390 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 191 



haps another. Yet despite the fact that no one motive can be postu- 

 lated for all the carvers, either individually or as a group, the one 

 common factor among the younger men seems to be their desire to 

 conform to the old way of life. Since carving is regarded as a typi- 

 cal Iroquois activity, it provides an obvious means of relating to the 

 aboriginal culture, allowing the Onondaga to fulfill the conception 

 which they have of themselves as Indians. 



TECHNICAL AND ESTHETIC PROCESSES 



The ancient method of mask carving has long been obsolete. I 

 was told that no one on the reservation ever works on a live tree and 

 none of my informants could remember hearing that anyone had done 

 so within the past 100 years. Most of them, however, knew that it 

 was an old Iroquois custom, and one man expressed a desire to "try 

 it sometime." Today there are no religious proscriptions placed upon 

 the carvers, and few traces remain of the rituals which were formerly 

 interwoven with the technical processes. One carver did say that 

 tobacco may be burned when the wood is being cut from the tree, but 

 I could not be sure whether he was describing a current practice or 

 simply stating what he knew to be the ancient, and therefore proper, 

 procedure. 



Basswood still has the prestige of tradition and is generally pre- 

 ferred because it is a soft, light wood. The carvers find it easy to 

 work and say that the finished product is light enough to wear with 

 comfort. Other types of wood which are used include poplar, well- 

 seasoned white pine, and butternut. As the latter is heavier than 

 basswood, it is not so apt to split. Cedar is considered too heavy, 

 and willow, though light, is difficult to carve because it has knots. 

 All of the carvers work the wood when it is very dry or almost rotten, 

 since by then it has already cracked and they can allow for this fact 

 in the carving. Sometimes the bark is stripped from a standing tree 

 so that it will die and be thoroughly dried out before it is felled. 

 Although a few of the Onondagas told me that masks should be started 

 in green wood and worked gradually over a long period of time, this 

 method was advocated only by noncarvers and is probably a retention 

 from the days when carving was done on a live tree. 



The carvers' basic tools are knives and chisels, but they employ 

 any tool which facilitates their work and allows it to progress more 

 quickly. The initial processes, which consist of cutting the wood 

 into the shape of a semicylinder and roughing out the features, 

 are performed with hatchets and saws. The holes for the eyes and 

 the mouth are made with drills, while small knives and files of various 

 kinds are considered necessary for refining the forms and finishing 

 the details. The crooked knife, traditional tool of the eastern In- 



