IROQUOIS — FENTON 403 



ture record of the ceremonies would have the same weakness. Only 

 during the last season have I been permitted to photograph the False- 

 face ceremonies, but here again it has been more successful to have 

 selected informants compose a series of what they consider the essen- 

 tial phases of a curing ritual. While the camera freezes character- 

 istic posture and gesture, it also catches the contemporary scene. For 

 this reason I had a young Seneca artist, Ernest Smith, of Tonawanda, 

 make some illustrations of the False-face ceremonies, as he imagined 

 they might have been performed a century earlier. At the same time 

 he was executing an extensive series for the Rochester Museum of 

 Arts and Sciences and his work entailed consultation with my older 

 informants. Smith's illustrations, therefore, are to the photographs 

 as informant descriptions are to the ethnologist's observations. They 

 stand in the relationship of ideal patterns, cultural concepts, to 

 actual practice. 



Observation coupled with photography is particularly rewarding 

 in studies of material culture. In this way I recorded the technique 

 of mask making at Tonawanda, Coldspring, and Grand River, noting 

 positions of work and ways of handling tools. Out of this emerged 

 the best material on artistic styles, the role of the individual in devis- 

 ing new forms, education in handicrafts, and the tyranny of local 

 canons of art. The whole mask-making process, which was foitnerly 

 ritualized, is still hedged in by the fragments of a broken-down cere- 

 monial procedure. 



Because up to 1937 my data on mask types contained nothing com- 

 parable to the poetic titles that Converse had given to her masks, it 

 seemed advisable to study her extensive collections in Albany and 

 New York. I employed the technique of recording on slips informa- 

 tion on a selected series of criteria that increased or narrowed as the 

 study progressed, such as color, form of chin, mouth, nose, presence or 

 absence of supplementary wrinkles and superorbital ridges, spines on 

 nose bridge, shape and method of attaching tin eyes, presence of 

 tobacco bags; and on the back: number of holes for head and hair 

 attachment, indications of use, carving methods, species of wood, and 

 othef noteworthy features. Then each specimen was photographed 

 with the aid of a copy stand, and negatives were cataloged serially 

 to agree with data sheets and the museum catalog. Over 100 masks 

 were examined at the New York State Museum, 6 at the Montgomery 

 County Historical Society, Fort Johnson, N. Y., 24 at the Royal 

 Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto, and 16 of the older masks 

 in the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences. Only 35, a small 

 part of the extensive collections of the Museum of the American In- 

 dian, were examined at the Annex during 1 day, and photographs 

 have been obtained subsequently of specimens on permanent exhibit 



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