TITLE: Cherokee Medicine Mask
TYPE: face mask
GENERAL REGION: North America
COUNTRY: United States of America
SUBREGION: North Carolina
ETHNICITY: Cherokee
DESCRIPTION: Medicine mask (nvwoti avgdulo)
CATALOG ID: NAUS081
MAKER: Allen Long (Cherokee, North Carolina, 1917-1983)
CEREMONY: Medicine Dance
AGE: ca. 1970s
MAIN MATERIAL: wood
OTHER MATERIALS: pigment
In the Eastern Cherokee Nation, each medicine man has his own proprietary formulum for healing the sick. However, medicine dances are communal, and most use similar masks. These have have determined and aggressive faces, often surmounted by bison-like horns. The medicine man prays for divine assistance while frightening the patient into healing. This specific mask was made by a famed carver, Allen Long.
For more on Cherokee masked dance, see Frank G. Speck & Leonard Broom, Cherokee Dance and Drama (University of Oklahoma Press 1951).
