American Indian Culture and Research Journal

During the 1840s the ethnologist Lewis Henry Morgan visited the Iroquois of New York State -particularly the Seneca at Tonawanda -to gather information about their culture. This research led eventually to his study, League of the Iroquois, the first and one of the finest ethnological treatises on the Iroquois. While it seemed easy for Morgan to gather information on Iroquois customs, religion and society, this did not prove the case for those hired to take censuses of the Iroquois. In 1845, the State of New York commissioned ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft to take a census of the Iroquois people in the State. Schoolcraft received little cooperation from the Indians and soon discovered that the Iroquois were suspicious of the State's growing interest in their numbers and economic condition. The Tonawanda chief, John Blacksmith, asked: Why is this census asked for, at this time, when we are in a straitened position with respect to our reservation? Or if it is important to you or us, why was it not called for before? If you do not wish to obtain facts about our lands and cattle, to tax us, what is the object of the census? What is to be done with the information after you take it to Governor Wright, at Skenectati?