Powwowing: Ritual Healing in Pennsylvania Dutch Country

Removing warts by the light of the waxing moon with a potato is one of the most common powwow experiences in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Photo by Patrick J. Donmoyer

It was just after dark when the powwow doctor arrived at the elderly woman’s home in Lebanon County. The woman had been suffering from swelling in her legs that made walking difficult. Regular medical treatment had proven to be unsuccessful, so after enduring several months of painful discomfort, she called a powwower on the advice of a friend. Tonight would be the third successive Friday-night session, but it was the first time she greeted him in person. A phone call preceded each of the previous two sessions. She had been surprised to learn that powwowing could be performed from a remote location. In the calls she received instructions to find a comfortable place to sit facing east and to place the Bible under her chair or hold it in her lap. The powwow doctor had asked her full baptismal name and promised to call her back in about 45 minutes, when he was finished. Tonight in person she couldn’t help but watch as he began a series of fluid movements with his hands, not touching her, pausing only to make the sign of the cross over each part of her body from head to toe, speaking words too softly to hear. Frequently he made a motion as though carefully removing something from her afflicted legs. He then rubbed his hands and shook them off as if he were drying them. She reported that although the swelling returned in a few days, she felt much better after each session, which provided much-needed relief.

Powwow, or Braucherei, is one of the oldest surviving systems of European folk belief in North America. Derived primarily from oral tradition, it encompasses a wide spectrum of rituals for healing ailments and preventing illness, among both humans and livestock, and for protection from spiritual forces. Although methods have varied considerably over three centuries of use among the Pennsylvania Dutch, a rich tapestry of cultural narratives has been woven from generations of those who participated in these traditions. Today, with the rise in popularity of genealogical research, complementary medicine, and alternative spiritualities, the ritual aspects of Pennsylvania Dutch folk culture offer tremendous opportunities to explore one’s roots and find meaning in rare glimpses of an ancestral view of the world that is not always so accessible in the present.

“The Man of Signs,” appearing here from Der Neue Readinger Calendar (1802), printed by Jacob Schneider of Reading, Berks County, is a common diagram still found in today’s farmer’s almanacs. It depicts the relation of human health to the movements of the heavens, detailing the governance of each part of the body by the signs of the zodiac and the planets.
Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University

The quintessential powwow narratives common throughout the Pennsylvania Dutch region in the southeastern part of the state are stories of the removal of warts involving the use of a common potato under the light of the waxing moon. My grandmother described this experience to me, recalling how her grandfather, Charles Belleman Struphaar, treated a wart on her hand at the family farm in northern Lebanon County. He rubbed the wart with half of a potato while quietly reciting words in the Pennsylvania Dutch language outside at night, below a full moon. The potato half was subsequently buried under the downspout of the farmhouse, where it would rot away to nothing, taking the wart with it. This particular family story is by no means unique. My grandmother, like many others in her generation, is not sure exactly what her grandfather had spoken or how the procedure worked – only, that the wart was gone in a few days.

While most who have engaged in these ritual practices as patients are not so self-conscious or concerned about the minute details of the experience, it is true that the procedures are part of a distinctive form of cultural and ceremonial performance, engaging both the practitioner and patient in a ritualized context composed of elements that are simultaneously mundane, cosmological and sacred. The common wart cure demonstrates the interrelation established between each element of the context, setting and roles of the performance, even when the script, a blessing offered in Pennsylvania Dutch, is unknown to a participant.

For instance, the moon was viewed as essential to this process. Considered a beacon of cosmic order, it is an agent of change, growth and dispersal. Echoing sentiments expressed in the common farmer’s almanac, the waxing moon was believed to pull a force away from the earth, powerful enough to enhance the growth of climbing plants such as corn and beans, and affect the rise of the tides, the wetness and quality of wood when cutting timber, and even the growth of one’s fingernails and hair. It is no wonder then that this lunar force was believed to assist in the transference of illness to the potato, which when cut in half has a cross-sectional profile that resembles the round, white, textured surface of the full moon; however, potatoes were to be planted during the waning moon, when the force was directed towards the earth, enhancing the downward growth of root crops. By burying the halved potato in the full moon, it was believed to be more likely to rot away under the downspout or below the dripline of the eaves, a location that represented the outermost boundary between the home and the outside world, separating that which is familiar from the unknown.

