'^°N'o?7'4f"^^' IROQUOIS MASKS AT ONONDAGA — ^HENDRY 355 



I was unable to persuade one of them to teach me the essentials of the 

 craft. Sunilar difficulties were encoimtered when I sought an oppor- 

 tunity to observe the technical processes of carving, although in this 

 case the principal obstacle was the lack of activity in maskmaking 

 during March and April, the months when I was at Onondaga. 



In other respects, too, my position in the community was not ideal. 

 Because of the relatively crowded Uving conditions in most of the 

 homes and the general distrust of strangers, I had little freedom in my 

 choice of living quarters. The only family which was both able and 

 wilUng to take me in was Christian; the wife was White and the 

 husband, though Indian, quite thoroughly westernized. Their circle 

 of friends and acquaintances did not include Onondagas who continue 

 to make and use the masks since these people belong to the "pagan," 

 less acculturated, portion of the population. I was, therefore, not able 

 to make contact with my informants on an informal, friendly basis, 

 or to converse with them casually in a variety of situations, but was 

 forced to seek them out with no previous introduction and depend on 

 one or two fairly structured interviews. Although I attempted to 

 secure roughly comparable data from each carver, I had little success 

 with the older men who were for the most part unwilling to talk to me. 



The fact that I had no knowledge of the native language consti- 

 tuted another handicap. Though not necessary for communication, 

 it would have been an excellent means of establishing rapport. 

 Furthermore, insofar as conceptualizations about art are verbalized, 

 many of them may be phrased in Iroquois but not carried over into 

 English, which means that they are lost to the observer who has no 

 command of the native tongue. 



I had hoped to obtain some information concerning the artistic 

 standards of the carvers by showing them photographs of masks 

 which have been made on the reservation during the last few years. 

 This plan was blocked by difficulties of an interpersonal sort since 

 after I had taken pictures of a group of Onondaga masks, the carver 

 who had originally given me permission to do so was told that under 

 no circumstances should he allow Whites to photograph them. He 

 asked me to refrain from mentioning to anyone that I had already 

 taken pictures, a request which obviously prevented me from showing 

 them to my other informants. However, I was able to use photo- 

 graphs of Iroquois masks which I had obtained from museums, and I 

 found them very effective as a means of eliciting the carvers* judg- 

 ments and opinions about masks and as a rapport device. The mere 

 fact that I possessed such photographs seemed to change my in- 

 formants' conception of me from that of a stranger who asked prying 

 questions to that of a person who had a genuine interest in masks and 

 who, perhaps, knew something about them. This technique also led 



