XII FOREWORD 



equipment supplied by the Library of Congress, he made two large 

 collections in 1941 and 1945, at Six Nations Reserve and at Cold- 

 spring. During subsequent recording sessions, in 1948, 1950, and 

 1951, he made use of tape recorders from the Library of Congress 

 and the Bureau of American Ethnology. 



Through his prolonged experience with longhouse ceremonies, 

 Fenton realized the significance of music and dance to the Iroquois. 

 He also realized that "ethnologists are quite ill-equipped ordinarily 

 to describe dances as part of ceremonialism. The need for an ade- 

 quate choreographic technique is quite as apparent as the need for 

 musical annotation" (Fenton, ed., 1951 a, p. 8). It is a source of 

 pride to me that he considered my professional training adequate to 

 this double task and gave me his encouragement and collaboration. 



I did not enter the picture until 1946. In the midst of my career 

 as a modern creative dancer, I became acquainted with the American 

 Indian dance, largely though not entirely, through publications. I 

 was struck by the inadequacies of choreographic descriptions. By 

 1946 I was so determined to explore these expressions of native culture 

 that I undertook a Mexican field trip in the spring of that year. 

 My subsequent concentration on Iroquois arts resulted from a 

 coincidence. 



In July 1946, I met Chauncey Johnny John (pi. 1), not in his 

 native haunts, but at the University of Michigan Linguistic Institute. 

 As "professor" for Carl Voegelin's students, he basked in the scholarly 

 environment. On several free evenings he changed to his artistic 

 role and his ceremonial costume, and, in our living room, showed 

 samples of the War, Eagle, and other dances and of the songs he had 

 sung into "Bill Fen ton's machine." 



When Fenton and I met in Washington in the fall of 1947, he 

 persuaded me to attend a Midwinter Ceremony at the earliest oppor- 

 tunity. This opportunity came during the week of February 14, 1948. 

 I witnessed a ceremony at Soursprings Cayuga longhouse on Six 

 Nations Reserve, thanks to the advice of John Witthoft, then a 

 graduate student at the University of Michigan; to Volney Jones, 

 who introduced me; to Cayuga chief Deskaheh, who extended me an 

 invitation; and to Mohawk Sadie Jamieson, who opened to me her 

 home in Ohsweken. An equally friendly reception awaited me at 

 Coldspring longhouse in the summer of 1948. The Fenton family 

 was spending the entire summer near the reservation, and my family 

 rented a cottage for a month in adjacent Allegany State Park. During 

 my month's stay I held many sessions with the entire Johnny John 

 family- — not only Chauncey, but his singer son, Amos; the expert 

 dancers, his grandsons, Richard and Arthur, and Arthur's wife, Pearl. 

 Fanny Stevens (pi. 1), Geneva Jones, and Albert Jones (pi. 2) were 



