68 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. Ill 



The Eulogy ends on a note of humility, of regret that the present 

 generation is losing the old ways, and is no longer able to perform 

 the ritual in the manner of the founders. Hale thought that this 

 dejection of mind was over the loss of a chief whose successor they 

 were about to install (Hale, 1833, p. 165). 



EVIDENCE OF AGE 



Ethnological investigation has developed that the age of the speci- 

 men does not carry it back to pre-Columbian times. This does not 

 mean, however, that the specimen may not be an important one or 

 that the ideas which it memorializes may not have ancient cultural 

 roots. The first fact that struck us about the Cranbrook Condolence 

 cane, the subject of this study, was the apparent disfigurement at one 

 end and the information that this was ". . . owing to an umbrella 

 handle having once been fitted to the stick by a former owner, A. 

 Spragge, Grand River Reserve" (Chandler and Hatt to Fenton, per- 

 sonal communication). Although Yankee Spring, my Seneca in- 

 formant, had asserted that the cane was surmounted by an eagle head, 

 Cayuga chiefs who had seen it more often held out for the curved 

 handle which they likened to a sword guard. Recent reconstructions 

 at Grand River have such a handle. Surely if there was any analogy 

 drawn between a sword and the appearance of this record stick in 

 the minds of Iroquois Indians there was something modern about it. 



The absence of the Sixth Nation, the Tuscarora, from the record 

 can be interpreted two ways. The Tuscarora became part of the 

 League in the second decade of the eighteenth century, but they re- 

 mained second-class citizens, never enjoying the rite of Hai Hai, and, 

 although represented, never voted in the council of the League. On 

 the basis that they are not listed on the cane, we might say that the 

 cane antedates 1710; but since we know the above, this argument 

 is irrelevant to dating the specimen. It simply does not have to be 

 that old. 



Had the cane dated from the beginnings of the League, as some 

 ethnologists at first thought, it would have shown a good deal of 

 handling and it would have acquired some patina. While the relation 

 of patina to age is difficult to establish, it is worth while noting that 

 early nineteenth-century specimens of known date show more or less 

 patina. They look older than the Iroquois cane. On subjective 

 grounds the Iroquois stick may not be older than 1850, but patina 

 remains an unsatisfactory criterion. 



The mnemonic which the cane carries is probably older than the 

 pictographs. There were canes with pegs only, and the same mnemonic 



