8 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



Congdon of Salamanca, N. Y., who have located and transcribed 

 other documentary sources. 



Iroquois music has long deserved serious study, and with the devel- 

 opment of modern electric sound-recording apparatus, record making 

 in the field has become practicable. When the Division of Music 

 in the Library of Congress furnished the necessary blanks and 

 apparatus for Dr. Fenton's trip to the Six Nations Midwinter Fes- 

 tival, January 10 to February 17, 1941, Dr. Fenton undertook the 

 task of making the recordings, first at Ohsweken, Ontario, and later 

 at Quaker Ridge, N. Y. Sixty-two double-face records were made 

 of samples of social and religious dance songs, and complete runs of 

 several shamanistic song cycles and the Adoption Rite of the Tutelo 

 were taken. Informants gave complete texts for all the recordings, 

 and these, as rewritten after returning to Washington, should prove 

 helpful to the transcriber. For this purpose the Recording Labora- 

 tory is furnishing a duplicate set. Because musicologists have ex- 

 pressed interest in the recordings, several were selected for a proposed 

 Album of Iroquois Music, which the Library contemplates publishing ; 

 and in return for the fine cooperation of the Recording Laboratory 

 and the Division of Music, Dr. Fenton delivered a lecture, Music in 

 Iroquois Religion and Society, illustrated with slides and records, 

 as the first of a series by the Archive of American Folk-song. It 

 was repeated for the Society of Pennsylvania Archaeology at its 

 annual meeting. 



In addition a series of brief informal excursions were made to 

 Allegany regarding place names and to explore the area that may 

 be flooded by the proposed Allegheny Reservoir, and to Tonawanda 

 to collect song texts of the Medicine Society. 



Besides a number of book reviews in scientific and historical jour- 

 nals. Dr. Fenton published two papers in Bureau of American Eth- 

 nology Bulletin 128 — Iroquois Suicide: A Study in the Stability of 

 a Culture Pattern, and Tonawanda Longhouse Ceremonies: Ninety 

 Years After Lewis Henry Morgan — and an article, Museum and 

 Field Studies of Iroquois Masks and Ritualism, which appeared in 

 the Explorations and Field-work of the Smithsonian Institution in 

 1940. Dr. Fenton prepared for publication in the Annual Report 

 of the Smithsonian Institution for 1940, a paper entitled "Masked 

 Medicine Societies of the Iroquois." 



SPECIAL RESEARCHES 



Miss Frances Densmore, a collaborator of the Bureau, continued 

 her study of Indian music by collecting additional songs, transcribing 

 these and songs previously recorded, and preparing material for pub- 

 lication. In August 1940 a trip was made to Wisconsin Dells, Wis., 



