FOREWORD XIII 



communicative then and also on subsequent visits. I notated dances 

 during the gatherings and after the culminating Green Corn Festival 

 over Labor Day weekend. Also, I attended two important recording 

 sessions by Fenton: one of the Coldspring Towisas ceremonies, with 

 Fannie Stevens and Sadie Butler as leaders; and another, with Jesse 

 Cornplanter at Tonawanda Reservation. 



During 1949, I added song transcriptions to the choreographies, 

 utilizing a grant from the Viking Fund (now the Wenner-Gren Foun- 

 dation for Anthropological Research) to study Herzog's shipment of 

 disk copies. In 1951, Fenton procured for me a commission from the 

 American Philosophical Society for a manuscript, which I forwarded 

 to the library by the fall of thg,t year. The following year he arranged 

 another commission for me from the Society — the transcription and 

 analysis of the Tonawanda collections. In 1960, Richard H. Shryock 

 and Gertrude Hess released my two manuscripts, which constitute 

 this volume. 



Subsequently, I revisited Allegany Reservation, sometimes in con- 

 nection with Iroquois Conferences in the Allegany State Park at Red 

 House, N.Y. But most of my Iroquois field work and all of my own 

 tape recordings, took place at Six Nations Reserve and at Onondaga 

 longhouse near Nedrow, N.Y. I also made several trips to Qualla 

 Cherokee Reservation, N.C., and spent 4 years studying the Algon- 

 quians of Alichigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa, usually in the company of 

 my daughter, Ellen, or my son, Edward. My wider experience I owe 

 to the American Philosophical Society and, repeatedly, to the Michi- 

 gan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters. 



In publications, my approaches complemented Fenton's ethnological 

 presentations. The first collaboration appeared as paper No. 7 of 

 Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 149 (Fenton and Kurath, 

 1951); the second and larger one, as Bureau of American Ethnology 

 Bulletin 156 (Fenton and Kurath, 1953). Also, I shared in the 

 symposia (Kurath, 1951, 1961). The collaborations largely took the 

 form of correspondence, but in the summer of 1951, when Fenton 

 taught at the University of Michigan, consultations were possible. 



THE LONGHOUSES 



For completeness, the present volume should contain an expert 

 description of the history and social structure of the longhouses in 

 relation to the ceremonialism. However, Fenton's copious notes 

 must await monographic treatment separately. Meanwhile, the 

 Foreword gives a brief survey, with references to recent ethnological 

 literature. 



The prehistory and history of the Iroquois are complex. The 

 former is still under debate (Fenton and Gulick, eds., 1961, Nos. 4-6); 



