418 ANNUAL REPORT S^HTHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



Longnose^ icho kidnaps naughty children. — The Iroquois and their 

 Algonquin neighbors use buckskin masks to impersonate cannibal 

 clowns who sometimes kidnap naughty children. The Seneca call 

 this clown "Longnose" (hag6nde-s) because of his elongated pro- 

 boscis. He is the Indian bogeyman. He chases bad children when 

 the old people are sleeping. He mimics them, crying out as he runs 

 after them. But the old folks do not wake up, since he has bewitched 

 them in order that they will remain sleeping. This goes on all night 

 until the child gives up and agrees to behave, or else Longnose makes 

 away with the child, carrying him off in a huge pack basket. It is 

 not right to whip little children. Stubborn children who will not go 

 to bed are sometimes sent out at dusk to meet Longnose, impersonated 

 by a relative wearing a cloth mask. The child immediately runs into 

 the house. Neither is it right to use the great wooden masks belong- 

 ing to the medicine society for scaring little children. The great 

 Faces are sacred and should not be ridiculed ; and the being they rep- 

 resent might, through the mask, "poison" the child, or "spoil his face" 

 and bring bad luck to the wearer. 



The Blgheads. — At the Seneca Midwinter Festival, two women 

 dress two men in buffalo robes, which they bind with ropes of braided 

 corn husks, from which the ears have been successively pulled for con- 

 sumption; they hand the men wooden corn pounders and dispatch 

 them about the village. These heralds impersonate the "Uncles" or 

 "Bigheads" who run through the fires heralding the Feast of Dreams 

 which marks the new year. Their costume symbolizes the union of 

 trophies of the hunt and fruit of the harvest. The Bigheads sliould 

 not be confused with the wooden False-faces or the Husk Faces, who 

 form two distinct but somewhat linked medicine companies. 



THE SOCIETY OF FACES, OR THE FALSE-FACE COMPANY 



The origin of the False-faces. — Among the Iroquois there are two 

 prevailing types of origin legends for the wooden False-faces. One 

 is a mythical epic belonging to the creation; the other is a human 

 adventure. Both are associated with different classes of beings. In 

 abridged form, here is what Chauncey Johnny John and Henry Redeye 

 heard from their "old folks." 



The Struggle fob Control of the Eabth 



Now when ovir maker was finishing tills earth, he went walking around inspect- 

 ing it and banishing all evil spirits from his premises. He divested the Stone- 

 coats and banished them as harmful to men. He removed the Little Folk's 

 stone shirts and permitted them to remain to help hunters and cure illness. As 

 the creator went on his way westward, on the rim of the world, he met a huge 

 fellow — the head man of all the Faces. The creator asked the stranger, as he 

 had asked the others, whence he came. The stranger replied that he came from 

 the Rocky Mountains to the west and that he had been living on this earth since 

 he made it. They argued as to whose earth they traversed and agreed to settle 



