Huskanaw Ceremony

The Importance of Huskanaw Ceremonies among Powhatan Confederacy Indians
A Huskanaw is a ceremony used by the Virginia Indians of the Powhatan Confederacy in which boys between the ages of ten and fifteen were prepared for manhood. Only fifteen of the finest young men in the tribe were chosen for the ceremony and it was considered a great honor to be chosen. In the Huskanaw ceremony, the boys were massed around the roots of a tree and five men came and gathered the chosen boys while enduring severe blows from the elders of the tribe. While that was happening, the mothers of the boys were weeping and preparing animals skins, mosses, and other sacred items for their sons’ funerals. After the five men gathered the boys, the tree was torn down and the boys were sent to the woods for nine months. During those months, the boys were held captive by the men they had been chosen by and were forced to drink of poisonous, hallucinogenic roots. In doing this, the boys were supposed to forget everything about their lives as children so that they can develop into men. In this essay I am going to describe what I believe it would be like to have undergone the Huskanaw ritual of the Powhatan Confederacy.
Being one of the young men chosen for the Huskanaw ceremony would have been one of the greatest honors one could receive in the tribe. If I were a young man in that time that had been chosen I would feel very privileged to be chosen even thought I knew that undergoing the ceremony would be hard. I would know that I had a hard nine months ahead of me but it would all be worth it in the end. In the beginning of the ceremony I would be painted and gathered around the tree to be chosen. Once chosen and sent to the woods I would be given the hallucinogenic substance. The substance would completely change my way of thinking and even make me forget my past life as a child. While taking the substance I would most likely become mad and forget everything about my past, including the language I spoke. The young men acquired a spirit guide which was usually an animal of some kind that would help lead them through their journey. Their whole life would change as they knew it and because of the hallucinogenic substance they were given, they were experiencing whole other worlds. According to the U.S. Forest Service website, hallucinogens including mushrooms were described as striking madness among natives. No one can say for sure what the young men really underwent without doing it for themselves. The men were held captive and grouped together in an enclosure and were given strong doses of the hallucinogen Wysoccan until the leaders thought they had enough to have forgotten their past. While the young men were still experiencing side effects of the Wysoccan, they were brought back to their towns to learn. Here they were taught to speak and interact with others again but act fearful of learning all of the “new” things.
After the ceremony commenced, the boys were considered men. They had undergone the Huskanaw. Their lives had completely changed and they had no recollection of their past. There were questions that came up about whether the boys actually lost their memories or not. If they did not lose their memories, they were forced to undergo more of the Huskanaw ritual with even stronger doses of the Wysoccan. Many boys did not make it through a second stage of the Huskanaw. Whether the boys lost their memory or not, I am not sure but what I do believe to be true is that they would have undergone some sort of emotional trauma even if they did not lose all memories of their childhood. I most definitely believe that the young men would have a different view on life and on the afterlife because of their experiences with the hallucinogen. They had experienced what they believed to be other worlds from the drugs and had experienced more in the months in the woods than most people would experience in a lifetime. If it were me, I would completely have a different world view and would not be sure about what was in the afterlife for me. After the ceremony the boys would go on to become priests and prominent members of their society for the rest of their lives.