White Dog Sacrifice of the Iroquois Confederacy
Prayers of Thanksgiving Offered During Centuries-Old Practice
May 19, 2009
Spirituality has always been an integral part of most Native American cultures. The Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy were no exception. Part of the outward expression of that spirituality for the Iroquois were key ceremonies held at various times of year. For centuries, the Iroquois have believed that the Creator instructed them how to live their lives, which included prayer and ceremony.
One specific ritual, which remained largely unchanged until the late 1800s, took place during the Midwinter Ceremony, which was held four days after the first new moon following the winter solstice, according to the Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy), edited by Bruce Elliot Johansen and Barbara Alice Mann. This ceremony is described in detail by author David Swatzler in A Friend Among the Senecas.
Process of the Sacrifice
On the fifth morning of the Midwinter Ceremony, one white dog with no blemishes or markings was chosen for sacrifice to the Creator. Swatzler writes that the dog was strangled, the Iroquois taking care not to spill any of the animal’s blood or break any bones “as that would render the sacrifice useless.” The dog’s body was then decorated with ribbons, paint, and other ornaments, and hoisted eight feet in the air to hang from a wooden statue of the Creator.
A Prayer of Thanksgiving
After five days, the dog’s body was taken down and burned while celebrants danced and sang songs of thanksgiving to the Great Spirit. As the dog burned, Swatzler continues, a religious official would “recite a lengthy prayer to the Creator acknowledging favors received, giving thanks for preservation in times past, and seeking continued care and protection.”
In his ground-breaking work, League of the Iroquois, first published in 1851, anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan also described the white dog sacrifice, and provided some insight into why this ceremony held the spiritual significance that it did among the Iroquois.
Morgan explains, “The fidelity of the dog, the companion of the Indian as a hunter, was emblematic of their fidelity. No messenger so trusty could be found to bear their petitions to the master of life. The Iroquois believed that the Great Spirit made a covenant with their fathers to the effect that, when they should send up to him the spirit of a dog of spotless white, he would receive it as the pledge of their adherence to his worship, and his ears would thus be opened in a special manner to their peitions.”
Decline of the Practice
The ritual of white dog sacrifice began to decline around the 1880s. Explanations of this decline include the increased difficulty in finding a purely white dog, and growing negative attitudes of European Americans toward animal sacrifice, Swatzler says.
Nowadays, Johansen and Mann write, the white dog sacrifice ceremony is still performed, but instead of a live animal, an undyed black-ash splint basket is used. The basket is adorned with colorful ribbons, just as in the original ritual. After the traditional prayer is offered, the basket is burned.
