46 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. Ill 



cry : Yo he ; hi and the others answer : 3;^ / 



(The first is high, the second low, rising, and the last abrupt.) 

 While this was going on, Chief Logan and David Thomas, the 

 principal professors of the rites, sat back and let the younger man 

 perform. Chief Peter Buck, father of the tyro, sat by as his son 

 rehearsed. Chief Buck himself later performed this role inside the 

 longhouse, after his son had carried the Eulogy over the road, on 

 the day of the installation. Chief William Sandy and others of the 

 elder chiefs studiously watched the corn on the singers bench as the 

 young man went through the roll call. As the singer completed the 



roster of each nation, the chiefs present raised the yo he 



for each group denominated. The rehearsal thus is a session of 

 education in ritual. 



USE CONFINED TO THE LOWER CAYUGA BAND 



That a cane was an indispensable symbol of officialdom on both 

 sides of the League should be evident from the way singers of the 

 Condolence rites were trained at Six Nations to pace the length of 

 the house, cane in hand. Hale ( 1895, pp. 53-54) noted this, while Boyle 

 (1906) failed to mention it; and Boyle is especially disappointing 

 since he accompanied the party of the clear-minded from Lower 

 Cayuga Longhouse to Onondaga Longhouse on an occasion when 

 A. Spragg should have been at his prime. Neither the man nor his 

 cane receive notice. 



Although both sides used canes, the specimen in question was con- 

 fined to the Cayugas. All informants agree. Simeon Gibson asserted 

 that while the Onondagas (Three Brothers) did not use the cane, he 

 supposed that conceivably they could use it because it had the names 

 of the chiefs on it in pictures. David Thomas agreed with my observa- 

 tions that the Onondagas manage to get through the ceremony without 

 such a cane. During the many occasions when Simeon Gibson ac- 

 companied his blind father. Chief John Arthur Gibson, and his father's 

 brother. Chief George Gibson (Senecas), to condolence and installa- 

 tion ceremonies, the latter always sang on the road for the Three 

 Brothers, and he never used the cane with pegs and pictographs. "He 

 carried an ordinary bent-wood cane, for the singer on the road always 

 carries a cane." 



If a singer on the road always had a cane, and if the specimen in 

 question is the cane which Andrew Spragg carried when singing for 

 the Four Brothers side, we can understand how that particular one 

 came to be associated with the Lower Cayuga band and that phratry 



