402 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 191 



a tendency to look for similarities to the Iroquois style, the carvings 

 that were considered to fulfill these criteria differed widely. This 

 does not imply that the choices made by my informants were haphazard, 

 but simply that they were idiosyncratic; the factors which determined 

 them must be sought in the area of personality rather than culture. 



One final point may be raised. Do the Onondaga react to masks, 

 either their own or those of other Indian tribes, in a way which we 

 would recognize as esthetic; that is, do they react to the form as 

 well as the content or meaning of the carvings? I believe that 

 there is a concern with form for its own sake which some people do 

 not verbalize, or perhaps even conceptualize, and which others ex- 

 press in terms of the standard of technical excellence ("It's got good 

 carving"). It would seem that the Onondaga do not possess in 

 their English vocabularies such words as "composition," "propor- 

 tion," or "balance" with which to discuss the formal characteristics 

 of the masks. ^^ Yet there is no reason to suppose that they do not 

 respond to these characteristics and that when they say they prefer 

 a particular carving "because it is like the one in the legend," they 

 may not also be expressing their appreciation of form in the only 

 terms they have at their disposal. In this connection it is significant 

 that there were among the series of Iroquois pictures three crooked- 

 mouth masks which presumably have the same associations and sym- 

 bolize the same supernatural being. One, however, was singled out 

 as best (pi. 100, a), while the others were passed over with little or no 

 comment (pi. 101). The difficulty, and perhaps impossibility, of 

 isolating the esthetic response results from the fact that it is rarely 

 explicity stated and is always closely associated with other factors 

 such as tribal pride, the value placed upon antiquity, and the repre- 

 sentative function of the carvings. 



An esthetic response does not depend upon the existence of an 

 abstract concept of art. The carvers are not regarded, either by 

 themselves or by the rest of the community, as artists but rather as 

 members of the False Face Society. Consistent with the way in 

 which the carvers are perceived is the disposition to view masks 

 always within their ritualistic context. In appraising the photo- 

 graphs, many of my informants remarked, usually with disapproval, 

 that the Iroquois masks had no bags of tobacco attached to them. 

 They also questioned me about the symbolism of the foreign carvings 

 and inquired about the ceremonies in which they are used, apparently 

 taking it for granted that any mask has meaning and serves a specif- 

 ic purpose. Evidently the Onondaga have not assimilated the west- 

 ern conception of art as a thing in itself, a class of objects which have 



23 While it is probable that the native language also lacks an "esthetic vocabulary," there is nothing in 

 the literature concerning this point. 



