Indians 101: Some Iroquois healing ceremonies

It is common in both today’s world and in the ancient past to view some illnesses as having a spiritual or religious cause for which people have sought and continue to seek religious remedies. Throughout the world, ceremonies are used as a form of treatment for certain physical, emotional, and mental illnesses. Briefly described below are some of the healing ceremonies which were used by the Iroquois nations.

First, a note on the designation Iroquois which is used in referring to the Iroquois language family and in referring to the Iroquois Confederacy. The term Iroquois comes from the French modification of the Algonquian word Irinkhoiw which means “real adders.” The members of the Iroquois Confederacy refer to themselves collectively as Haudenosaunee in reference to the longhouses in their villages which serve as communal and ceremonial buildings. While the designation Iroquois is often used to refer to the Five or Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, it should be remembered that not all Iroquois-speaking nations in the Northeast were members of the Confederacy. In this essay, Iroquois will be used as meaning the Indian nations of the Haudenosaunee: Seneca (the big hill people, or the people of the big mountain); Cayuga (the people at the landing, in reference to portaging a canoe); Mohawk (the people of the flint, in reference to the flint quarries in their territory); Onondaga(the people of the hill, in reference to the hill where a woman long ago had appeared to give the people corn, beans, squash, and tobacco); and Oneida (the people of the standing stone, in reference to the supernatural stone which followed them).

While there are a number of healing ceremonies which are performed by specific medicine societies, the ceremonies described below do not need to be performed by members of a specific medicine society.

One of the most important aspects of Iroquois spirituality is the dream. Writing in 1668 about the Seneca, the Jesuit missionary Father Fremin observed:

“The Iroquois have, properly speaking, only a single Divinity—the dream. To it they render their submission and follow all its orders with the utmost exactness.”

In their book The Encyclopedia of Native American Religions, Arlene Hirschelder and Paulette Molin report:

“During sleep, an Iroquois person may experience one of two kinds of dreams that lead to ritual action. A symptomatic dream expresses the wish of the dreamer’s soul. The wish, interpreted by the dreamer or by a clairvoyant man or women may lead to ceremonial action to help carry it out not only at the time of the dream but during the dreamer’s whole life span.”

The second kind of dream is the visitation dream in which powerful beings appear. Arlene Hirschelder and Paulette Molin report:

“Whole rituals are said to have been revealed through these dreams, and changes in older rituals have been made on the basis of these visits through dreams.”

In his 1851 book League of the Ho-Dé-No-Sau-Nee or Iroquois, Lewis Henry Morgan writes:

“In relation to dreams, the Iroquois have ever been prone to extravagant and supernatural beliefs. They often regard a dream as a divine monition and followed its injunctions to the utmost extremity.”

As with cultures throughout the world, dreams were often associated with illness and curing. There are two basic aspects of this: (1) dreams themselves are the cause of mental disturbance and its physical symptoms; and (2) dreams are the mechanisms for determining causes and cures.

In the first instance, a person would be harassed by recurring dreams of trouble or evil. A Dream Guessing Ceremony would traditionally be held during the Midwinter Ceremonies or during times of illness. In this ceremony, men known for their dreaming powers would exert these powers to guess the nature of the dream. The patient only replies in the negative or affirmative. The divination ceremony continues until there is an affirmative answer.

Perhaps the most famous example of the Dream Guessing Ceremony and the power of dreams among the Iroquois can be seen in 1810 when the Seneca sachem Cornplanter (1735-1836) was troubled by a dream. In a Dream Guessing Ceremony, Cornplanter went from house to house searching for someone who could guess his dream. According to the interpretation of the dream, Cornplanter was to give up his name, Gy-ant’-wa-ka, and his chiefly title and assume the name O-no-no, meaning “cold.” He was to remove from his house all items associated with the Euroamericans. Following the dream, he took all of the gifts given to him by Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and others, placed them in a pile and burned them. In his book Who Was Who in Native American History: Indians and Non-Indians From Early Contacts Through 1900, Carl Waldman reports it this way:

“Late in life, Cornplanter experienced a vision—perhaps influenced by his brother Handsome Lake’s religious experiences—telling him to end all relations with whites, whereupon he destroyed the gifts he had received from white officials over the years.”

Arlene Hirschelder and Paulette Molin also say this about the Dream Guessing Ceremony:

“This was a dominant ceremony at one time, and it still is among the New York’s Onondaga.”

In Iroquois society there are certain men and women who are known as dreamers and who are called upon to diagnose illnesses which baffled the practitioners from the medicine societies. In Dreamer Ceremony, the dreamer would take a piece of the patient’s clothing, wrap some tobacco in it, and then sleep with it. The next day the dreamer would tell of the dream and what had to be done to cure the illness.

Writing about the Oneida in Ontario in the Handbook of North American Indians, anthropologist Jack Campisi reports:

“Dreaming was an instrumental part of curing with individuals being noted for their ability to divine the future from their dreams. Often dreamers were consulted in order to determine the kind of cure suitable for their specific ailments.”

The Ghost Dance was performed by Iroquois women to prevent and to cure illness by satisfying the spirits of the dead. According to the teachings of Seneca prophet Handsome Lake, each person has two spirits: one which goes to the eternal after death and the other, the “ghost spirit”, remains behind. Unless satisfied, the “ghost spirit” may disturb people and cause illness. In his book Midwinter Rites of the Cayuga Long House, Frank Speck reports:

“In this dance the participants are women only, who move along slowly in circle formation (no specific steps) in single file, contraclockwise. They hold their arms horizontally doubled outward, with hands closed in front of their chests.”

The dance was performed to the music of the water drum and the horn rattles. Approximately 100 songs are used in this ceremony.

Among Iroquois, a malevolent power or spirit could cause great pain in the chest which could lead to death. The antidote to this was to hold a nude dance, known as the Heart Squeezing Ceremony. The dancers would enter the dwelling, undress, and face a wall. The elder who knows the songs for this type of curing would be in the center of the room.

There were several ceremonies that encouraged or facilitated healing in general. In the Chipmunk Ceremony, a rasp would be used to accompany the songs. In the Chicken Dance, a water drum and horn rattles were used.

It should be noted that the Iroquois, like other Indian cultures, recognized that not all illness or injuries could be treated ceremonially. They also used plant-based medicines and physical manipulation to treat many physical injuries and ailments.