Sometimes the mask he uses is inherited from another healer and given away to him with a ritual. As if it were an intelligent being, the mask is told of its journey with a new owner. The mask is adopted as much as it is received. Even that may not be the right word.
But new masks are made, and a new healer might also carve his own. This, also, is a ritual process. He begins by entering the woods and walking until he finds the right living tree. It might be better to say that the tree picks him, and it may take days.
The time of day that tree and carver finally meet will determine the mask’s color. If it’s morning, the mask will be red; if it’s afternoon or evening, it’s black. This follows the belief that the first grand False Face made a daily journey with the Sun. He would be red in the morning as he approached from the east and black in the afternoon as he looked back into the shadows from the west.
Basswood is customary for False Face masks, though pine, poplar, and maple are also used. One tree never used is the elm. Clearly there is tree magic among the Iroquois, and it seems even less familiar to the rest of the world than that of the Celtic druids.
So that the power of the tree might enter into the mask, the carver will start on a live tree. The mask has to be finished to a certain point before he can remove the block that holds it. He does the features, then strikes notches above and below, chiseling out the face in a block and working it in a more sheltered place. The mask never breaks and the tree never dies, perhaps because he’s offered prayers and sacred tobacco. At almost any stage of its crafting the mask is more or less living, with sentiments and power. Once started, it can’t be left unfinished.
Nature Strikes Back
A white art dealer we know tells us an odd tale from the 1980s. An old Seneca from the Tonawanda Reservation broke this taboo and left a well-formed face on a live tree. We don’t know the reason. Maybe someone talked him into making the mask for money, possibly when he was drunk, and when he came to, he refused to work on it any more. Friends tried to talk to him, but he was resolved.
Then he had a stroke. His features distorted until it was clear that he was coming to resemble the face on the tree. Our white confidant claimed to have seen pictures (before and after) confirming the marvel. Finally, the mask maker gave in, and removed and ritually destroyed the nascent artifact. His appearance went back to normal before long, but he never got his walking stride back.
THE GOOD CROP
It’s vitally important for these medicine masks to be renewed periodically through ceremonies and offerings of corn and tobacco. These are the rituals that would have been observed when the mask decked a living wearer, and maybe they help it to feel alive in its periods of stasis. The tobacco is often left in little pouches with the mask and needs to be changed at least once a year.
The Sacred Corn
The Midwinter Festival is the one at which the False Face masks are typically “fed” the sacred corn. The date of the rite is determined by the moons, a cycle probablyintended to pay tribute to the matriarchy and female nature the way the old Celtic festivals did. It usually works out to be a late-January event, often held these days at Onondaga.
Our late Tuscarora friend Norton Rickard made a specialty of raising the old-style corn. So that his friends on the Cattaraugus Reservation might have some of their own to bring to the Onondaga gathering, Norton delivered nine bushels to the shop of a friend on the lakeside rez. The shop owner was in the middle of a talk with customers when he arrived. “Just take ‘em in the back room,” she said to Norton. “People will come pick ‘em up.”
As he dropped off the corn in the dim storeroom, he noticed twelve of the most beautiful False Faces he’d ever seen hanging on the wall in a line. Their features absolutely glowed, and their long shocks of hair trembled as if the room had its own faint breeze. He couldn’t help studying them quickly. Each was a marvel. This was a master-carver! He could have stared at them all day. The shop owner was still busy as he was on his way out, but when he could get a word in he meant to ask her where she got such beautiful creations. And how she lit them! It was an artistic display.
He went to visit a friend and came back to the shop a few hours later. Social hour was still in force, but the owner told him that only eight of the bushels had been taken. The last should go back with him. When he went to get it he was surprised to see that the masks were gone. He knew the ceremonies involved in moving even a single mask. Doing it for twelve of them should have occupied several people for hours.
“You guys must have been busy after I left,” he said. Nobody got the quip, and he had to explain the masks he had seen in the back room. That still didn’t clarify the situation, and one or two of the listeners looked at him like he was crazy. There had been no display of masks back there—at least no material ones.
He called his mother, a clan mother, and asked
