380 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 191 



was done, its relative importance in Iroquois culture as compared 

 with other activities, the age of the carvers and their position in the 

 society, or the kind of prestige and satisfaction they derived from 

 their occupation. Quain (1937, pp. 267-268, 279) mentions that 

 skill as a craftsman was one of the ways to gain esteem without 

 reference to inherited claims, but taken in context, his statement im- 

 plies that it was their contribution to the general welfare of the 

 society rather than their artistic achievements per se which brought 

 the craftsmen recognition. 



Taking into consideration what is known about the aboriginal 

 patterns and the foci of Iroquois culture, it is probable that occupa- 

 tional differentiations were never well developed but that, to the ex- 

 tent of this development, craftsmen were accorded less prestige than 

 those whose contributions were in the realm of politics, oratory, 

 and warfare. One can guess that masks were never made in any 

 quantity and that although certain men might have been judged to 

 be better carvers than others, it was their proficiency in manipulating 

 the carvings as religious symbols in the curative rituals rather than 

 their ability to create them that set these individuals apart from the 

 rest of the society. It is even conceivable that mask carving was 

 itself a religious technique and was regarded as were clairvoyance and 

 prophecy — a special form of supernatural power or orenda. The 

 power to carve would then have been bestowed, along with the power 

 to heal, on any individual who was initiated into the False Face 

 Society. 



If this historical reconstruction is correct, it is evident that what 

 may be termed the sociological aspects of maskmaking — the position 

 of the art in the culture and the role of the artists in the community — 

 have not changed materially under the impact of acculturation, but 

 are essentially the same today as they were in the aboriginal society. 



ECONOMICS OF MASK CARVING 



Masks were originally clan property, were later acquired by the 

 medicine society, and finally came to be individual possessions which 

 were handed down within families. Exchange in ownership was a 

 ritual rather than an economic transaction and was effected by the 

 new owner adding his bag of tobacco to those already attached to the 

 mask (Keppler, 1941, p. 17). There is not enough historical data to 

 permit an accurate account of the economic significance of the carvings 

 in the aboriginal culture. However, since they were ceremonial 

 objects, masks probably had little if any commercial value within 

 the society, an assumption which explains why the Europeans were 

 able to purchase them at a very low price during the 18 th and 19 th 

 centuries (Beauchamp, 1905 a, p. 191). Later, when the Indians 



