IROQUOIS — FENTON 411 



at Newtown (Seneca) and among the Cayuga of Grand River. At 

 Newtown, James Crow formerly had a pig mask which was used as 

 doorkeeper in a dream ceremonial constructed around the Delaware 

 Skin-beating Dance. It is possible that pig masks are derived from 

 masks representing the bear, but there is no evidence that such masks 

 were used in the Bear Dance Society ritual. However, with the dis- 

 appearance of the bear the pig has become the principal feast animal 

 among the remnant Iroquois, and the pighead has acquired a reflected 

 holiness by association with the rituals of the medicine societies 

 (pi. 11, fig. 2). At Coldspring the pig is only a beggar mask who 

 appears at the Midwinter Festival. 



12. The blind mask (dagggwegQ gagghsa') presents something of 

 an enigma because it is either little known or informants are unwill- 

 ing to discuss it. The former is apparently the reason because blind 

 masks have been obsolete ceremonially for over a generation, accord- 

 ing to J. Cornplanter, whose father remembered them from his youth. 

 In the ritual of the I'do s Medicine Society, the shaman demon- 

 strated his power to see through the mask by juggling hot stones, and 

 he knocked a standing doll from an inverted corn mortar. Further- 

 more, the masks of this ritual in the New York State Museum, 

 which Parker published in 1909, do not appear to have had much 

 use in ceremonies. Although a blind mask has been collected from 

 the Seneca of Grand River (pi. 12), its use is unknown to my in- 

 formants, the Gibsons. In this connection it is interesting that some 

 Senecas think the black faces have more power because they usually 

 have smaller eye holes than the red ones, but other informants say 

 red masks are equally powerful, and James Crow said that to meet 

 a, red one might cause nosebleed. At any rate the red and black 

 masks are about equally represented in our collections. 



The hush faces or '^hushy-headsy — Besides the wooden False-faces, 

 corn husk masks represent another class of earth-bound supernatural 

 beings who formed a pact with mankind and taught them the arts 

 of hunting and agriculture. The techniques of twining and braiding 

 corn husks in the manufacture of shoes, mats, and dishes is ancient 

 among the Iroquois peoples, and it is one of the traits that point to a 

 southern origin for those elements of their culture that are asso- 

 ciated with the cultivation of maize. Nevertheless, the use of husk 

 masks is probably no older than sewing braided corn husks for 

 seats and foot mats, since the Husk Faces and the beings which they 

 represent are named like the mats "bushy, fuzzy, or awry" (gadjr'sa'). 

 The husk faces look like door mats, the only difference being 

 that the masks have holes for the eyes and mouth and the pile is cut 

 off on the inside, but they too have a ragged fringe of hair. Thus 

 a person awaking with his hair standing awry, like the pile of a foot 

 mat, in said to look like gadjr'sa' — a bushy-head. 



