NO, 15 ROLL CALL OF IROQUOIS CHIEFS — FENTON 57 



In attempting to relate the roll call to the pictographs, earlier lists 

 of chiefs were examined and tabulated and several manuscript ver- 

 sions of the Eulogy were analyzed. Morgan published repeatedly a 

 list of federal chiefships in Seneca, which he had from Ely S. Parker 

 (Morgan, 1851 (1901, vol. i, p. 60); 1878, p. 130; 1881, p. 30). 

 The list is divided into classes, approximately the same number as 

 in the above tables, which Morgan thought comprised the chiefs of 

 the original confederating towns. Eighteen classes would mean that 

 many towns. There were 12 such towns in the seventeenth century 

 (Fenton, 1940). The cane calls for 19 groupings, and so do all other 

 lists taken from the Grand River Iroquois. So we are faced with 

 the possibility that Morgan's Seneca informant was mistaken, or that 

 a different tradition had grown up since the division of the League 

 tribes after the American Revolution into an American faction at 

 Onondaga, Tonawanda, Buffalo Creek, Cattaraugus, and Allegheny 

 Reservations on the American side, and the Six Nations on Grand 

 River, Ontario. 



Morgan's list does not agree with the order of pictographs on the 

 cane. Such agreement as first appeared seemed to warrant placing 

 the pictographs from the cane alongside Morgan's list in the same 

 table. Results were disappointing and frustrating. Correspondences 

 were fairly close for the Onondaga roster, precise for the Cayuga 

 roster, and the Seneca roster which Morgan's informant knew best 

 begins and ends like the Grand River lists, but the third to sixth 

 Seneca titles are completely inverted. Lloyd, editor of later editions 

 of Morgan's League (vol. 2, p. 212), notes the discrepancies between 

 Morgan's list and that of Hale (1883), and adds remarks and dif- 

 ferences based on the list of Chadwick (1897, p. 86). 



Hale had his information from Old Smoke Johnson, and the 

 Chadwick list came from Chief Josiah Hill in the orthography which 

 was then in use for the official list at Ohsweken (Chadwick, p. 97). 

 Both lists are the then official Grand River version. There is a still 

 earlier list dated 1847 from Peter Green, about which we have no 

 supporting information. None of these lists quite fits the cane in the 

 middle of the Seneca roster. Even the list of Seneca Chief John A. 

 Gibson (A. A. Goldenweiser, Ms. 1912, pp. 450-462), which other- 

 wise agrees, inverts 45 and 46 in the Seneca roster. So it is likely 

 that the inversions in the official Grand River lists represent the 

 version used by the Three Brothers, whereas the cane was a Cayuga 

 document. 



Our problem here is not to find out who was right and who was 

 wrong, but to find a list which fits the cane exactly. For such a list 



