IROQUOIS MASKS AND MASKMAKING AT 



ONONDAGA 



By Jean Hendry 



INTKODUCTION 



Few features of Iroquois culture have aroused a more sustained 

 interest on the part of observers than the wooden masks or false faces. 

 From the middle of the 17th century, when these carvings first caught 

 the attention of the early travelers and missionaries, down to the 

 present day, masks and the rituals associated with them have been a 

 favorite topic of both amateur and professional ethnographers. 

 Systematic investigation began in 1880 with the work of De Cost 

 Smith and has been continued by William Beauchamp, Lewis Morgan, 

 Arthur C. Parker, Harriet Converse, and Joseph Keppler. These 

 students were primarily concerned with the role of masks in the 

 religious patterns of the culture, and whUe they have provided 

 abundant material on the mythological symbolism of the carvings 

 and their use as ceremonial properties by the medicine societies, they 

 tended to minimize or neglect other aspects. 



The limitations of an approach solely in terms of religious function 

 have been overcome to a considerable extent by the contributions of 

 Frank Speck and William Fen ton. Speck's attention has been directed 

 toward the historical implications of masks. Through an analysis of 

 masking as a culture complex common to many Indian tribes of north- 

 eastern America, he has traced the distribution and probable course of 

 diffusion of masks in this region, thus placing the Iroquois materials 

 in geographical and historical perspective. Fenton's treatment is, 

 to date, the most comprehensive. He includes a consideration of 

 the function of masks in the curative rites of the False Face Society, 

 the historical problems related to the rise and spread of the masking 

 complex, and is the first to approach the carvings from the stand- 

 point of art. In his monograph "Masked Medicine Societies of the 

 Iroquois," Fenton discusses the classification of formal types, the 

 relation of these types to mythology and ritual, and the possibility 

 of establishing local and tribal styles. He has also obtained infor- 



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