414 AKNTTAL REPORT SIVHTHSOXIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



Furthermore, as now at Grand River, the patient was also led around 

 in the medicine dance and encouraged to recover, and there was a 

 terminal feast for invited guests. 



"While these descriptions do not fit the modern ceremonies pre- 

 cisely, they at least contain the kernels out of which the modern 

 rituals have grown. 



For the Iroquois of New York at this period we do not find ac- 

 counts of face painting and masking, comparing the Indians with 

 the masqueraders in the French Mardi Gras. However, the author 

 of Van Curler's journal, whose party visited the Mohawk villages 

 and the Oneida town at Christmas of 1634, tells us how on two oc- 

 casions the Chief of the first Mohawk Castle ". . . showed me his 

 idol; it was a head with the teeth sticking out; it was dressed in a 

 red cloth." ^* This is reminiscent of the modern custom of covering 

 masks when putting them away. A fortnight later at Oneida, he 

 saw a dozen red-faced Oneida shamans handle and eat fire while 

 attempting to drive away evil spirits to the accompaniment of a 

 turtle rattle. 



The "Relations" for 1636 and 1637 mention the antics of the False- 

 faces and their husk-face doorkeepers among the Huron. Brebeuf ^' 

 writes, that in the Midwinter Festival of 1636 : 



You would have seen some with a sack on the head, pierced only for the 

 eyes; others were stuffed with straw around the middle, to imitate a pregnant 

 woman. Several were naked as the hand . . . 



And so do the modern maskers go naked to the waist. The following 

 December at the great Huron village of Ossosane ". . . they donned 

 their masks and danced, to drive away the disease." ^^ During this 

 winter a clairvoyant came into prominence among the Hurons, and 

 his name Tsondacoiianne is not only preserved to us in the "Relations," 

 but my informants identify it with their term for the individual 

 who sponsors a medicine feast (godesoni — she sponsored the ritual; 

 sad^Soni — you . . . sponsor) . In a dance which he ordered {to drive 

 away pestilence — 



All the dancers were disguised as hunchbacks, with wooden masks which 

 were altogether ridiculous, and each had a stick in his hand. An excellent 

 medicine, forsooth! At the end of the dance, at the command of the sorcerer 

 Tsondacoiiane all these masks were hung at the end of poles, and placed over 

 every cabin, with the straw men at the doors, to frighten the malady . . . 

 [p. 263]. 



And a day or so later they beat upon pieces of bark, making a great 

 din, and a householder burned tobacco and urged the masks to keep 



•♦ Wilson, James Grant, Arent Van Curler and his journal. Ann. Rep. Anier. Hist. Assoc, 

 for 1805, pp. 88, 95, 1896. 

 "Jesuit Relations (Thwaites edition), vol. 10, p. 203. 

 » Op clt., vol. 13, p. 176. 



