The warriors of the Iroquois Longhouse announced military supremacy over neighboring tribes in a similar manner. And Father Louis Hennepin was present at a council held in January, the great village of Senecas meeting in the cabin of the principal chief, Tagarondies, after whom the village was named.
THE CANE OF ANDREW SPRAGG
Only the colonial documents bear the signatures of Iroquois chiefs, which usually take the form of sketch drawings of clan eponyms: wolf, bear, tortoise, snipe, beaver, eel; sometimes objects - war club, tree, circles connected by a line indicating groundnut (Apiostuberosa Moench), the mark of the Potato, or possibly the Ball clan. 15 CALL OF IROQUOIS CHIEFS – FENTON II 1849 list of titles from the Tonawanda Seneca Reservation east of Buffalo, a manuscript list in the spelling of the Anglican missionaries at Grand River, the Canienga Book of the Condoling Council.
THE MAN
During his Canadian visit, Yankee lived one winter at the home of Andrew Spragg, a member of the Lower Cayuga band on the Six Nations Reserve. Hill (Seneca-Tuscarora), who was principal secretary of the Indian office in Brantford for many years.
A MUSEUM SPECIMEN
That the Onondagas on the part of the Three Brothers (Mohawk-Onondaga-Seneca) never used this stick, all informants agreed; its use was limited to the Four Brothers (Oneida-Cayuga-Tuscarora-Tutelo). To ensure that the men to whom the people now look with confidence might benefit from the knowledge of how their predecessors remembered the roll call of the founders of the League, the writer carried with him an enlarged line drawing of both sides of the walking stick to show to the informants.
22 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL, III 1883 and observed leading the delegation of the younger nations to
15 ROLL CALL OF IROQUOIS CHIEFS— FENTON 23 Material and Dimensions.— The stick itself is of sugar maple.^*. Panels or Portions of Pins.— The lateral edges of one side are cut off in alternate panels in equal length over the whole length, three-and-right, and two between the month left.
24 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS
15 ROLL CALL OF IROQUOIS CHIEFS— FENTON 25 Less than half of the pictographs are representative designs; most of the characters are abstractions. The figures appear to have been drawn with a nail or hard pencil, with the sole exception of the tree opposite peg no.
GENERAL SYMBOLISM
RECOGNITION BY THE IROQUOIS AND BY ANTHROPOLOGISTS The specimen was submitted to several specialists on the Indians
While in the field and between trips during this study, I was able to count on the interest of Chief AlexGeneral of the Upper Cayuga Band, the current holder of the title Deska'heh. Seeing a drawing of the Stick, the Chief General confirmed the fact that the front is an overview of the fifty leaders in the League.
CANES IN IROQUOIS CEREMONIALISM
In the collections of the National Museum of Canada are four so-called Chief's canes, which Waugh collected at Six Nations Reserve in 1915. The rest of the combinations do not practice, since the total number of beads does not correspond to the grid of federal chiefs, which is 49 or 50. There are two such canes from the Huron or Iroquois of Eastern Canada in the ethnological collections of the Provincial Museum.
Besides being spaced in groups or committees, the pegs extended in a continuous line from the top to the tip of the grid, near the foot of the cane. Such an arrangement naturally resembles the seat of the tribal councils at the Six Nations courthouse in Ohsweken. 15 ROLL CALL OF IROQUOIS CHIEFS— FENTON 39 to the center and with the long pendant representing the Onon-daga wampum keeper to the left of the compound in the circle.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the Iroquois record holder had ceased altogether. on wampum strings and other devices to remember the main call. Mr. Hill stated that the document was not in the hand of Josiah Hill, longtime secretary of the Six Nations Council, but suggested two other possibilities.
FUNCTION: A REMINDER TO THE EULOGY SINGER
REHEARSALS
At the rehearsals of the Four Brothers (Oneida, Cayuga, and dependent tribes), the sugar cane was present, but when it was not, they used white corn and laid out a kernel for each of the Six Songs and for each of the fifty chiefs who had been nominated in the roll call. Chief Charles laid out a grain of corn for each man. title of capital ship), which describes the relationship of that status to other leaders in the same group, the groups in the tribal council, and the relationships between the tribes of the League. George Buck recalled how her sister, then a little girl, was able to go through the entire condolence ritual, and after a rehearsal she would walk back and forth around the house with a cane singing the eulogy and naming the founders, who she had learned from hearing her father instruct the men.
In this way the roles are changed between individuals and the recognition of the ceremony is. 15 ROLL CALL OF SHIEFS IROQUOIS— FENTON 45 ritual bit, and Chief Logan, who usually lays out the corn in the trials, omitted the release. Turning from the middle to the Seneca side, the cores were thrown down for the 14 Onondaga gentlemen, illustrated (fig. i, e); then came 9 Oneidasinaline of three; and likewise the Mohawks, but over the line on the side of the Three Brothers.
While this was going on, Chief Logan and David Thomas, the chief professors of the rites, sat back and allowed the younger man to perform. Chief William Sandy and others of the older chiefs looked intently at the corn on the singer's bench as the young man went through the roll call.
USE CONFINED TO THE LOWER CAYUGA BAND
(The first is high, the second low, rising, and the last abrupt.) While this was going on, Chief Logan and David Thomas, the main professors of the rites, sat back and let the younger man perform. Chief Buck himself later performed this role inside the longhouse after his son delivered the eulogy across the road, on installation day. 15 ROLL CALL OF IROQUOIS CHIEFS— FENTON 47 of the league called the Four Brothers side, of which the Cayugas occupy the principal role among the Six Nations of the Grand River.
