The Little Water Medicine Society Of The Senecas

For the Seneca Iroquois Indians, song is a crucial means of renewing both medicine and heritage. Two or three times a year, the Little Water Medicine Society of western New York meets to renew the potency of its medicine bundles through singing. These bundles have been inherited from eighteenth century Iroquois war parties, handed down from generation to generation. In this long-awaited book, William N. Fenton describes the remarkable ceremonies of one of the least recorded but most significant medicine societies of the Iroquois Indians. Most of the Senecas who were members of the Little Water Society, or Society of Shamans, have passed away, and their knowledge of ceremonial healing and spiritual renewal is fading. Fenton has written this book to preserve knowledge of the ceremonies and songs for the Iroquois people and as a contribution to anthropology, folklore, ethnomusicology, and American Indian studies. In The Little Water Medicine Society of the Senecas, he presents his original 1933 fieldwork, along with details from the published and unpublished works of other researchers, to describe rituals, poetry, and songs drawn from his more than six decades of research among the Six Nations.

Shamanism can be defined as the practice of initiated shamans who are distinguished by their mastery of a range of altered states of consciousness. Shamanism arises from the actions the shaman takes in non-ordinary reality and the results of those actions in ordinary reality. It is not a religion, yet it demands spiritual discipline and personal sacrifice from the mature shaman who seeks the highest stages of mystical development.

Freemasonry has played a significant role in the history of Native Americans since the colonial era--a role whose extent and meaning are fully explored for the first time in this book. The overarching concern of Native American Freemasonry is with how Masonry met specific social and personal needs of Native Americans, a theme developed across three periods: the revolutionary era, the last third of the nineteenth century, and the years following the First World War. Joy Porter positions Freemasonry within its historical context, examining its social and political impact as a transatlantic phenomenon at the heart of the colonizing process. She then explores its meaning for many key Native leaders, for ethnic groups that sought to make connections through it, and for the bulk of its American membership--the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant middle class. Through research gleaned from archives in New York, Philadelphia, Oklahoma, California, and London, Porter shows how Freemasonry's performance of ritual provided an accessible point of entry to Native Americans and how over time, Freemasonry became a significant avenue for the exchange and co-creation of cultural forms by Indians and non-Indians.

The purpose of this book, says the author, is to show the effect of Indian medicinal practices on white civilization. Actually it achieves far more. It discusses Indian theories of disease and methods of combating disease and even goes into the question of which diseases were indigenous and which were brought to the Indian by the white man. It also lists Indian drugs that have won acceptance in the Pharmacopeia of the United States and the National Formulary. The influence of American Indian healing arts on the medicine and healing and pharmacology of the white man was considerable. For example, such drugs as insulin and penicillin were anticipated in rudimentary form by the aborigines. Coca leaves were used as narcotics by Peruvian Indians hundreds of years before Carl Koller first used cocaine as a local anesthetic in 1884. All together, about 170 medicines, mostly botanical, were contributed to the official compendia by Indians north of the Rio Grande, about 50 more coming from natives of the Latin-American and Caribbean regions. Impressions and attitudes of early explorers, settlers, physicians, botanists, and others regarding Indian curative practices are reported by geographical regions, with British, French, and Spanish colonies and the young United States separately treated. Indian theories of disease—sorcery, taboo violation, spirit intrusion, soul loss, unfulfilled dreams and desires, and so on -and shamanistic practices used to combat them are described. Methods of treating all kinds of injuries-from fractures to snakebite-and even surgery are included. The influence of Indian healing lore upon folk or domestic medicine, as well as on the "Indian doctors" and patent medicines, are discussed. For the convenience of the reader, an index of botanical names is provided, together with a wide variety of illustrations. The disproportionate attention that has been given to the superstitious and unscientific features of aboriginal medicine has tended to obscure its real contributions to American civilization.

In America's collective unconscious, the Haudenosaunee, known to many as the Iroquois, are viewed as an indelible part of New York's modern and democratic culture. From the Iroquois confederacy serving as a model for the US Constitution, to the connections between the matrilineal Iroquois and the woman suffrage movement, to the living legacy of the famous "Sky Walkers," the steelworkers who built the Empire State Building and the George Washington Bridge, the Iroquois are viewed as an exceptional people who helped make the state's history unique and forward-looking. John C. Winters contends that this vision was not manufactured by Anglo-Americans but was created and spread by an influential, multi-generational Seneca-Iroquois family. From the American Revolution to the Cold War, Red Jacket, Ely S. Parker, Harriet Maxwell Converse (adopted), and Arthur C. Parker used the tools of a colonial culture to shape aspects of contemporary New York culture in their own peoples' image. The result was the creation of "The Amazing Iroquois," an historical memory that entangled indigenous self-definition, colonial expectations about racial stereotypes and Native American politics, and the personalities of the people who cultivated and popularized that memory. Through the imperial politics of the eighteenth century to pioneering museum exhibitions of the twentieth, these four Seneca celebrities packaged and delivered Iroquoian stories to the broader public in defiance of the contemporary racial stereotypes and settler colonial politics that sought to bury them. Owing to their skill, fame, and the timely intervention of Iroquois leadership, this remarkable family showcases the lasting effects of indigenous agents who fashioned a popular and long-lasting historical memory that made the Iroquois an obvious and foundational part of New Yorkers' conception of their own exceptional state history and self-identity.

The history of anthropology at Harvard is told through vignettes about the people, famous and obscure, who shaped the discipline at Harvard College and the Peabody Museum. The role of amateurs and private funders in the early growth of the field is highlighted, as is the participation of women and of students and scholars of diverse ethnicities.

This account of a 1799 Quaker mission to a Seneca village is based on the journal of Henry Simmons and offers a captivating look at the lifestyles of both groups and their interactions.

William N. Fenton?s contributions to the understanding of the cultures and histories of the Iroquois are formidable. Fenton grounded his studies in decades of fieldwork among the Senecas, an encyclopedic knowledge of pertinent historical accounts, a keen appreciation for interpretive theory and practice in ethnohistory and anthropology, and an enduring, generous character. ø William Fenton: Selected Writings brings together for the first time Fenton?s most influential writings on the Iroquois and anthropology, written across nearly six decades. This volume includes Fenton?s classic studies of such key issues as Iroquois folklore, factionalism, and the repatriation of material culture; discussions of theory and practice and the methodology of ?upstreaming?; obituaries of colleagues and reviews of other studies of the Iroquois; and summaries of the early Conferences on Iroquois Research. This collection reveals much about the world of the Iroquois, past and present, as well as the career and accomplishments of Fenton himself.