The contents of a handwritten personal blessing created by Dr. Joseph Hageman of Reading. Heilman Collection of Patrick J. Donmoyer

Whether it’s the removal of warts with a potato by the light of the waxing moon, the passing of an infant around a table leg to cure colic, the reading of scriptures to stop bleeding, or the concealment of written blessings to avert illness, danger or calamity, these experiences were all once commonplace expressions of folk medicine among the Pennsylvania Dutch. Although decidedly less popular among the generations following the Second World War, powwowing is still very much a part of the collective imagination of the Pennsylvania Dutch and those to whom their cultural influence has spread.

Throughout three centuries, this traditional notion of healing has combined physical, emotional, communal and spiritual health in a much broader sense than any one discipline of modern conventional medicine, encompassing domestic, agricultural and religious life. Powwowing rituals aim to restore a sense of balance and wholeness not just to the individual, but to the whole context of social, spiritual and cosmic relationships that comprise the individual’s experience of the world. This perception of healing is not a New World invention, but a European byproduct of the interrelation between the Roman Catholic consensus of the Middle Ages and the budding Protestant movements of Pietism and Mysticism that flourished in the centuries just prior to the mass migration of German-speaking people to North America in the 18th century. Pennsylvania, known as the most diverse ethnic and religious population of the 13 original colonies, provided the fertile soil for these traditions to grow and flourish in the New World.

Although the ritual practices of the Pennsylvania Dutch are predominantly European in origin, the word powwow was appropriated from the Algonquian languages and incorporated into English by colonists in 17th-century New England. In its original usage, the word powwaw among the Narragansett designated a medicine man, deriving from a verb describing the use of divination or dreaming for healing purposes. It is probable that the Native American word was applied by early English-speaking Pennsylvanians to describe the ritual practices of the Pennsylvania Dutch out of some perceived similarity in the process of ritual healing.

The original Pennsylvania Dutch word used to describe these ritual practices is Braucherei, literally describing from its German linguistic origin a comingling of customs, traditions, ceremonies and rites derived from brauche (to need, to use or employ), as well as Breiche (customs, traditions) and Gebrauch (custom, ceremony or ritual). A folk practitioner of Braucherei is referred to as a Braucherin if female and a Braucher if male, or as a “powwower” or “powwow doctor” in English. In some areas, a powwower is called a “hex doctor,” referencing the removal of an illness believed to be caused by a curse, or a grudge, known in the dialect as a hex. Any ritual activity used maliciously to harm a person or their cattle is known as Hexerei (witchcraft). It is the role of the powwower to counteract these activities.

Not everyone who powwows identifies as a practitioner, which implies a level of specialization or vocation. In many cases, it was once common that an older member of the family might powwow for anyone in the Freindschaft (extended family, including neighbors and friends), but not claim the title of Braucherin. Powwowing is taught by word of mouth, through the strict memorization of prayers, gestures and ritual processes used for specific illnesses, as well as general procedures to bless each portion of the human body. Protocol typically requires a female practitioner to teach a male or a male to teach a female, and usually the bulk of this oral material is taught in Pennsylvania Dutch language. No one knows how this particular requirement developed, but it has fostered a sense of gender equality in the tradition.

