois began searching for new solutions to their difficulties.”
Handsome Lake was a notorious drunkard when, in 1799, he stumbled out of his cabin and fell. In his book Red Jacket: Seneca Chief, Arthur Caswell Parker describes the scene this way:
“In a small shack near Burnt Houses lay a babbling invalid, delirious and wasted to a mere skeleton. He was a pitiful victim of malaria and its so-call ‘cure,’ rum.”
His daughter Yewenot and her husband Hatgwiyot carried the limp figure back to his bed. Thinking that he was dead or dying, they send for his closest relatives, Cornplanter and Blacksnake. When Blacksnake arrived, he found that Handsome Lake had no breath or heartbeat but detected a warm spot on his chest. After a couple of hours, Handsome Lake returned to this world and told of meeting three men, dressed in old-time Indian garb, carrying pronged blueberry saplings as canes. In his entry on Handsome Lake in the Encyclopedia of North American Indians, Ted Montour writes:
“He pledged to the messengers that, should he be allowed to walk on the earth again, he would repent his sins. The messengers told him that the Creator had sent them to find him because he had been chosen for a mission.”
The message from the Creator contained four words that summarize the evil practices of the people: whiskey (ohnega), witchcraft (otgo), love medicine (onohwet), and abortion/sterility medicine.
Handsome Lake described his vision in council. His words were translated into English for the benefit of the Quaker schoolmaster who wrote it down.
During a second trance which lasted about seven hours, Handsome Lake had a sky journey during which he was told the moral plan of the cosmos. According to Anthony Wallace, in his book The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca:
“This second vision would become the core of the new religion’s theology.”
During his sky journey Handsome Lake met both George Washington (who only got half-way to heaven) and Jesus (who complained that he had no followers). Jesus told Handsome Lake:
“Now tell your people that they will become lost when they follow the ways of the white man.”
In this second vision, a moral code was revealed to Handsome Lake in a series of vignettes. This code outlawed drunkenness, witchcraft, sexual promiscuity, quarreling, and gambling. In addition, reluctance to have children, unfaithfulness to one’s mate, fiddle dancing, and card playing were to be considered to be forms of misconduct.
At one time, Handsome Lake developed an obsession about witches. He demanded confessions from those he suspected of engaging in witchcraft. In some instances, those who refused to confess were killed. Kay Floyd writes:
“Gradually, the sentiment turned against Handsome Lake for what they considered an overzealous pursuit of witches.”
He was accused of using accusations of witchcraft against his rivals. In his chapter on the origins of the Longhouse religion in the Handbook of North American Indians, Anthony Wallace reports:
“He himself came finally to the opinion that he had gone too far and virtually dropped the persecutory mode of handling suspected witches.”
In 1800, Handsome Lake had his third vision in which the Great Spirit communicated worry about the condition of the Iroquois. The angels who guided him deplored the fact that the Indians had lost so much of their land and that the Europeans were so arrogantly sure that the mind of the Creator was written in their book. Handsome Lake was told to have his words written down so that Indians could always remember them.
Handsome Lake’s gospel emphasized the role of the nuclear family – husband, wife, and their children – rather than the Iroquois matrilineal clan or extended family. While women had traditionally owned the land and worked the fields, Handsome Lake’s vision called for the men to become farmers. While the Iroquois long houses were traditionally owned by the matrilineal clan, Handsome Lake’s vision called for the man to build a house for his wife and family rather than living with an extended family.
According to the visions, four ceremonies were important: Thanksgiving Dance, Feather Dance, Personal Chant, and Bowl (Peach Stone) Game. In addition, Handsome Lake sought to disband the traditional medicine societies and to eliminate the annual mourning ceremony, but these changes were met with strong opposition. He also emphasized keeping land instead of selling it.
The new religion, as revealed through Handsome Lake’s visions, incorporated traditional Iroquois religious practices and Christianity. The Seneca, at this time, had been exposed to about two centuries of Christian proselytizing. Anthony Wallace reports:
“In assessing the cultural origins of Handsome Lake’s code, as he expressed it during his lifetime,, it is apparent that it was a blend of several streams of culture tradition amalgamated in a unique formula by his visionary experience. Explicit recognition of Christian theology is made in the code with his encounter with Jesus Christ, whom the prophet regarded as his counterpart among the Whites.”
In 1801, the Seneca Council debated the possible sale of a strip of land along the Niagara River to the Americans. Handsome Lake opposed the sale on the grounds of revelations given to him by angels. His nephew Red Jacket, the speaker of the Seneca Nation, favored the sale. Handsome Lake accused Red Jacket of witchcraft and Red Jacket accused Handsome Lake of manufacturing his visions.
