406 ANNUAL REPORT SIVHTHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



beings because he promised the Creator to abide in inaccesible places 

 on the rim of the earth; but he is well known in mythology and by 

 his human counterparts, the maskers that represent him in the 

 ceremonies. 



The Faces of the forest also claimed to possess the power to control 

 sickness. They instructed the dreamers to carve likenesses in the 

 form of masks, saying that whenever anyone makes ready the feast, 

 invokes their help while burning Indian tobacco and sings the curing 

 songs, supernatural power to cure disease will be conferred on human 

 beings who wear the masks. The dancers should carrj^ turtle rattles 

 and speak a weird, unintelligible nasal language. They can scoop up 

 glowing embers in their bare hands, without suffering burns when 

 they blow hot ashes on the sick person. The masks are as varied as 

 the visions and the artistic whims of the individual craftsmen who 

 have carved them from single blocks of living basswood. 



Native classiilcation confused. — Natives themselves are confused 

 when asked to classify False-faces. One old Seneca informant, Henry 

 Redeye, told me there are as many False-face types as there are dif- 

 ferent people. Some are portraits of youths; others are of old men 

 who have long, white hair and wrinkled faces. Tliere are angry indi- 

 viduals with broken noses and mouths skewed to one side as if they 

 had suffered paralytic strokes, who are apt to sweat and cause an 

 owner illness if he neglects to supplicate them with tobacco offerings. 

 Some have distended, open lips as if they were blowing ashes ; a few 

 with standing hair and raised eyebrows are whistling and merely want 

 tobacco, while others protrude red tongues in pain, or laugh, revealing 

 irregular rows of wooden or bone teeth. Their similarities are only 

 those which the local culture has prescribed in dreams. 



Tradition has dictated the forms which the faces assume in visions, 

 and the features which the craftsmen emphasize when carving, the 

 very features which the Indians mention when describing the original 

 forest folk. It is sufficient for the carver to single out particular 

 features of the face for artistic expression; the face portrays the 

 being, and the wearer must dramatize his other attributes: his erect 

 or slouching gait, his awful mien and the nonsensical, nasal speech 

 which he accompanies by shaking a rattle. To the Indians, the total 

 effect is both terrifying and extremely humorous. 



Iroquois conceptions of the supernaturals whom these dramatiza- 

 tions represent have unquestionably been influenced by projecting in 

 dreams the form of the masks and the behavior of the actors who 

 appear in the ceremonies. Thus, as Golden weiser pointed out : ^o 



Various grotesque spirits must be regarded as derived either from dreams or 

 visions or to be the outgrowth of the free play of the imagination. Not in- 

 frequently, artificial objects or artistic conventions must have had an influence 



» Goldenwelser. A. A.. Early civilization, pp. 231-232. New York. 1922. 



