IROQUOIS — FENTON 399 



collections in several museums.^ Somewhat later David Boyle, of To- 

 ronto, was stimulated to make similar observations of the False-face 

 ceremonies among the Iroquois of Grand River and to publish brief 

 notices of his collecting activities/ His collections now repose in the 

 Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology in Toronto along with the 

 Chiefswood Collection of Pauline Johnson, the Mohawk poetess. 



Several large study collections resulted from the activities of 

 Harriet Maxwell Converse, a poet and journalist, who during the 

 years 1881 to 1903 was an enthusiastic collector of Seneca Iro- 

 quois materials. Her success was partly due to adoption by the 

 Senecas and later by the Onondagas, who installed her as an honor- 

 ary chief of the Six Nations.^ There are over 100 Converse masks 

 in the New York State ISIuseum (in Albany), and others in the 

 Peabody Museum of Harvard University and in the American 

 Museum of Natural History (New York) ; and Joseph Keppler, her 

 successor among the Seneca, has deposited his mask collections in 

 the Museum of the American Indian. However, Converse's brief 

 published utterances on masks (1899 and 1908) and the accession 

 records which sometimes accompany her collections make one sus- 

 picious of her field work. There are poetic titles for the masks, 

 suggesting fanciful roles, such as "war and scalp, clan, maternity, 

 bird, pipe-smoker's, sun-rise, dead chief, etc.," that no field worker 

 among the Iroquois since her tune has substantiated. 



M. R. Harrington,^ who visited the Canadian Iroquois in the 

 summer of 1907, turned over to the American Museum gratify- 

 ingly full accession records which suggest only a few rather general 

 mask types that agree with the findings of Morgan, Smith, Parker, 

 and the writer. Even Parker himself, who had access to Mrs. 

 Converse's notes and to some of her informants, found only four 

 classes of masks based on function.^" We conclude, therefore, that 

 Mrs. Converse wrote into the records more than she was told, or 

 that she posed leading questions to willing informants who politely 

 assented. 



"The Onondaga Historical Society of Syracuse has the masljs that Smith presented to 

 Beauchamp, but the American Museum of Natural History has the masks that he published 

 and his drawings. Following his recent death, his remaining collections were divided 

 between the latter institution and the Museum of the Amercan Indian, Heye Foundation. 



^ Boyle, David, Society of the False Faces, Ontario Arch. Rep. 1898, pp. 157-160, 1898 ; 

 and Iroquois medicine man's Mask. Ibid., 1899, pp. 27-29, 1900. 



■ Converse, H. M., and Parker, Arthur C, ed., Myths and legends of the New York 

 SState Iroquois. New York State Mus. Bull. 125, pp. 17-29, 1908. 



" Harrington, M. R., Some unusual Iroquois specimens. Amer. Anthrop., n. s., vol. 11, 

 No. 1, pp. 85-91, 1909. 



^0 Parker, A. C, Secret medicine societies of the Seneca. Amer. Anthrop., n. s., vol. 2, 

 No. 2, p. 179, 1909. 



