When I was a boy, I went to the Mid-Winter festival on the Tonawanda Indian Reservation, near Buffalo NY. Dan, one of the Boy Scout leaders in town, managed to get an invitation from the religious leader. Dan's adopted son is Seneca. He was too young to spend several days sitting around the longhouse in the middle of winter. Dan successfully claimed that he wanted to learn Iroquois traditions so that he could pass them on to his son. Dan, a 40+ year old scoutmaster and I were interested in native culture and were thrilled at the invitation to observe and participate in the festival.
It was a typical cold, gray and windy afternoon when we arrived at the reservation. The long house was a simple one-story rectangular wood-frame building with doors and both ends. Dan parked his truck and we slowly walked through the door at the east side of the building. The longhouse looked like it was built 100 years ago. It was a single room with three rows of raised benches lining the length of the house. The floor was wooden, well worn from years of communal gathering. Two wood stoves anchored each end of the long house. This was the only source of heat in the building.
On the walls, between the single paned windows, hung false-face masks. These wooden masks were painted either red or black. Later we would learn that if the mask was taken from the tree in the morning, it was painted red, in the afternoon, black. Some incorporated metal. All had black hair with small pouches of tobacco tied to the forehead. The more tobacco, the more powerful the mask. Those in the longhouse believed that the mask contains the spirit of the tree, a spirit that has healing and other powers.
Near the stoves were three metal folding chairs, which were unoccupied at the moment. Three teenage boys in jeans and winter coats sat on the benches to our right. There were about another dozen or so people in the longhouse in small groups, talking or sitting silently. The boys were silent and ignored our entrance.
We sat down and looked for Corbet Sundown, our host. Neither of us had met him before. We asked the silent three, but we didn't get more than a grunt from them. Before we could find someone else, an elderly woman in traditional dress approached us. The Iroquois are a matriarchal society, and we were about to receive the matron's 'greeting'. She wanted to know what we were doing there, who invited us, and what our intentions were. She was concerned that we were missionaries and told a story of a missionary who once visited the reservation with a message of condemnation to native non-believers. The evangelist angered the false-face spirits and endured a Job-like fate. Within weeks of his mission to the reservation his wife left him and his house burned to the ground.
While we were not missionaries, both Dan and I were church-going Christians. We promised not to evangelize and to follow their rules, which included stepping outside in the driving snow with a tribal elder every time there was a false-face dance in the longhouse. After a thirty-minute warning by "the boss", she left us alone. I presume that she had someone find Chief Sundown, because he showed up not long after.
Corbet Sundown was the Chief of the Seneca Nation, one of the five nations that make up the Iroquois Confederacy. He introduced himself as the Keeper of the Faith, or a kind of medicine-man of the HauDe No Sau Nee (Iroquois). He was probably in his seventies at that time. Short and strong, with a head of white hair beneath a wool baseball cap, he spoke with calm confidence. It was his job to make sure the tenets of the faith were kept as intended by their founder, Handsome Lake. Chief Sundown told us about Handsome Lake. In the late 1700's, as Europeans were making their way across Iroquois land, some indigenous people lost interest in their traditions, including a man named Handsome Lake. He had a series of life-changing visions illustrating how the people of the nation should live and treat each other. The Code of Handsome Lake came from the teaching and vision sharing of this prophet from 1799 to his death in 1815. It condemned drinking of alcohol and encouraged community stewardship. The entire Code can be read here.
The mid-winter festival is a Thanksgiving Festival. Families gather in the longhouse over a three-day period. They have what seemed as spontaneous social dances, with men, women and children gathering in a circle and dancing to the high pitch of a 10 inch water drum. Several times throughout the day, representatives from two clans (there are 8 Seneca clans), would sit in the folding chairs near the wood stove and play a game. In a large wooden bowl were several fruit pits that were colored like dice. Each clan member would shake the bowl to 'roll the dice'. The winning clan would get the contents of box or several grocery bags near by. Each clan would bring food, blankets, winter coats and other goods to be raffled off in this game. Dan and I brought a several bags of gloves, hats and blankets. The winning clan would distribute the booty to needy members of their clan.
(You can read Sundown's thoughts on Thanksgiving here.)
Occasionally we would hear the false-face dancers outside, having blessed a house or clan member. The next day, one of the silent three boys would recount the time that he was healed by a false face dancer, as as such, became eligible to enter the secret society.
Corbet Sundown was our guide and interpreter for the weekend. He stood with us outside when the false face dancers were inside. He told us stories and explained the social dances and mid-winter games. He told us the history of his religion and why there has always been tension between the evangelical Christian church and those that follow Handsome Lake. There is one story that I'll never forget. Chief Sundown asked me, "Do you know the difference between Christians and the Indians?"
He answered for me, "The difference between the Christians and my people is how we pray. The Christians pray to God, 'give me this, give me that.' It is a give-me religion. They are always telling God what they want and how they want it. They are focused on themselves, not on others. They think God is there to give them what they want."
"We pray with gratitude. We pray, 'Thank you for the Sun, that warms us and grows the corn. Thank you for the rain and the snow that gives us water and irrigates the beans. Thank you for the earth, that feeds the plants. Thank you for the trees, that give us wood for houses and heat. Thank you for giving us each other."
Sundown paused and reflected, "You see, we know that God will take care of us. He always has. It is our job to recognize his blessing and thank Him for it, not to tell Him what we need. He knows our need and will provide for us what we need."
So, on Thanksgiving Day, when we re-create the Harvest Celebration of pilgrims and natives, I think of Corbet Sundown's admonition of recognition and thanks. Happy Thanksgiving.