l8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. Ill 



would know it. Then it revived. That is why they made something like the 

 cane to remind them. Also, the songs may be sung only at stated times, in 

 spring and fall, which are the only times when it may be rehearsed . . . 



A MUSEUM SPECIMEN 



The mystery attending the fate of the Condolence cane of Andrew 

 Spragg solved itself suddenly and unexpectedly in early 1943, when 

 Dr. Robert T. Hatt, Director of the Cranbrook Institute of Science, 

 asked the writer to describe a unique specimen of a cane or stick in 

 their collections, which Dr. F. G. Speck (University of Pennsylvania) 

 and Dr. Arthur C. Parker (Rochester Museum) independently had 

 identified as a roll-call tally of chiefs in the Iroquois Confederacy. 

 The stick had come to the museum in a collection obtained from 

 Milford G. Chandler, a noted collector of ethnological materials 

 among the Indian tribes of the Great Lakes area. 



Mr, Chandler first heard of the cane on a collecting trip to the 

 Grand River in about 1917 or 1918. It was then in the possession 

 of Andrew Spragg who, at that time, refused to sell. About 2 years 

 later, however, after the midwinter ceremony in February, the stick 

 was acquired. With the stick was a manuscript which, according to 

 Spragg, contained a list of chiefs' titles very similar to the list found 

 in Morgan's "League of the Iroquois" (1851). The manuscript con- 

 tained a sentence about each peg on the cane; it was formerly kept 

 bound to the stick but was subsequently lost. 



Sprague assured me that this was the original roll call stick of the League 

 of the Iroquois and had been handed down to him. He said that he was the 

 one at that time to check the roll call. He would press his thumb against the 

 peg representing a particular chief and call his name. There were two pegs cut 

 off level representing men who were not true officers but who were doorkeepers. 



* ♦ * 



Sprague was a man of medium height, angular and slender in build. He lived 

 in a dilapidated house within walking distance of Six Nations Post Office and 

 near the Cayuga Longhouse. Atkins, at that time Postmaster at Six Nations, 

 acted as guide and interpreter for meM 



In recalling these circumstances Mr. Chandler remembered that 

 he stayed with Peter Atkins, Postmaster at Six Nations Post Office, 

 and that Andrew Spragg lived nearby, next to Lower Cayuga Long- 

 house, as George Buck and others have confirmed. It was his im- 

 pression that the cane was used in the council meetings to call the 



11 From a statement dictated by Milford G. Chandler regarding the Iro- 

 quois Condolence cane now owned by the Cranbrook Institute of Science, dated 

 May 7, 1945. Personal interview, October 1944. 



