398 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



the Grand River in Six Nations Reserve comprise four bands 

 of Handsome Lake's adherents. The Upper Cayuga have their 

 longhouse at Soursprings, Onondaga longhouse stands by Macken- 

 zie Creek opposite Middleport (pi. 1, fig. 2), nearby is the third 

 or Seneca longhouse with a congregation of mixed Onondaga, Cayuga, 

 and Seneca descent, and the fourth longhouse is down below Peter 

 Atkins' corners among the stronger band of Lower Cayuga. The 

 Oneida near St. Thomas, farther west, have a longhouse, but neither 

 among the Oneida, who early came under New England Giristian 

 influence, nor among the Catholic Mohawks of the St. Lawrence, 

 who have recently been missionized from Onondaga, is there any 

 great number of longhouse people.^ As might be expected, the rituals 

 of the masked shamanistic societies are best preserved in the more 

 conservative centers of the Seneca and among the mixed Onondaga 

 and Cayuga of Grand River. 



EthTwlogicaZ importance of collections. — ^Wooden masks from the 

 Iroquois that are prominently displayed in eastern museums have 

 considerable ethnological importance as well as popular appeal. 

 Lewis H. Morgan seems to have been the first to collect Iroquois 

 masks, and the literature on the so-called False-faces begins with 

 his publication in 1851 of a line drawing of a mask, which he had 

 acquired among the Onondaga of Canada, together with a terse 

 statement of beliefs regarding the False-faces, the organization of 

 the band, a reference to their preventing a cholera epidemic at Tona- 

 wanda in 1849, a description of their curing activities, and the dep- 

 redations committed by small thieving boys disguised as False-faces 

 at the Midwinter Festival.^ Although J. V. H. Clark made some- 

 what earlier observations of the False-faces in the Onondaga Mid- 

 winter Festival of 1841,^ the articles by DeCost Smith, the artist, 

 are more reliable as source materials.* Smith drew the attention of 

 the Reverend William M. Beauchamp to the function of the masks, 

 which he had discovered in an Indian's attic, and to the problem of 

 their antiquity among the Iroquois.' Besides his articles, Smith exe- 

 cuted a series of animated illustrations which he deposited with his mask 



' For a map and summary of populations of reservations and settlements of modern 

 Iroquoian peoples see the author's recent paper, Problems arising from the historic north- 

 eastern position of the Iroquois. Smithsonian Misc, Coll., vol. 100, pp. 214-215, i:740. 



» Morgan, L. H., League of the . . . Iroquois, vol. 1, pp. 157-160, 204-205, New York, 

 1901. 



• Clark, Joshua V. H., Onondaga ; or reminiscences of earlier and later times, vol. 1, 

 p. 57, Syracuse, N. Y., 1849. 



* Smitli, DeCost, Witchcraft and demonlsm of the modern Iroquois. Journ. Amor. Folk- 

 lore, vol. 1, pp. 184-194, 1888 j Additional notes on Onondaga witchcraft and IIo °-do'-i. 

 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 277-281, 1889. 



' Beauchamp, William M., Aboriginal uses of wood in New York. New York State Mus. 

 Bull. 89, p. 187, 1905. 



