404 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



which it was not advisable to disturb. Other photographs have been 

 generously supplied by Dr. W. C. McKern, of the Milwaukee Public 

 Museum, the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, which I was 

 unable to visit, and the United States National Museum, the National 

 Museum of Canada, and the American Museum of Natural History. 



In using photographs for sampling the knowledge of informants, 

 I did not succeed in devising a controlled technique for testing and 

 recording their attitudes toward the pictures. All informants re- 

 garded pictures of masks with great interest, and frequently with con- 

 siderable amusement which they often shared with passing Indians; 

 and the amount often varied with the horrific appearance of the mask 

 and its supposed power, or sometimes as it furnished an excellent cari- 

 cature of some local personality.^^ The Iroquois are both amused and 

 awed by these pathetically humorous portraits of supernatural disease 

 beings who so dominate their dream life. Nevertheless, if we did not 

 obtain from all informants a consistent appraisal of mask types, very 

 often an informant would recognize the picture as of a mask that he 

 had made or one that he had seen in some ceremony, and all these 

 incidents provided grist for our mill. 



The pictures should prove of further value in segregating formal 

 mask types and art styles by localities. It is possible to analyze the 

 masks and plot the distribution of characteristic features, such as 

 mouth shape, bent nose, spines on forehead, and presence of supple- 

 mentary wrinkles. This is one way of establishing local and tribal 

 styles. We compare these with concepts of informants and discover 

 that much of formal art exists on the level of unconscious behavior 

 patterns. 



The practice of recording extensive texts in the native language of 

 myths, prayers, and even accounts of individual participation in cul- 

 ture, has become a bit unfashionable of late in ethnology. This is 

 partly because the texts often became an end in themselves, or they 

 remained unpublished because the authors were not satisfied that they 

 were accurately translated, or they reached such proportions that the 

 translation became an impracticable ordeal, and the recorders passed 

 away before the end was acliieved. Nevertheless, in the study of 

 ceremonies there is no substitute for texts in the native language. Very 

 often the prayer texts contain archaic words that are the keys to 

 unlock concepts that are not verbalized by contemporary members 

 of society. Therefore, apart from any interest in linguistic research, 

 I early discovered that I had to record texts to get at the ethnological 

 materials which I was seeking. Thus from our texts we derive a 

 name for the "sponsor" of medicine society ceremonies which we recog- 



" Miss Marjorle Llsmer, who was cooperating In the same study, enconntered similar 

 reactions. 