These European artifacts of religious healing reflect the origins of Pennsylvania Dutch powwowing: left, a scapular worn around the shoulders with images of the saints, as well as an unopened Breverl (letter of blessing), highly embellished with the beaded monogram of the Virgin Mary; right, the contents of an 18th-century German-language Breverl, which was sealed and worn on one’s person.
Heilman Collection of Patrick J. Donmoyer

When preserved within families, the tradition often skips a generation: A grandmother will teach a grandson or a grandfather his granddaughter. The only rare exception to this particular manner of gender-specific transmission is when the tradition is held closely within a family, and the younger generations are able to gain firsthand observational experience from older generations regardless of gender. More commonly today, however, is the memory of such practices having declined or disappeared within families where descendants of the appropriate gender were unavailable or unwilling to learn. The rapidly widening gap between the older native speakers of the dialect and subsequent generations of monolingual English-speakers also fundamentally complicates the passing of the tradition.

One who is interested in learning Braucherei is typically taught only under the condition that it be learned for the sake of being practically used and not merely to satisfy intellectual curiosity, academic interest or, what is considered worse, subjecting elements of the oral tradition to publication and public scrutiny. As a result, many academics or journalists who are forthright about their interests have struggled to find willing informants and have relied instead upon written sources. This has led to the premature assumption that powwowing is a dead or dying tradition; however, it is merely reflective of difficulties commonly experienced when encountering any close-knit community from the outside.

In addition to the protocol that determines how the practice is learned, there is also a strong admonition against putting memorized oral content into written form, except for personal reference. Despite this fact, a whole genre of literature developed in Pennsylvania, echoing similar currents in Europe that provided codified instructions for healing procedures.

In fact, sources confirm that the most popular folk healing manual in North America printed in Reading in 1820 was surrounded with an air of controversy. Der lange Verborgene Freund, compiled by Johann Georg Hohman in 1819 and later appearing in Harrisburg in 1840 under the well-known English title The Long Lost Friend, contains prayers, benedictions and rituals, a portion of which had been entirely in the realm of oral tradition or contained in private diaries. The majority of his contents, however, were directly plagiarized from an 18th-century European manual entitled Das Romanus-Büchlein, or The Little Book of the Gypsies, which had made a brief cameo in Reading around 1810 under the title Das Vortreffliche Zigeunger Büchlein, or The Splendid Little Book of the Gypsies. Hohman, an entrepreneurial compiler and publisher of printed material, admitted in his introduction that a portion of his material was derived from the oral tradition and that his own wife, a practitioner herself, had begged him not to put the material into print. Despite controversy, his work has never been out of print in nearly 200 years.

Characterization of John George Hohman on the cover and frontis of the Lewis de Claremont edition of Long Lost Friend, 1938.
Heilman Collection of Patrick J. Donmoyer

Whether a scoundrel or a hero, Hohman was a man of business who enhanced the sale of his book by adding that “Whoever carries this book with him is safe from all his enemies, visible or invisible; and whoever has this book with him cannot die without the holy body of Jesus Christ, nor drown in any water, nor burn up in any fire, nor can any unjust sentence be passed upon him. So help me.” This inscription designated the book itself as a talisman, accounting for the prevalence of the work among many families who never actually used it. The majority of practitioners relied instead on oral tradition or privately written sources. The rarity and secrecy surrounding these personal manuscripts makes them some of the most significant primary sources for studying the early history of the practice in Pennsylvania and Europe.

One of the earliest Pennsylvania powwow manuscripts was composed in 1775 by Johann Georg Henninger (1737-1815). He was an Alsatian emigrant, son of the weaver Johan Martin and Anna Catharina (Fuchs) Henninger, born in the town of Hatten, just a mere 10 miles from the Rhine River. He crossed the Atlantic in 1763, aboard the ship Chance, and made his way to Albany Township, Berks County, where he likely penned his manuscript.

Henninger’s work includes rare blessings used for stopping blood and convulsions, healing burns, protection from calamity and criminal violence, and compelling thieves to return stolen property, as well as lengthy transcriptions from a European medical booklet, Kurtzgefasstes Arznei Büchlein für Menschen und Vieh (Little Book of Medicine for Man and Beast), first printed in Vienna and later reprinted at the Ephrata Cloister in 1791. Henninger’s manuscript contains chapters for horses, cows, pigs and humans, with copious additions not found in the Ephrata imprint.

