The timing was chance – tied more to pandemic delays, than anything – but Bill Crouse figures this kind of chance can sometimes be the best instructor.
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims are expected to pour into Western New York next month to witness a total solar eclipse. Some will undoubtedly find their way to musical and cultural events beneath the once-in-a-lifetime shadows created as the April 8 eclipse begins to happen above the old grain elevators known as Silo City.
Once there, those visitors will watch as the sun gradually diminishes above a new sculpture called “The Gustoweh,” designed by Crouse – a sculptor, artist and faithkeeper for the bird clans within the Seneca Nation. A “gustoweh” is the anglicized version of what Crouse spells as “gastowe,” the Seneca word for a ceremonial headdress.
The 16-foot-tall sculpture – made almost entirely from stainless steel – was created to emphasize a solitary eagle feather, rising from that headdress and into the air.
That’s how Crouse said his people wear the gustoweh as a means of distinction within the Haudenosaunee – or Six Nations – where the headdress of each nation is singular, a specific means of identification.
The whole Seneca role in that great Indigenous confederacy is symbolized by the idea of five fingers creating a tight fist, as Crouse demonstrated during a recent interview on a sunny morning at the sculpture. Centuries ago, five separate nations – the Tuscarora people would join later – became much more powerful as one woodland empire.
That decision, as Crouse explained, pivoted for the Senecas on the appearance of another total solar eclipse, in ancient days.
He speaks of the new sculpture, which went up in the autumn, as “an exclamation point, a statement of our identity on that land.” Silo City is located within what once was the Seneca territory known as Buffalo Creek, refuge and sanctuary for the Haudenosaunee and many Indigenous…
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