NO. 15 ROLL CALL OF IROQUOIS CHIEFS — FENTON II 



1849 list of titles from the Tonawanda Seneca reservation east of 

 Buffalo, a manuscript roster in the orthography of the Anglican mis- 

 sionaries at Grand River, the Canienga Book of the Condoling Coun- 

 cil (Hale, 1883), and various lists of League chiefs collected at Six 

 Nations Reserve by Hewitt, Goldenweiser, and the writer. 



THE MAN 



Not much is known about Andrew Spragg, or "Sprag," as it is 

 spelled on the cane; "Spragge" on the Agency rolls. He is pictured 

 among a group of chiefs and warriors who visited Toronto, June 

 1897, 01^ the occasion of a visit by the Governor General. He appears 

 to be middle-aged, he wears his hair long, and has a moustache. He 

 must have been active because in another picture he is postured in 

 War dance. Like several of his colleagues he wears a circlet of turkey 

 feathers, and Spragg alone has a shoulder sash. Quite unmistakably 

 they are having a good time. (Chad wick, 1897, frontispiece and op- 

 posite page 80.) He was an informant to several ethnologists before 

 World War 1. Frachtenberg (1913) employed "Andrew Sprague, a 

 Cayuga, who in his early youth had been adopted by the Tutelo tribe," 

 as an interpreter, and obtained from him some information on Tutelo 

 history and ritualism. Sapir (1913) credits Sprague with having 

 heard Tutelo spoken during his childhood, in reporting on a small 

 Tutelo vocabulary collected from him in August 191 1. But neither 

 F. W. Waugh, A. A. Goldenweiser, nor J. N. B. Hewitt seem to have 

 worked with him.'' Visiting Tutelo descendants on the Six Nations 

 Reserve in later years, Speck (1942) found the memory of him quite 

 clear. 



But it was Yankee Spring, a Tonawanda Seneca, who first told 

 me about Andrew Spragg. Yankee had served a term of 5 or 6 years 

 as secretary of the council of the Tonawanda band of Senecas, and 

 during his office he pondered : Why was he not a chief, why were 

 others of no apparent ability installed in office? He had been caught 

 in the dilemma of changing customs. The new elective system was 

 theoretically based on achievement and opposed the old system of 

 life chiefs appointed by the matrons of certain clans, so that the band 

 was torn between the new method of election and the old way based 

 on family lines. 



Yankee inquired of the old men of Tonawanda, the quandary took 

 him to Onondaga (Syracuse, N. Y.), and ultimately to Canada. On 



^ Waugh, F. W. (1916), Mss. on Folk-lore, medicines, and material culture; 

 Goldenweiser, A. A., Reports to Anthropological Division, Dep. Mines, Geol. 

 Surv., Ottawa, and Mss. ; Hewitt, J. N. B., Ann. Reps, to the Chief, Bur. Amer. 

 Ethnol., and Mss. 



