202 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



information he was collecting- in very broken English. Consequently, 

 many passages in his work were equivocal, while others conveyed a 

 sense quite contrary to that intended. Furthermore, the material he 

 collected was not arranged in an orderly manner according to topics. 

 He had failed to grasp the fundamental principles of the structure 

 of the Institution of the League of the Iroquois. Twice he sub- 

 mitted his compilation to the Six Nations Council for acceptance, but 

 each time it was rejected. Another serious objection to the Newhouse 

 collection arose from the fact that Chief Newhouse, quite uncon- 

 sciously, it may be, frequently infused his own personal opinion into 

 what purported to ])e historical tradition. Nevertheless, I pursuaded 

 Chief Newhouse to translate the material which he had collected into 



Fig. 182. — Mr. and Mrs. .^lexandtT Slicriy with Miss Ruby Klliul, their 

 granddaughter, Ohsweken, Canada. The Sherrys are both typical Tuscarora 

 and the oldest persons living of this tribe. 



the excellent Mohawk of which he was a perfect master, in order to 

 preserve fine examples of Mohawk forensic diction which it was next 

 to impossible to ojjtain otherwise. 



So by a rigid comparison of this Mohawk translation with other 

 kindred material in the Onondaga and the Cayuga dialects relating 

 to the same aspects of the League, I sought to conserve in the New- 

 house material what accorded with historical tradition and to eliminate 

 what was due to the personal opinion of Newhouse. The residue then 

 in its contents accords in a confirmatory manner with similar material 

 obtained from the other dialects, and is embodied in excellent Mohawk. 



With the assistance of Mr. Alexander Sherry and wife I was 

 enabled to record a valuable list of Tuscarora proper names. This 



