370 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 191 



mouth, hanging-mouth, straight-Hpped, spoon-Hpped, tongue-protrud- 

 ing, smiling, whistling or blowing, divided (red and black), and blind. 

 Combined with other features, mouth types constitute local and 

 tribal styles, ceremonial classes, and mythological stereotypes. 

 Crooked-mouth masks with a bent nose and many wrinkles are most 

 common among all the Iroquois and portray the distortions suffered 

 by the original False Face as described in the legend. Together 

 with spoon-lipped masks, which are generally confined to the Seneca, 

 they belong to the Doctor and Doorkeeper classes. Faces with a 

 protruding tongue appear most often among the Onondaga, whereas 

 those with a hanging mouth and a crest of spines on the forehead are 

 considered to be "classic Seneca." The Beggar or Dancing class is 

 the most plastic as it contains a variety of types. Smiling and whis- 

 tling masks fall into this group ; among the Onondaga they are apt to 

 be heavy with thick lips and puffy cheeks. The divided masks that 

 represent a "god whose body is riven in twain" and who is half 

 human, half supernatural, are unfamiliar to most of the Iroquois, and 

 Fenton believes that they may have been acquired fairly recently 

 from the Delaware. Blind masks are an enigma to ethnographers. 

 They have no eyeholes and were formerly used in the rites of the 

 Idos medicine society, where the wearer demonstrated his ability to 

 find and identify hidden objects. Today they never appear in public 

 and the Indians are unwilling to talk about them, a secretiveness 

 Fenton attributes to lack of knowledge, for blind masks have been 

 ceremonially obsolete for over a century. Except in the case of the 

 divided mask where red and black symbolize east and west, color 

 seems to be irrelevant and is not correlated with any other feature. 

 Although some Iroquois attribute greater power to black masks 

 while others favor the red, the two colors are equally common. 



As might be expected, Fenton found that the Seneca do not adhere 

 rigidly to their own classification; types are not definable in terms of 

 form alone. Since masks are usually carved according to dreams or 

 visions, the conception portrayed by the carver may be ignored by 

 the subsequent owner of the mask. Most masks regardless of form 

 rise in status with age and use, so that many Beggar masks are in 

 time promoted to the role of Doctor or Doorkeeper. Some Indians 

 refuse to recognize any classification, saying that there are as many 

 mask types as there are people. 



One general observation may be added to Fenton's discussion, as it 

 pertains to a consideration of tribal styles. While it is quite possible 

 to plot the spatial distribution of variations in formal characteristics 

 and so determine which masks are toda}'' most prevalent in a particular 

 locality, there is little assurance that these types taken together 

 comprise a traditional tribal style. For almost 200 years the Iroquois 



