We went to the morning session of the conference. When Ted was done talking, he ducked out somewhere and no one could find him. My companion and I stood with Michael Bastine and a small group of people. Thankfully, the others talked; I was only half there, still dwelling on the terrible dream. My skin crawled as though tiny electrical wires charged my clothing.
Just as we were asking Michael to give our good-byes to Ted, I felt a light, cool touch on the nape of my neck, just lifting a bit of my hair. Instantly, my preoccupation with the dream vanished. I turned. It was Ted, who had come up behind me and, with a brush up of a hand, lifted a lock so gently that it could have been done by a puff of air. It was an odd gesture, one no American white would think of. There had to be something cultural or even ceremonial about it. Light as a breeze, it would have taken practice to copy.
An hour later on the rural roads of central Ohio, I spilled everything out to my partner: the dream, the turmoil I could barely remember, the curiosity of it all, and that strange touch. It was as if all the grief and trauma of the past ten years were at rest.
My partner was a massage therapist, a Reiki healer, and a deeply intuitive woman. “He healed you,” she said. She could have said: He knew the dream. It’s too much to think he could have seen all that. But he was of the medicine people.
Later the same year—September 28, 2005—Michael Bastine called to tell me that Ted Williams had passed away in Asheville, North Carolina. It was a shock, since Ted had seemed in such good health. Michael was leaving early in the morning to be with Ted’s southern family and friends. Memorials closer to home on the Tuscarora Reservation hadn’t even been scheduled. We talked just a few minutes about Ted and all the elders leaving the world. The closeness—and the loss—was far greater for Michael than for me.
We closed, though, with him consoling me. “Ted’s working his medicine all over, now,” he said.
On the Rez
In August 2004, I went to the Tuscarora Reservation fair to meet Mike and Pam Bastine. I never found them. It would have been easy to miss someone. The grounds around the fair were ample, and a string of trees, if not a clump of woods, seemed to frame every area of the event—school, parking lot, fairgrounds, baseball diamond.
I walked among the displays and activities. I listened to music, looked at art, and threw tomahawks. I didn’t mind being with my thoughts. As I strolled along a line of trees at the edge of the fairgrounds, two small parties crossed paths.
The first was a tiny wagon train, headed by a bandaged, older white guy in a motorized, off-road wheelchair. He was smoking a cigarette through a mouthpiece, hooked by fluid-filled tubes to a big contraption in back. I presumed the device was a filter for the cigarettes, and that the man was dying from cancer caused by the smoking he couldn’t quit. Another little cart trailed him, linked to his wheelchair with chains and cables. It had to be oxygen. Two female companions, probably wife and daughter, pushed and steered the procession.
Three Native American men cut across the path of this unwieldy group. Hidden by the trees as they’d approached, they made their entrance laughing at the punch line of a joke and hurled themselves into visibility like an assault team. One of them tripped on a tree root, tumbled on all fours like a bear, and laughed the louder.
An old Native American man I hadn’t noticed before was standing beside me. “Ah,” he said contentedly to the air, “the white man shouldn’t do tobacco, and the red man shouldn’t do alcohol.”
I walked and looked around a bit more and gave up on finding my friends. As I headed for my car, two young Native Americans came toward me out of the parking lot from the east. They looked about fourteen. One was probably five-three and 120 pounds, but the other was bigger and of a very distinctive body type. So much of the boy’s mass pushed up under his straight shoulders and thick upper arms that he was surely destined to become one of the bear bodies I had seen among the Tuscarora men. The lad had on a black T-shirt with a bit of orange on the collar. Tipping up a bottle of a colored drink, he was grinning at something his friend had said.
Five minutes later and two miles away, I drove past two young Native Americans on the north side of the broad, sunny road, coming back toward the fair I had left. The smaller of them I didn’t notice as I drove by, but to his left was the big boy I had just seen at the fair. The same black, orange-collared T-shirt, even the same gesture: smiling, raising a drink. It was him, or an identically dressed twin.
Only a helicopter could have gotten that kid where he was so quickly. I stared as long as I could, even craning to look back when I passed him. I couldn’t have been mistaken. I was reminded again of the aura of the surreal that surrounds every one of my visits to a reservation.
When Michael asked Mad Bear how much of his success was due to the ingredients of his remedies and how much to psychic and psychological factors, he said that just about all of it was in the mind. He chose to use things that helped him focus his own healing powers or that of his patients. Maybe it’s all in the mind.
Maybe there’s no difference, anyway, between the witch and the medicine person. Maybe it’s all how they do their stuff. But make no mistake about it: There are power people now and “doing work” as you read. Many of them are mature, humble-looking Native Americans. Almost none are out to impress. They aren’t all saints, and they have their troubles. Some of them struggle with their health, with their families, with alcohol, or with money. But never underestimate them, their powers, or the culture that has brought these medicine people among us. How the world needs them.
