NO. 15 ROLL CALL OF IROQUOIS CHIEFS — FENTON 1 7 



reference to such mnemonic aids) ; but he had his own ideas about 

 the ritual, Spragg had a book.® 



The last time he came up to our [Onondaga] longhouse to install a chief, 

 he had altered the roll call. There are names for 50 chiefs in the council of the 

 League. There are also 50 pegs on the Condolence cane. Andrew had cut oflf a 

 peg, the last one on the Onondaga roll, leaving but 49. Andrew claimed, as they 

 have recently claimed at Syracuse [Onondaga Reservation], that the last chief 

 serves double duty, having both the titles Ho's'dhha-'hwih and Sganawa-'dih, 

 that the last chief is of opposite sides (moieties) to himself, holding two offices. 

 We claim there are 50 chiefs. (D. Thomas.) ^o 



Unless Spragg had changed his mind about the number of federal 

 chief titles, he would not have made the cane with 50 pegs in the first 

 place. The fact that he is alleged to have cut off a peg points to an 

 earlier maker. And there is some opinion in the community bearing 

 on earlier holders. Cayuga Chief Alex General could not recollect 

 in 1945 whom in the generation before Andrew Spragg he had heard 

 mentioned by Indian name as having made the cane. Chief General 

 does not think the cane is old. Some years previously at a Condolence 

 Council rehearsal the late Oneida Chief Jacob Isaac of Sour Springs 

 (Upper Cayuga) talked of the cane that Andrew Spragg had and 

 spoke the name of the man who made it before Andrew Spragg got 

 hold of it. My informant had forgotten the name since hearing it. 



To Chief General it seems likely that the cane came to Andrew 

 Spragg in a Ten Days' Feast, which the mourners and their brother 

 clans give to the cousin clans who conducted the funeral. "That is 

 the rule." 1 l I I 



Many times since the coming of the Cayugas to settle here on the Grand 

 River the Condolence ceremony was nearly lost. Only a few in a generation 



» Chief Crawford had told Yankee Spring and the writer in 1935 that Spragg 

 had a copy of Morgan's "League of the Iroquois," a fact confirmed by Yankee 

 Spring and by Milford G. Chandler who collected the cane. We do not know 

 that Spragg was literate. 



10 J. N. B. Hewitt had come to the same opinion as Andrew Spragg. I have 

 not discovered that Hewitt had employed Spragg as an informant. In a con- 

 versation held in his office in October 1934, Hewitt stated that originally when 

 the League was established, one recalcitrant Onondaga war chief refused to 

 relinquish the privilege of going on the war path, but in order that he might 

 continue to go to war he took both a federal chief's title and retained a war- 

 rior's name. Acoordingly, he is represented as having his body divided in 

 twain: in his right hand he holds the war club, and his left side stands for 

 peace; he is at once ho'skg'egeh'de', "warrior," and hoyaa'neh, "law giver." 

 Hewitt has documented this statement in a number of reports (37th Ann. Rep. 

 Bur. Amer. Ethnol., p. 12, 1923; 41st Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., p. 10, 1928; 

 Introduction to Iroquoian Cosmology — part II, 43d Ann. Rep. Bur, Amer. 

 Ethnol., p. 463, 1928). 



