  The properties of 939 star clusters in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds
were determined from ground-based CCD images in UBVR passbands. The areal
coverage was extensive, corresponding to 11.0 sq-kpc in the LMC and 8.3 sq-kpc
in the SMC. After corrections for reddening, the colors and magnitudes of the
clusters were converted to ages and masses, and the resulting mass
distributions were searched for the effects of fading, evaporation, and
size-of-sample bias. The data show a clear signature of cluster fading below
the detection threshold. The initial cluster mass function (ICMF) was
determined by fitting the mass and age distributions with cluster population
models. These models suggest a new method to determine the ICMF that is nearly
independent of fading or disruption and is based on the slope of a correlation
between age and the maximum cluster mass in equally spaced intervals of
log-age. For a nearly uniform star formation rate, this correlation has a slope
equal to 1/(alpha-1) for an ICMF of dn(M)/dM proportional to M^-alpha. We
determine that alpha is between 2 and 2.4 for the LMC and SMC using this method
plus another method in which models are fit to the mass distribution integrated
over age and to the age distribution integrated over mass. The maximum mass
method also suggests that the cluster formation rate in the LMC age gap between
3 and 13 Gy is about a factor of ten below that in the period from 0.1 Gy to 1
Gy. The oldest clusters correspond in age and mass to halo globular clusters in
the Milky Way. They do not fit the trends for lower-mass clusters but appear to
be a separate population that either had a very high star formation rate and
became depleted by evaporation or formed with only high masses.
