IROQUOIS — FENTON 421 



THREE SOCIETIES EMPLOY MASKS 



Among the Iroquois, three distinct medicine societies employ masks. 

 They perform their rituals in public or privately. The False-face 

 Company, who wear the wooden masks, include both orders of 

 medicine masks who have three distinct rituals. Their public rituals 

 are the spring and autumn exorcism of disease from the settlements 

 and cures which are sometimes sponsored in the longhouse during the 

 Midwinter Festival. However, the public appearance of the Beg- 

 gars and Thieves, during several nights of the midwinter ceremonies, 

 are merely a motely group of boys who sometimes "take sick" after- 

 ward and thereby gain admittance to the society (pi. 18, fig. 1). The 

 second ritual belongs to the Common Faces, who enter a house and 

 dance (pis. 19, 20). The Common Faces may be followed by the great, 

 world-rim Faces, whose ritual is the Doorkeeper's Dance. The Soci- 

 ety of Faces is the body of people who have been cured by the masked 

 company. The separate society of Husk Faces appears publicly two 

 nights at the Midwinter Festival. They have their own invocation, 

 songs, and a curing dance. Membership is gained by a dream or 

 cure, but nonmembers join in their public dances, dancing at the end 

 of the line. Frequently at Allegany two special Husk Faces appear 

 as doorkeepers for the Common Faces at private curing rites and as 

 heralds and longhouse police during public rituals. Among the 

 Canadian Iroquois, masked societies seem more highly specialized, but 

 at Allegany and Tonawanda their functions are less clearly defined. 

 At Newtown, on Cattaraugus reserve, the Society of Mystic Animals 

 (hadi^do's) possess certain "secret masks" of which one has no eye 

 holes, but at Coldspring on Allegany Reservation certain black or 

 white Faces, which are also used as medicine masks by the Society 

 of Faces, appear in one ritual of the Society of Mystic Animals and 

 juggle hot stones or hot ashes while curing the patient (pi. 18, fig. 2) . 



Membership. — An Iroquois Indian joins a particular medicine 

 society after a dream or because a clairvoyant has prescribed the 

 ritual of that society to cure a sickness. He automatically joins 

 all the societies, and is afterward duty bound to sponsor any combina- 

 tion of rituals that have assisted his i*ecovery. Thus the Society of 

 Faces includes persons who have been cured by the False-face Company. 

 Membership in the several orders of the society, or participation in the 

 rituals of the masked company depend on an individual's personal 

 history. The masked company are men wearing masks of the orders 

 which cured them, but both men and women sponsor the rituals and 

 belong to the orders that have accepted them for membership in the 

 society by making them sick. Among the Seneca, two head women, 

 one from each moiety of four clans, are responsible for certain equip- 



