Handsome Lake

(1735-1815)

Iroquois religious leader

Handsome Lake (Sganyadai:yo) was born in 1735 at the village of Ganawagrahs, in present-day New York State. Born into the Wolf clan, he was later adopted by the Turtle clan. Relatively little is known of his earlier life. In July 1777 he and his half brother Corn-planter attended a great war council of the Iroquois Confederacy with the British at Oswego. Though the brothers initially argued for Seneca neutrality, they later fought alongside the British forces against the revolutionaries.

In 1780 Cornplanter and his followers moved to the Allegheny Valley; for the next decade, he traveled extensively among his people, counseling peace with the thirteen states, and went to Albany and Philadelphia to meet with the new state and federal governments. His brother Handsome Lake was described at the time as being a dissolute man, ravaged by drink. From 1795 to 1799, he lived as an invalid in Cornplanter's house, consumed by a wasting disease ascribed to his excessive drinking and to his having offended the Creator.

On June 15, 1799, Cornplanter, summoned urgently to his house, was told that his brother was dying. The unconscious Handsome Lake—in at least one account he was taken by his family for dead and dressed for burial—awakened some hours later and began to recount three visions he had had while he lay sick. In the first, he had been visited by three messengers, he said, handsome men dressed alike and carrying pronged blueberry saplings as canes, who at first prescribed medicine to cure him of his illness. He pledged to the messengers that, should he be allowed to walk on, the earth again, he would repent of his sins. The messengers told him that the Creator had sent them to find him because he had been chosen for a mission. In his second vision a fourth messenger showed him the paths to heaven and hell and revealed the nail holes in his hands and feet. In his third vision the Creator's instructions were given to him. His recounting of these instructions came to be known as the Code of Handsome Lake:

• Ohnega (alcohol), the worst of evils, had been given to the white man to ease his labors but had been abused by all and had to be renounced.
• Otgo (witchcraft) was to be used by its practitioners not for evil purposes but for healing, and witches were to give freely of their good medicine.
• Onohwet (love medicine) "clouds the mind and sickens the body to the point of death." Those who did not repent of its use were on the path to hell.
• The blessings of marriage, family, and children were to be cherished so that the strength of the people could be renewed.

But Handsome Lake taught much more than abstinence, family values, and the continued practice of the ceremonies, songs, and dances of thanksgiving. He counseled his people to learn the white man's ways by sending some of their sons to school; he preached against vanity; he told his people there was nothing wrong with building and living in a white man's house, or farming as the white man did; he told them to keep their traditional clothing and wear it at ceremonies to give thanks; and he preached the confession of sin.

Faith keepers had special responsibilities for preserving the traditional ceremonies, prayers, and rituals. The code prescribed four sacred rituals: the Great Feather Dance, to honor children and life; the Drum Dance, to honor the spirit beings who watch over the Haudenosaunee; the Men's Chant, to honor the Creator; and the Peach Pit Bowl Game and the Sustenance Dance. All of these rituals were to be performed at midwinter ceremonies.

Handsome Lake warned against the Evil One, trying to turn the people away from sin. He told of how a child's love and encouragement relieved him of his own weariness and depression. And he made predictions about the future: that the Iroquois chiefs would argue among themselves and abandon the Great Council; that the people would cease their ceremonies and return to witchcraft; that a woman well past childbearing age would give birth; that a child would bear a baby. The fulfillment of these predictions and others would be a sign that the end was near. Then the four spirit beings would gather the young and old to the Creator to shield them from sadness, and the earth would come to an end.

Handsome Lake began his preaching in his home village of Cornplanter's Town, or Burnt House, on the Allegheny River, where he remained for some ten years. In 1802, he traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of War Henry Dearborn, who said of the Iroquois prophet in a letter, "If all the red people follow the advice of your friend and teacher Handsome Lake, . . . the Great Spirit will take care of you." He later moved upriver to Cold Springs, where he spent two years before moving again to Tonawanda, where he lived for another four years.

At Tonawanda, Handsome Lake received emissaries from the Onondaga Nation inviting him to bring his message to their people. Shortly thereafter he had a vision in which he was advised by the three messengers that it was his duty to go to the Onondagas, but that he would meet there four messengers, who would lead him to the Sky Trail. Although after learning of this vision the Tonawanda people begged him not to go, Handsome Lake set out east for Onondaga territory, passing his abandoned birthplace at Ganawagrahs.

By the time Handsome Lake and his followers reached Onondaga (sometimes referred to as Onondaga Castle), near Syracuse, New York, Handsome Lake was very ill and weak. The Onondagas organized a lacrosse game, hoping to lift his spirits, but on August 10, 1815, he left this world to embark on the Sky Trail.

Almost a decade after Handsome Lake's death, his teachings were revived with the help of his grandson Jimmy Johnson and his nephew Owen Blacksnake. Since this revival, representatives from the Iroquois longhouse in Ontario and the one in New York State have met each autumn in Tonawanda to agree on a schedule of meetings at various reserves, where the people gather to reaffirm their faith in his teachings. The preaching of the Code of Handsome Lake, which embodies the most profound tenets of the Longhouse beliefs, remains the heart and soul of their faith, and sustains that faith as a living testament to Iroquois tradition.

See also Iroquois Confederacy; Seneca.

Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Knopf, 1969).

Ted Montour
Woodland Cultural Centre
Brantford, Ontario