Thomas Saganaki

Thomas Saganaki is #579 on the 1907 Wooster Roll but no ancestors are identified. At age 90 he is one of the oldest people listed on the roll. His calculated birthdate of 1817 means he was age 16 at the time of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. His traditional name is documented on the roll as "Newago" but no meaning of the word is offered. No wife's name is recorded, presumably because she was deceased by 1907.

Although no ancestors for Thomas Saganaki are documented on the 1907 Wooster Roll his surname has a resemblance to the Potawaromi leader "Sauganash" so an association or relationship between the two men deserves further research. Sauganash was at least a generation older since he was apporoaching age 23 when he met with Tecumseh on January 1, 1801 (Eckert 1993:512) so Sauganash was born about 1778 making him about 39 years older than Thomas Saganaki. In Anishinaabemowin several words begin with the syllables "sagan". The suffix "aki" (as in the name of Thomas Saganaki) means "land or coutry". The suffix "osh, ash?, ence etc" denotes the diminutive i.e "Little Sagan". The relationship between the names Saganaki and Sauganash require scrutiny by those with expertise in nuances of the Anishinaabemown language.

Sauganash had a close association with Tecumseh who, on October 4, 1813, presented Sauganash with one of his 2 Mortimer pistols (Eckert 1993:808) - the day before the Battle of the Thames when Tecumseh was killed. Sauganash was the mixed-race son of Irish immigrant William Caldwell and a Mohawk mother, and was also called Billy Caldwell. In 1838, twenty-five years after the Battle of the Thames, Sauganash and the Potawatomi band which he led settled at Council Bluffs, Iowa as result of the Chicago Treaty of 1833 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_Bluffs,_Iowa).