In 1802, Handsome Lake traveled to Washington, D.C. where he met with President Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of War Henry Dearborn. Dearborn, who was in charge of Indian Affairs, later praised Handsome Lake’s teachings.
Word of Handsome Lake’s visions and his teachings spread to other Iroquois nations and beyond. In 1807, a Shawnee delegation visited Handsome Lake and asked him to return with them to tell the people of his vision. He refused. In his book Shawnee! The Ceremonialism of a Native American Tribe and its Cultural Background, James Howard notes:
“Handsome Lake’s refusal may have been predicated on his unfamiliarity with the Shawnee language.”
Handsome Lake began preaching at his hometown, Burnt House (also called Cornplanter’s Town) on the Allegheny River, and later moved to Cold Springs and then to Tonawanda.
In 1815, Emissaries from the Onondaga Nation, one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, asked Handsome Lake to bring his message to their people. Shortly after this, Handsome Lake had a vision in which he was advised by three messengers that it was his duty to go to the Onondaga, but that he would meet four messengers who would lead him on the Sky Trail (i.e. the route to the afterlife). The Seneca begged him not to go, but he set out for the Onondaga Nation anyway. Near Syracuse, New York, he became very ill and weak. Following his vision, he died.
About a decade after the death of Handsome Lake, his grandson Jimmy Johnson and his nephew Owen Blacksnake began a revival of his teachings. In 1826, the Seneca women faithkeepers felt that the people were going back to the immoral ways before Handsome Lake. They asked Jimmy Johnson to recall the teachings of his grandfather. He initially refused but was asked a second time and consented. In her chapter on Seneca history in the Handbook of North American Indians, anthropologist Elizabeth Tooker reports:
“He then set about the task of recalling to mind what he could of these teachings. The first meeting at which he preached the teachings proved so successful that the Iroquois decided to hold a similar meeting each year at Tonawanda.”
In their book The Encyclopedia of Native American Religions, Arlene Hirschfelder and Paulette Molin report:
“After a generation of disorder and the proselytizing by Christian missionaries, disciples of Handsome Lake revived his words and organized them into a new religion, the Code of Handsome Lake.”
The Code of Handsome Lake was written down and published in 1850. Today, the Code of Handsome Lake is still practiced among the Seneca and is considered to be a traditional Indian religion.
Concerning the new religion and traditional Iroquois practices, Anthony Wallace reports:
“For the most part, Handsome Lake’s religious views were regarded by his contemporaries as conservative. He was, in his own eyes, essentially attempting to restore and revitalize an existing system of beliefs and ceremonies that had fallen into disuse. He was calling people back to an ancient faith, with only so much innovative scaffolding to justify his authority.”
In his biography Red Jacket: Seneca Chief, Arthur Caswell Parker writes:
“A non-Christian group led by Red Jacket believed that the Prophet may have started out to reform the old religion, but that he had added his own inventions, while condemning some ancient practices believed by many to be good. This branch of objectors claimed that Handsome Lake had changed the old religion and almost destroyed it by altering its character.”
Ten Montour writes:
“The preaching of the Code of Handsome Lake, which embodies the most profound tenets of the Longhouse beliefs, remains at the heart and soul of their faith, and sustains that faith as a living testament to Iroquois tradition.”
Kay Floyd summarizes the impact of Handsome Lake’s visions and his religion this way:
“The rise of Handsome Lake’s religion was more successful than most religions during that time, apparently because his code combined traditional Iroquois religion with white Christian values. It stressed survival without the sacrifice of the Iroquois identity and recognized the realistic need to make adjustments in order to survive in their changing world.”
Today, the Handsome Lake religion is practice on the Iroquois reservations in the United States and Canada. The religion is headquartered in Tonawanda on the New York Seneca Reservation where the wampum belts of Handsome Lake are kept. Each fall, delegates from the longhouses meet at Tonawanda to arrange a schedule for the reading of the Code of Handsome Lake at each of the longhouses.
Indians 101/201
Twice each week this series looks at American Indian topics. Indians 201 is an expansion of an earlier essay. More about American Indian religious leaders from this series:
Indians 201: Nakaidoklini, Apache spiritual leader
Indians 201: Eschiti, Comanche medicineman
Indians 301: Smohalla's Dreamer Religion
Indians 101: Kennekuk, Kickapoo Leader and Prophet
Indians 201: William Apess, Pequot author and preacher
Indians 201: Neolin, the Delaware Prophet
Indians 201: Frank White, Pawnee Prophet
Indians 201: Eschawamahu, Yavapai messiah
Note: this essay is from my book Sacred Things: American Indian Religions.