404 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 191 



(4) The fact that many of my informants were willing to reveal 

 information of a supposedly sacred nature to a stranger, a willing- 

 ness which I have interpreted to be an attempt to prove themselves 

 authentic Indians and to fulfill the expectations of the White visitor. 

 It seems evident that whether or not the masks have lost their 

 old meaning, they have acquired a new one and now function as 

 symbols of the old Iroquois culture and its values. Under these 

 conditions it is not surprising that the style of the false faces has 

 remained stable. Although changes in the direction of diversity and 

 greater elaboration have undoubtedly occurred in the past, today 

 the emphasis placed upon antic uity and tradition inhibits the virtuosity 

 of the artist; his tendency to play with technique and devise new forms. 

 Sometimes deliberately, sometimes unconsciously, the carvers repeat 

 the old forms with the result that modern masks are essentially 

 similar to those described by missionaries and travelers over 200 years 

 ago. 



It cannot be asserted that nativism constitutes the only incentive 

 for the retention of masks and the rituals associated with them. 

 Religious conviction, particularly on the part of the older men, cannot 

 be entirely ruled out, and it is very probable that for some of the 

 Onondagas carving offers a socially accepted means of satisfying 

 creative impulses. Nor should the psychological effects of masking 

 be overlooked: the drama that is provided for the spectator, and the 

 emotional release felt by the wearer who is able to relinquish his 

 identity and express himself more freely. 



The explanations advanced for the retention of mask carving at 

 Onondaga are not necessarily applicable to other Iroquois since the 

 differences between reservations limit generalizations about any 

 aspect of contemporary culture. Each reservation is unique in the 

 degree and type of acculturation it has undergone, and this, in turn, 

 is dependent upon the interrelation of such factors as the geographical 

 position, the size of the population, and the particular facets of 

 western culture to which the group has been exposed. St. Regis 

 Reservation, for example, has a larger population than Onondaga 

 and is located on the Canadian border between New York State and 

 the Province of Quebec, far removed from any large city. Yet 

 these conditions, which one might suppose would encourage the sur- 

 vival of the aboriginal culture, are apparently offset by the influence 

 of the Catholic church. Eighty percent of the Indians are Catholic 

 and man}^ of the native religious patterns, including the use and 

 making of false faces, have died out.^* 



Precisely because of the differences, Iroquois reservations afford an 



2< Lincoln White, a resident of St. Regis, kindly supplied me with the information pertaining to this 

 reservation. 