One entry in Henninger’s writings consists of a three-part poetic blessing to stop bleeding: “Es stehen 3 rothe Rosen am Himmel / Die eine ist gut, die ander stellt’s Blut, die dritte heilt’s gut. / 3. H. N.” (“In heaven stand three roses red, / The first is good, the second stops the blood, the third heals it good. / In the Three Highest Names.”)

Henninger’s classic Trinitarian blessing expresses a formulaic, nonbiblical religious statement, whereby earthly dangers are overcome by heavenly or celestial forces, concluding with an invocation of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Another one of Henninger’s entries is titled “For Invisibility,” but not in any conventional sense of the word. Instead it is a religious blessing used as a protective measure, so that anyone wishing him harm would be unable to see him. The poetic blessing consists of metered rhyming couplets, and concludes with four lines of cross-rhyme. The rhyming is both poetic and functional because it facilitated memorization. This is also true for officially sanctioned prayers intended for recitation from memory. Even the instructions to conclude the blessing with 15 recitations of the Lord’s Prayer and five of the Apostles’ Creed, repeated in three rounds, makes use of a partial rhyme. This later portion is a characteristic survival of Roman Catholic tradition, where any form of prayerful supplication was followed by repetitive recitations of the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed or the Ave Maria. While Henninger himself was a Lutheran, his material proceeded from a long-standing oral tradition that predated the Reformation and maintained some of its earlier Catholic elements.

Powwow instructions to Lillie A. Moyer for treating wildfire, Tulpehocken, Berks County, 1893.
Heilman Collection of Patrick J. Donmoyer

Powwow manuscripts can present significant challenges for interpretation related to the fact that they were created, not for posterity, but for private reference, ranging from notations in the margins of farm ledgers to lengthy collections of ritual procedures. While positively rife with fascinating materials, many lack basic information regarding their provenance, such as dates, names or locations. Even when such information is present, the overwhelming majority of these texts are in nonstandardized forms of early German, which can vary considerably in spelling and vocabulary, making translation a difficult task even for those who are extremely well-versed in modern German. Only rarely are written sources composed in Pennsylvania Dutch, which was almost exclusively a spoken language until the late 19th century. In contrast, much of the oral tradition today is conveyed in the dialect, demonstrating the interrelation of language in both official forms and folk usage. Occasionally memorized verses were later written down by speakers of Pennsylvania Dutch, or by those who only spoke English, resulting in phonetic renditions of German materials. This is especially true for materials from around the turn of the 20th century, coinciding with the decline of literacy in German following the strict enforcement of English-only education in Pennsylvania.

An elaborate inscription, decorated with stars, and written for Lillie A. Moyer by an unnamed “friend,” dating from 1892-93, provides phonetic instructions, “For the Wildfire to Powwow”: “Wildfire and inflammation, curse and pain, running blood and gangrene, / I circle thee. The Lord God protect thee. God is the highest one, / that can cast thee out, wildfire, inflammation, curse and pain, running blood and gangrene, / and all harm, away from [insert baptismal name]. + + +”

Snake bite charm of Regina Selzser, Jackson Township, Lebanon County, 1837.
Heilman Collection of Patrick J. Donmoyer

Wildfire is another name for erysipelas, a painful bacterial infection of the skin. Prior to the availability of antibiotics, wildfire was often fatal, and doctors could not always successfully cure the illness. Powwowing was the next resort for those seeking relief. The naming of both the patient and the affliction (or naming a whole cohort of illnesses as above) engages the patient in dialog with their disease animistically – that is, as though the disease is a sentient, willful entity that can be commanded to depart. An early benediction for a snake bite recorded for Regina Seltzer of Lebanon County in 1837 places this ritual dialog within a sacred, cosmological context of the divinely created world from the Book of Genesis: “And God created all things in heaven and on earth, and everything was good, except for thee, Snake, which God cursed, and cursed shalt thou remain. Swelling I halt thee, poison and pain, I destroy thee. Withdraw thy poison, withdraw thy poison, withdraw thy poison, Amen, X X X [in the name of God the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit]. Regina Selzser 1837”

