Late in his life, Ted Williams admitted to me that he was a member of the False Face Society. He told me quite a bit about it. This was something that would probably never have happened in earlier centuries, but many Native American elders have started opening up to the cultures around them. It’s as if they sense a greater need in the world, as if the world has lost something it should have kept, and the time may be here for them to start bringing balance back.
Ted had made his first mask thirty years before, just after his initiation. He didn’t know the ways then as well as he would later. Though horsehair and natural fibers are customary for masks, he figured to give the one he’d made more power by using his own long locks. He wasn’t accustomed then to the way they “think.”
Thus he blamed himself when, shortly after, his young daughter was killed in a freak accident as she carried the mask to a show-and-tell at her school. As if drawn to her by magnetism, a car had veered into a crosswalk and virtually pursued her. The stunned driver said the car had taken on a will of its own.
“Those things are just too powerful,” said Michael Bastine in retrospect. “You can’t take a chance on their energy going off in some direction you can’t anticipate.”
The founder of East Aurora’s alternative Mandala School, John Newton, taught Native American children at the Onondaga Reservation in the 1980s. He liked the Onondagas’ attitude to education. He admired the society he came to know. One of his ten-year-olds said something indiscreet. “I’m a member of the False Face Society.”
“You are?” said John. “How do you go about that?”
“I had a dream when I was seven and I told my parents about it. They said it meant I was going to be a healer. They got me into the False Face Society. Now I lead some of the ceremonies. We did one last night.”
“Ceremonies?”
“Oh, yeah. We went to see a guy who was sick. Fixed him up just right.”
“How can you lead a ceremony?”
“We always have to have someone who leads the ceremonies.”
“But you’re ten years old.”
“I am,” said the boy. “But when I put on the mask, I’m a healer.”
OTHER MASKED HEALERS
The fabulous medicine masks—the False Faces—were not the only masked healers among the Iroquois. There were two other orders of masked medicine societies, the Husk Face Society and the Company of Mystic Animals (a group of several small societies).
The Husk Face Society—sometimes nicknamed the Bushy Heads—is less organized and mythologized than that of the False Faces, and their masks look less like works of art. The Husk Face healers are water doctors. Their ceremonies end with a flourish of spritzing and spraying.
The Company (or Society) of Mystic Animals is a loose group of smaller societies whose masks are inspired by animals. Their job is to teach, maintain, and perform the rites needed to keep the goodwill of the animals in the world, which looks like a spin-off of one of the main functions of the ancient shamans. They do this by reaching to the core group of medicine animals, which doubtless includes their clan animals. The spirits of the medicine animals, had taught the founders of each dance the ceremonies needed to keep them happy and to maintain the balance of the worlds—human, animal, and natural.
Like every member of the False Faces, the conductors of these ceremonies seem to have strange powers. White guests have reported seeing the leaders of Mystic Animals rites lift red-hot stones barehanded from the lodge fire and toss them around like medicine balls. Routinely they “see” through a wooden mask that has no eyeholes and describe objects and events around the lodge. One powerful leader was reported to make a doll dance as if it were alive.
Though they may not be as legendary as the False Faces, these Mystic Animals folk are not to be mocked. If someone is persistently irreverent during a ceremony, the leader approaches him or her with a doll—even in his blind wooden mask—and cuts the string that holds its skirt. In the dimness of the lodge, it may take time for the scoffer to notice that everyone else is laughing. His pants or her dress have fallen to the floor, doubtless from the second the doll’s drape was cut.
Other Native North American societies have deep and powerful traditions of sacred clowns, some of them costumed and masked. Some contemporary scholars take it as given that these Iroquois maskers belong among them.
Certainly the False Faces share some of the same features and functions. Certainly their displays are ritualized and antic. But they are more than power clowns. The awe and reverence shown the masks themselves should answer to this. Furthermore, the purpose of the medicine maskers is healing, not social commentary.
UNMASKED HEALERS
Not all the Iroquois healing societies use masks. The Little Water/ Animal Society and the Pigmy/Dark Dance Society were the most important of the unmasked healers. They were named after their traditional healing songs.
The power of the Little Water Society doubtless draws from the animal clans so significant to the Iroquois. Mythologist Joseph Campbell was fascinated by their origin story, that of the good hunter killed by humans and revived through the magic and goodwill of the forest animals. There were nine Iroquois animal clans, but many more animals were involved in the ceremonies of the Little Water healers. Members of this society keep small animal parts for use as ritual objects.
Members of the Pigmy (also Little People) Society are often called the Dark Dancers because of their habit of doing their songs and dances in dark or dimly lit places. Their rites and origins are connected to the Little People, to whom we devote a whole chapter.
THE CALL OF THE MASKS
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