402 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



world of the grotesque wooden masks worn by human beings?" If 

 there are local styles of carving, we must consider how the individual 

 learns to carve and the opportunities for the free play of his whims 

 in devising new fonns. There is always the problem of disregard 

 of native theory in ritual practice. Thus, if there are formal dis- 

 tinctions between mask types, based on myths, the members of the 

 society may not consistently use the same mask always to portray the 

 same being, or to perform a consistent function in a ceremony. The 

 history of masked shamanism among the Iroquois may help explain 

 the relationship of the Society of Faces to the other medicine soci- 

 eties, the orders of membership, and the form and content of the 

 masked rituals. 



Method. — This study was first of all an attempt to find out the 

 meaning and uses of masks in museum collections. I went to the 

 Seneca at Allegany in 1933 with a series of photographs of masks that 

 had been collected among them. Informants expressed great inter- 

 est in pictures of their handiwork and they identified various masks 

 as belonging to individuals who employed them in certain ceremonies, 

 and I recorded these comments togethed with the Seneca names for 

 various mask types. This procedure led to a number of myths and 

 folk tales involving the masks, which I took down. The method was 

 not standardized or controlled, but it was repeated with several 

 informants who checked each other. 



Direct information was solicited of all informants on origin 

 myths and their personal histories as members of the Society of 

 Faces. Case histories of members disclosed information on illnesses, 

 membership through dreams and visions, hysteria, and accounts of 

 participation in cures, as well as lengthy descriptions of the rituals. 



Actual rituals of the masked societies were observed during field 

 trips to the Seneca of Allegany and Tonawanda, and to the Onondaga 

 outside Syracuse, N. Y. ; ^^ while only descriptions of the Cattaraugus 

 Seneca and Canadian Iroquois masked ceremonies were obtained. 

 However, observation provides only background for questioning be- 

 cause one observes both significant and accidental detail, and not until 

 an informant describes the same performance does the ethnologist 

 appreciate what the ceremony actually means to participants. Other- 

 wise, the observer makes a complete but spurious record of behavior, 

 and he fails to grasp what is culturally meaningful. A motion pic- 



" Goldenweiser, A. A., Early civilization ... pp. 231-232. New York, 1922. 



>• Field work among the Seneca at Allegany from June to September 19.?3. and January- 

 Febniary and July and August 1934, was conducted for the Institute of Human Relations 

 at Yale University. Two and one-half years at Tonawanda for the U. S. Indian Service 

 afforded ample opportunity to witness the masked ceremonies. Recently, two seasons of 

 field work among the Seneca of New York and among the Cayuga-Onondaga of Six Nations, 

 Ontario, for the Bureau of American Ethnology have yielded much additional infor- 

 mation. 