5
The False Faces
The mask in a primitive festival is revered as a veritable apparition of the mythical being that it represents—even though everyone knows that a man made the mask and that a man is wearing it.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL, THE MASKS OF GOD
THE MEDICINE MASK SOCIETY
As long as they’ve been known to history, the Iroquois have been distinctive for their healing societies. Other indigenous cultures have had their doctoring clans, but there has never been anything in the world precisely like the Iroquois medicine mask society, usually called the False Faces.
Known for their goon-faced, fright-wigged wooden masks, the False Faces need to be distinguished from the local “good witch” you can hire to help you with your problems. While many individual medicine people might be members of the False Face Society, this cult of maskers differs in fundamental ways from the medicine folk of the last chapter. Obviously, there’s the matter of the masks, which will be unforgettable to anyone who’s ever seen one. The village healer doesn’t use one of these. That shaggy mane of corn-silk or horsehair may be the most conspicuous feature of one of the classic medicine masks.
Members of the False Face Society have always been group healers, too. The national guard of the medicine people, they are mobilized as much as summoned. They come in a flock. They only do house calls. And they call you, and at special times of the year.
The old-timers held their traditional ceremonies in the spring and fall, when the collective pileup of societal ailments needed to be addressed. They made special appearances in times of special need. Their techniques were different, too, from those of the medicine people. The village medicine people, though more than simple herbalists, minister to splinters and skin rashes; their remedies can be physical and practical.
The False Faces, on the other hand, have always been fundamentally spiritual healers. They deal with the spirits of disease. And they are still at it. The healing members of the False Face Society are always male. The leader of every local group, though, is a woman. This priestess is the Keeper of the False Faces. She rules the rituals, guards the masks and paraphernalia, summons the healers, and sends them out on their missions. She is the only one who knows the identity of all the local members.
Arthur C. Parker described the accoutrements of the classic False Face Society as its members roamed the village on a healing mission. First and foremost, of course, wer
e the masks, which every member wore. And since percussion accompanied all Iroquois rituals, the False Face healers carried rattles, often made of snapping turtle shell and hickory bark. All wore head throws—shrouds over the backs of their necks—which helped conceal their identities. The leader carried a pole on which dangled miniatures of their trademark items: tiny husk faces, mini masks, and turtle rattles. Since the customary payment for each healing was an offering of sacred tobacco, a little tobacco basket was part of their equipment.
Their ceremonies were crafted to deliver awe. Their calls could be heard a long way off, and they seemed to come out of nowhere, converging on a community at night. They stalked through the village with their gourd and shell rattles, searching for sufferers’ homes. What moments those must have been, waiting for them!
Like giant predators stalking disease by scent, these healers snuffled outside the doors of homes and longhouses, deciding which one to visit. The masks amplified the sounds they made, which must have had quite an effect. Sometimes they crashed into a house and besieged beds like marauding demons. Sometimes they crawled on the floor like ominous saurians toward sufferers and jumped up tall beside them. They finished their healings with a flourish of hair, a clack of implements, and a puff of soot. Then, taking tiny bowls of corn soup as refreshment, they made their way out to the next sufferer—until the last was served and the band of healers withdrew into the night.
They needed no escorts through the spirit-haunted wood. No demon, witch, or beast would dare touch one of them as they were: behind masks and in trance.
And so often, they cured.
There’s no reason to doubt the power of the False Faces. Traditional healing sometimes works where Western medicine has not, and the force of the mind can go a long way in the repair of the body. When all other treatment had failed, the False Faces offered the last psychic boost.
Some contemporary scholars aren’t too sure that the False Face Society is more than a few centuries old. Arthur Parker felt sure that the outfit went a long way back, at least among his Seneca people. This society feels old to us, if that counts for anything. And we have reasons for thinking that.
The tradition of these maskers was fully developed by the time the Europeans discovered it. It’s hard to believe that it had no backstory. And curious tiny bone and stone plaques that suspiciously resemble the historic medicine masks have been found in Iroquoian graves that go back a thousand years. These trinkets, possibly slipped into a grave in secret as the earth closed, have been interpreted as badges of honor for the long work of a healer whose name no one could know in life.
THE HEADMAN OF THE FACES
There are a number of origin stories for the False Faces, but they fall into two major categories. One stems from the creation myth. Michael Bastine tells this story wonderfully.
A Creation Myth Story
Shortly before humankind was put on the earth, the Good-Minded Spirit dropped in for a look at the region that would become the Northeast. It was a sublime, turbulent landscape full of fantastic, monstrous beings. The Great Spirit could see that these would be trouble when his Iroquois came to being as he planned. He surveyed the chaos, wondering which of the critters to keep and which to clear out.
A giant creature sometimes called the Headman of the Faces came up to him and asked what he was doing. Pleasantries commenced, and the Great Spirit kept his cards close to the vest. The giant—surely a forerunner of the Stone Giants, whose story is to come—could sense that his guest was a heavy hitter, probably from the emanations of his orenda. How heavy he didn’t guess. He suggested a test of power.