Occasionally, illnesses were banished to a particular location, such as the sea, a mountain, a stone or the moon. One of the earliest collections of powwow blessings, printed as a series of broadsides in the early 19th century attributed to Dr. Georg Friedrich Helfenstein and entitled Soli Deo Gloria (Glory to God Alone), makes frequent use of banishing illness “to the highest mountain” and “into the depths of the sea.”

Dr. Helfenstein explains in a lengthy introduction that this motif of the mountain and the sea is derived from the Gospel of Mark, undergirding the notion that faith plays a role in ritual healing: “For verily I say unto thee, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; and he shall have whatsoever he saith.”

Despite what may seem by today’s standards to be unconventional use of scripture in powwowing, some clergy were actually advocates for the practice in early Pennsylvania. The circuit rider Rev. Georg Mennig (1773-1851), who served congregations in Berks and Schuylkill counties, printed a series of broadsides, including the Biblical verse Ezekiel 16:6, used for stopping blood and cures for wildfire, where the very same processes remained popular well into the 20th century. Folklife scholar Don Yoder (1921-2015) documented Sophia Bailer (1870-1954), known as “The Saint of the Coal Regions,” utilizing Pastor Mennig’s cure in 1950 in Schuylkill County, demonstrating the continuity of these practices over the centuries.

Sophia Bailer demonstrated the powwow ritual for curing wildfire for Don Yoder’s camera in 1950. Here, she transfers the illness to a red woolen string by drawing it along the child’s body and then sweeps the string away from the body three times, while addressing the illness and commanding it to depart: “Wildfeier, Wildfeier, Flieh, Flieh, Flieh! Der rote Fadem jagt dich hie, hie hie!” (“Erysipelas, Erysipelas, Fly, fly, fly! The red string chases you away, away, away!”).
The sequence continues below with (2).
Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University

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It is difficult to determine how many people actively practice powwowing in Pennsylvania today. Although there are marginal manifestations of powwowing throughout Pennsylvania Dutch Country, as well as other locations throughout the United States, there have also been some organized efforts to keep the tradition alive, such as the Three Sister’s Center for the Healing Arts, a practitioner’s collective that offered a series of educational workshops and programs in Kutztown, Berks County, in 2008-10. While the classes themselves were strictly of a cultural and historical nature and did not teach anyone how to powwow, the Three Sisters Center did connect new generations of people with local powwowers for the purpose of learning the practice within a traditional framework. Although all of the original founders of the organization have moved on to other projects, such as farming and herbalism, its brief appearance supports the notion that the tradition has been carried on by everyday people. Powwowing is a tradition that has grown and changed over time, adapting to contemporary culture, and is not likely to vanish from its New World point of origin in Pennsylvania anytime soon.

Powwowing in Pennsylvania

Don Yoder (1921-2015) was regarded as the foremost authority on the folk culture of the Pennsylvania Dutch. In honor of his legacy, a traveling exhibition of the largest collection of Pennsylvania Dutch folk healing manuscripts, books, photographs and ritual objects will be featured at the Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn, Montgomery County, opening February 2017. The exhibition will showcase these fragments of the past as expressions of Pennsylvania’s diverse cultural attitudes towards health and healing, the nature of illness and suffering, and the interrelation of domestic, agricultural and spiritual life.

Patrick J. Donmoyer is site director of the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University. He is the author of Hex Signs: Myth and Meaning in Pennsylvania Dutch Barn Stars and the forthcoming Powwowing in Pennsylvania: Ritual Traditions of the Dutch Country.