USE IN THE CONDOLENCE COUNCIL
Sick in their heads; and the procession of condoling heads symbolically carries the bones of the dead chieftain whose place they are about to fill by erecting another. None of my informants claim to have followed Spragg along the way, so I have no firsthand account of his behavior in this role. Simeon Gibson, who was always at the side of the Three Brothers with his father, recalled meeting the column of Cayuga condolers at the small fire beside the grove, or at the Onondaga Common, where they greeted each other with a speech of welcome, called At the Woodside, or at the Edge of the Bush.
The singer calls out the names of the chiefs on the road, and if it comes to the end of the call before he arrives at the fire, which is always lit within sight of the longhouse, he must repeat from the beginning until he arrives there . During the ceremonies that follow on the edge of the forest, the leader stands on the road, others make the speeches, until the procession. In the protocol observed beside the small fire, which blazes on the side of the road at the boundary between the village community and the line of thornbush that once marked the wilderness, we have a relic of ancient customs that have always been observed by friend or foe who does not approach another town.
After the reception, the mourner continues his song, following two warriors who have been appointed to take the leader by the hand and lead the group to the main bench in the long house. Inside the longhouse.— "The singer picks up a can that was used on the road," to repeat the hymn to the founders from the very beginning to the end, walking up and down the longhouse.
SPECIFIC INTERPRETATION
BACK : INTRODUCTION TO THE EULOGY
The order of the introduction is not exactly the same in any two of these versions, for the "words" come in a different order, the tenses vary, and some variation occurs in the versions given by Hewitt at later sessions by the same informant. Rather than reproduce any of the texts in full here, it is the order of the icons and their possible meaning that concerns us. The chant consists of approximately eighteen sentences or lines of poetry before the singer turns the baton to begin the roll call and steps out the door to enter the path as he announces the first founder.
ROLL CALL OF IROQUOIS CHIEFS — FENTON
I am obliged to interpret the five traces near the circles (i, h), unless, perhaps, they represent the Five Nations which are named by the titles of their five principal chiefs. Tekarihoken, Odatchehdeh, Adodarhonh, Deka'en-yonh and Skanyadariyoh - in the preface to Joshua Buck's version. The next figure obviously refers to the heads in the tombs, where the founders have taken with them what they decreed (3).
Then comes a procession of the principal chiefs of the Five Nations wearing officer's horns going up the path (6,b) to the long house with two chimneys (7), which runs with the line: "You have strengthened (fortified) the house (the League)" (through the Council of Consolations). It also serves as their destination where the main part of the ceremony is performed and, finally, where the new chief will be raised (8). The last human figure is also a reminder to insert special praise for the Dead Chief when the singer reaches the vacant title (on the front side of the cane).
FRONT : THE ROLL CALL OF THE FOUNDERS
The arrangement of the peg on the can corresponds exactly to the space relationship maps Hewitt had from Chief Abram Charles (Hewitt and Fenton, 1945, pp. 304-305). No, in an attempt to relate the appeal to the icons, earlier lists of chiefs were examined and tabulated, and several manuscript versions of the eulogy were analyzed. The list is divided into classes, about the same number as in the tables above, which Morgan thought included the heads of the original confederate cities.
Title and Pictogram.— The meaning of the pictograms depends on how the titles of the 50 founders are interpreted. This culture hero is said to have combed the snakes from the hair of the Onondaga shaman, Thadoda-'ho', and corrected his mind. The pictograph is a rough representation of the leading Oneida chief, holding behind his shoulder what can be interpreted as aquiver with two arrows.
The inscriber of the cane has a stepped character engraved diagonally to the right, which also appears on the Charlemagne drawings. The eulogy ends on a note of humility, of regret that the current generation is losing the old ways and is no longer able to perform the ritual in the manner of the founders.
EVIDENCE OF AGE
FOUR BROTHERS SIDE
THREE BROTHERS SIDE
MOHAWK
SENECA
The pictographs, with a few exceptions that resemble early treaty signatures and some seventeenth-century war records, appear to be contemporary and demonstrate that they were elaborately embellished in later times.
CONCLUSION
Some of them represent objects of recent historical introduction, a type of log house built on the Grand River earlier (13), the claw hammer of the nineteenth century. Hale, who saw BillyWage in action in the summer of 1883, does not say that he carried a cane, nor does he describe the staff carried by Silversmith, who assumed the role inside the longhouse. So what we have in the current specimen is a synthesis of several cultural traits which have long historical roots in the past.
Made sometime after the middle of the nineteenth century, probably around the year 860, its use was limited to the Lower Cayugaband on the Grand River. Changes in the example reflect the local opinion of the Six Nations Reserve about how many federal chiefs founded the league, how. Although it is now a sacred relic and has been reproduced again by the Cayugas, the Cranbrook specimen does not predate the American Revolution and the dissolution of the League in NewYork.
It has managed to unravel the meaning of the pictographs and shown how they relate to two local versions of Eulogychant-Newhouse (1885) and Charles (1917). It presents several problems of kinship for future fieldwork, since we now have before us the complete organizational scheme of the government of the Iroquois Confederacy, which was, perhaps, the classic example of kinship.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PLATES
Grave of Patterson Sprague in lower Cayuga Cemetery. Six Nations Reserve
SETH NEWHOUSE-S ROLL OF THE CHIEFS (CA. 1885) The Seneca roster
