128 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



although it may be more recent with the other Iroquois. Early 

 explorers certainly could not have seen everything of Iroquois cul- 

 ture, especially some of the secret things, and their lack of descrip- 

 tion may be regarded as negative testimony rather than as positive 

 evidence of the nonexistence of certain features which later students 

 have found. It is quite possible that the author of " Van Curler's " 

 Journal of 1634-35 mentions a false face when he writes: " This 

 chief showed me his idol ; it was a head with the teeth sticking out ; 

 it was dressed in red cloth. Others have a snake, a turtle, a swan, 

 a crane, a pigeon for their idols. . . ." The Seneca at present 

 drape their false faces w^hen they hang them up for safe keeping, 

 and use them as well as turtle and snake charms as bringers of good 

 fortune. Some pipes from seventeenth-century graves seem to rep- 

 resent blowing masks. Mr M. R. Harrington and the writer fotmd 

 one in 1903 while excavating a seventeenth-century site, since 

 learned to be of Seneca occupancy, on Cattaraugus creek, near 

 Irving. The counterpart of this pipe was found by R. M. Peck on 

 the Warren site, near West Bloomfield, N. Y. The Indians say it 

 is a False Face blowing ashes, and such it may represent. I\Ir Har- 

 rington, and the writer as well, have found what may be false face 

 eye-disks, as well as turtle-shell rattles, in Seneca and Erie graves. 

 The principal False Face ceremonies are : Ganoi'^iowi, Marching 

 Song; Hodigosshos'ga, Doctors' Dance, and Yea°seMadi'yas, Door- 

 keepers' Dance. 



THE OPENING OR TOBACCO THROWING CEREMONY 

 OF THE FALSE FACE COMPANY 



Now receive you this tobacco, you, Shagodiowe^gowa, the great 

 false face. 



Now it is that you have come to where your grandchildren are 

 gathered. 



Now you are taking the place of the great false faces who are 

 wandering in the rocky valleys and mountains. 



Now you are the ones who think much of this sacred tobacco. 



Now we wish to make a request of you. So we always offer this 

 sacred tobacco [literally, real tobacco], when we ask anything of 

 you. 



We pray that you help us with your power. 



You can go over all the earth. 



In the center of the earth is a great pine tree and that is the place 

 of your resting. It is there that you rub your rattle when you come 

 to rest. 



