184 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



field men, but it differs in many respects. As it certainly is not 

 aboriginal, it will not be described here. It is an Onondaga game, 

 and the writer has illustrated it with a diagram. Beauchamp, 8:213 



False Faces 



The first mention of wooden masks near New York was among 

 the Hurons of Canada. In a dance to drive away a pestilence, " all 

 the dancers were counterfeits of hunchbacks, with wooden masks, 

 the whole ridiculously made, and each a staff in hand; behold an 

 excellent medicine. At the end of the dance, at the order of the 

 sorcerer Tsondacoiiane' , all the masks were hung at the top of a pole 

 at the top of each cabin, with the straw men at the doors." 

 Relation, 1637. The next night they hung " the wooden masks and 

 straw men above each cabin." At another time they put " a sack 

 on the head, pierced only at the eyes." 



Masks seem to have been rare among the early Iroquois, but 

 Lamberville mentions " a masquerade of people dressed like bears " 

 at Onondaga in 1676. At another dance, on the same occasion, 

 " the guests were covered with feathers from their heads to their 

 feet, and were all masked ;" but there is no hint of what the masks 

 were like. 



In 1687 Beschefer went with De Nonville in the Seneca invasion, 

 and wrote to Villermont: 



I was mistaken when I told you that the Iroquois wore no masks. 

 They make some very hideous ones with pieces of wood, which they 

 carve according to their fancy. When our people burned the vil- 

 lages of the Tsonnontouans, a young man made every effort in his 

 power to get one that an Ontaouae had found in a cabin, but the 

 latter would not part with it. It was a foot and a half long, and 

 wide in proportion. Two pieces of a kettle, very neatly fitted to it 

 and pierced with a small hole in the center, represented the eyes. 

 Relation, 1687 



These are the only allusions to wooden masks in New York in 

 the 17th century, and from the tone of the last it may be inferred 

 that those at Onondaga were not of wood. The Senecas had one 

 town of Hurons, and these may have introduced wooden masks 

 among them. At the New Year's feast of 1656 they are not men- 



