THE HUSK FACES

The Husk Faces represent a people of agriculturists who live “on the other side of the earth”, that is in another dimension of reality. They are regarded as the messengers of the Three Sisters – corn, beans and squashes – and are believed to have prophetic and healing powers. It seems that anciently the dancers impersonating these beings, wearing masks made with twined cornhusks, were exclusively male. Since the 1930s, however, some women began to participate in the ceremonies, wearing male costumes, while men impersonated sometimes female characters, realizing thus an inversion of sexual roles which is commonly found in several rituals, among which many European Carnivals.

 

Iroquois Husk Face mask (Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin)

The masked dancers are identified as personifications of powerful and beneficent beings, who promote the growth of crops in the fields, but can also ensure good fortune in hunting.
However, the spirits impersonated by the Husk Faces are above all spirits of the cultivated plants, unlike the False Faces, who represent the spirits of the forest, though the two kinds of masks appear often together, and their functions are frequently overlapped or confused (Fenton 1978: 461). The reference to human fertility is evidenced primarily by the masks representing female spirits, who frequently bring their children with them. On the other hand, the Husk Faces are regarded also as fearful beings, cannibals who sometimes kidnap children, especially the most disobedient ones, bringing them in the forest to eat them. It is believed that they represent ancestral beings, who “have always been here since the beginning of things”, but they are deemed less powerful than the False Faces. Their aspect is that of a human-like being, with the body covered with fur, except for his face. They have a strange way of talking, emitting non-comprehensible sounds and blowing with their mouth (Fenton 1987: p. 395-96).

 

A group of masked dancers, among whom can be distinguished two False Face masks, with their twisted face and a turtle-shell rattle in their hands, and a Husk Face mask. The picture has been taken during a Midwinter Ceremony celebration in an Iroquois community in the first half of the 1900s.

While the making of the False Face wooden masks was, and remains, a specifically male privilege, the twining of cornhusks for the realization of the Husk Faces is a female job, although most of the wearers of the masks are males. As in the case of the False Faces, the Husk Faces are distinguished for their clownish behaviour, intended to make the public laugh and have fun. That is one of the most significant element in their appearance.

Husk Face Mask (Peabody Museum of Archaelogy and Ethnology, Cambridge, Massachusetts)