The Lynx in Time: Haudenosaunee Women's Traditions and History

Abstract

Although the work of multiculturalism has begun in ethnohistory, I believe there is still a long way to go, especially once we turn to women's stories. I find that even those scholars who intellectually reject the confines of the Christian Eve story continue to be conditioned, however unconsciously, by its assessment of strong women as impediments to, not instruments of, progress. Nevertheless, reevaluations of women's social roles are undeniably underway, while oral history is acquiring greater status. Thus the timing seems propitious for revisiting one of the most powerful, if one of the most neglected, stories of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) history, that of the Jigonsaseh, or Head Clan Mothers of the League. In the pages that follow, I will examine some of the better-hidden skews that currently confuse the collections and, I hope, will offer another approach to Haudenosaunee history, one that will allow for a mixed oral-written reconstruction. My demonstration centers on the Jigonsaseh or, as I call her for reasons that will later become obvious, the Lynx in Time. In the process, I am careful to relate only stories already recorded in western sources out of sympathy for the position that no other sacred stories ought to be divulged beyond those that have been revealed to date.

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