“See that mountain in the distance?” said the giant to the stranger.
“Uh . . . yeah,” said the Maker of All Things.
“Now cover your eyes and look away, and don’t turn round till I tell you.” Heaven’s Holder played peek-a-boo, doubtless with a wry immortal smile.
There was a rustling of the winds and a shaking of the earth. It lasted quite a while. When the world had again fallen still, the giant being called triumphantly for the Great Spirit to turn and look. The distant mountain had moved a few notches. It was as far to the right of the sun at the bottom of the stormy sky as it had just been to the left. The giant looked very happy with himself.
“Wow, that’s pretty good,” said the Good-Minded One. “I can see you’ve really been working on your magic. Now it’s my turn. You just cover up and close your eyes the way I did.”
At the instant the giant’s mighty paws closed over, the Creator welcomed him to turn and look. The giant had sensed no quaking earth or cyclones and thought it had to be a trick. He turned too fast. The mountain was right on top of him, with a rocky jutting cliff on the level of his forehead. As he jerked around, it smacked his rugged puss and sprawled his features all over it. Suddenly the giant realized who he was talking to.
The Good Spirit shared the information that he had been thinking about clearing the world of its rambunctious first inhabitants. He asked the giant what he made of that.
“We can’t change our natures,” the giant said. “But we have a lot of good to give. We could become great healers. We could learn the uses of plants and the ceremonies of restoring health. We’ll get those ready for the day the people get here and figure out how to teach them.” The Good-Minded One decided that the world could stand to keep a bit of its diversity. The giants did indeed become healers, and the familiar crook-nosed masks have been made ever since in tribute to the first one, the Headman of the Faces, and his craggy collision.
Another version of the False Face story takes place near enough to our own time to involve a human encounter, probably within the last thousand years.
The Stone Giants—inveterate enemies of humankind—had been removed from the world, all but one. This last of them was a mighty being who had grown mightier through his years of isolation. He had made his home in a cave in the Allegheny Mountains.
A young Seneca hunter lost in a storm stumbled into this lair. After all the centuries on his own, the giant was ready for company. He let the young hunter stay with him and taught him a variety of arts, including healing through dreams and visions. As he left the cave at the end of it all, an apparition guided the human hunter to a basswood tree on which the original False Face mask was waiting for him.
It’s been said that these two myths were meant to stand for the two major classes of masks. The oldest story involving the Good-Minded Spirit could be the origin-tale of the Great Doctor masks, generally the most revered of the bunch. The Stone-Giant tale might be the source of the Common Faces.
DOCTORS AND DOORKEEPERS
Writing around the turn of the twentieth century, Parker described four classes of masks:
Doorkeeper or Doctor masks
Dancing masks
Beggar (and possibly thief) masks, not part of the true society
Secret masks, never used in public ceremonies
The classic recent study is the one of William Fenton, The False Faces of the Iroquois (1987). Fenton sticks to the idea that there were two main orders of masks, of which the Doctor/Doorkeepers are generally considered a higher caste than the Common Faces. This system might not be so rigid for the people who use them. This ranking of the two classes of masks could have something to do with their origin-tales.
The Great Doctor masks were drawn from the creation song and the game between the Creator and the crook-faced giant. These grand, time-tested healing masks, sometimes also called Doorkeeper masks, were long haired and colored red or black. Their mouths were either twisted or spoonlike for blowing soot. The oldest masks had corn-silk hair, though horse’s manes were used after European contact.
Iroquois masks of this holy class are more than portraits of random demons. Each one gives a definite message through its shape, color, and features. Some are mythological beings, gods of disease or wind. Old masks, veterans of many rites, passed along through centuries, have plenty of authority. Intuitives of any national
ity feel a sense of awe when they behold any of these major masks, true works of sacred art.
Even among the Doctor masks, there’s thought to be a pecking order. In some quarters, the red masks are considered more powerful than the black. There are even divided masks, painted half red and half black, possibly for the curing of people divided in spirit. Every year we seem to need a few more of those.
BEGGARS AND THIEVES
A ramshackle, slightly less imposing lot sometimes considered a lesser category, the common faces were rooted in stories set much more recently in time. One we discussed before involves the Stone Giants well after the Great Spirit had cleared the world of most of its demons. Others lack even mentions of the creation-days and are linked to supernatural forest beings like the Great Flying Heads.
Ethnologist William Beauchamp considered the Great Flying Heads a very likely source for the ghastly, disembodied visages these miracle masks personify. These heads could be the most dreadful bogies in the Iroquois metaphysical zoo, but they did good turns now and then for individual humans. They were also size-shifters. They could make themselves as small as a human head so as to float through a longhouse portal. In that circumstance, they would look a lot like medicine masks.
Iroquois Supernatural: Talking Animals and Medicine People Page 16
