464 THE SENECA NATION 



tioned by Father Beschefer in his letter 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 villages of the Tsonnontouans, a young man made every 

 effort to get one that an outaouae 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; 2 pieces of kettle, very neatly fitted to it and 

 pierced with a small hole in the center represented the eyes." * 



This mask is just such as is still used by the Senecas in 

 ceremonials. 



Greenhalgh noted that the Senecas after killing a captive 

 made a great clatter upon the bark sides of their houses to drive 

 away the dead man's spirit which might otherwise lurk about to 

 do them an injury. 



Correlating these few facts, somewhat of the religion of the 

 Senecas of the time may be learned. It seems to have been' 

 somewhat similar to that of the pagan party of the Senecas 

 today, in that immortality of the soul was believed in, and that 

 spirits were somewhat under the control of certain persons 

 (called the "jugglers" by the priests) who evidently corres- 

 ponded to the members of the secret societies of the modern 

 Seneca pagans. These religious secret societies were already in 

 existence as is made evident by the mask, and by a small gourd 

 rattle found in a grave at DeLong's similar to rattles still used 

 by the Senecas. 



Regarding the work of the Jesuit priests who labored a 

 quarter of a century amongst the Senecas, John Gilmary Shea 

 says: "But it is a remarkable fact that the Jesuit missionaries 

 while they did not succeed in making the Five Nations Christian, 

 overthrew the worship of Agreskoue or Tharonhiawagon, their 

 old divinity, so completely that his name disappeared, and even 

 those Iroquois who to this day refuse to accept Christianity 

 nevertheless worship Niio or Hawen-niio, God or the Lord, who 

 is no other than the God preached by the Jesuits in their almost 

 hopeless struggle in the seventeenth century." 



* Jes. Rel. LXIII, 289. 



