Iroquois False-face Masks

Iroquois False-face Masks
Author: Robert Eugene Ritzenthaler
Publisher: [Milwaukee] : Milwaukee Public Museum
Total Pages: 80
Release: 1969
Genre: Indian masks
ISBN:

Extending the Rafters

Extending the Rafters
Author: Michael K. Foster
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 447
Release: 1984-06-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1438403089

To the Iroquois, "extending the rafters" meant adding onto the longhouse, both in the literal sense of making room for new families and in the figurative sense of adding adopted individuals or tribes to the League of Five Nations. Similarly, this book extends Iroquois studies. The distinguished contributors represent such diverse areas of anthropology as ethnology, ethnohistory, and archaeology. They address issues that cut across disciplinary lines, making this book a significant, state-of-the-art survey. The topics explored revolve around the influence, contributions, field work, and teachings of anthropologist William N. Fenton, a founder of the discipline of ethnohistory. The essays run the gamut from prehistory to contemporary political issues, from individuals to women and nations, and from language to ritual.

Ritual Masks

Ritual Masks
Author: Henry Pernet
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2006-03-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1597525855

Ritual masking is an important institution in many traditional societies and has attracted much attention from Western scholars. In 'Ritual Masks', Pernet provides a thorough survey of masks and masking traditions in Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, based on a close analysis of the literature in several languages. Pernet's approach provides him with an opportunity to examine issues of importance to the history of religion and anthropology. These include the influence of theory on the interpretation of prehistoric documents; androcentrism in anthropology and the history of religions; and Western scholarship's recurrent problems in interpreting preliterate or traditional societies.

An Ethnography of the Huron Indians, 1615-1649

An Ethnography of the Huron Indians, 1615-1649
Author: Elisabeth Tooker
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 1991-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780815625261

Originally published in 1964 by the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of American Ethnology, this book is a compilation of the ethnographic data on the seventeenth-century Huron Indians contained in The Je­suit Relations and in the writings of Samuel de Champlain and Gabriel Sagard. This study of the Hurons, who lived in the present province of Ontario, Canada, spans the period from 1615 to 1649, when they were defeated and dispersed by the Iroquois. Topics covered include dress, modes of travel, trade, war, sociopolitical organization, subsistence activities, and religious beliefs and practices. The book is invaluable for indicating the cultural similarities and differences between the Hurons and the neighboring Northern Iroquoian cultures and for documenting evidence of cultural change. This first paperback edition also includes a new introduction by the author, in which she brings her work up to date by surveying developments in the study of the Huron ethnography between 1964 and the present.

Masks

Masks
Author: Wladyslaw Theodore Benda
Publisher:
Total Pages: 176
Release: 1945
Genre: Masks
ISBN:

The Little Water Medicine Society of the Senecas

The Little Water Medicine Society of the Senecas
Author: William Nelson Fenton
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780806134475

For the Seneca Iroquois Indians, song is a crucial means of renewing both medicine and heritage. Two or three times a year, the Little Water Medicine Society of western New York meets to renew the potency of its medicine bundles through singing. These bundles have been inherited from eighteenth century Iroquois war parties, handed down from generation to generation. In this long-awaited book, William N. Fenton describes the remarkable ceremonies of one of the least recorded but most significant medicine societies of the Iroquois Indians. Most of the Senecas who were members of the Little Water Society, or Society of Shamans, have passed away, and their knowledge of ceremonial healing and spiritual renewal is fading. Fenton has written this book to preserve knowledge of the ceremonies and songs for the Iroquois people and as a contribution to anthropology, folklore, ethnomusicology, and American Indian studies. In The Little Water Medicine Society of the Senecas, he presents his original 1933 fieldwork, along with details from the published and unpublished works of other researchers, to describe rituals, poetry, and songs drawn from his more than six decades of research among the Six Nations.