I78 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



virgin. Hitherto, the available traditions gave Djigo n 'sa"sc n ' , i. e., the 

 Fatfaced, meaning the Wild Cat, as the name of his mother. But, 

 this incongruous epithet is due clearly to a Seneca mishearing of the 

 correct name, namely, Djigo n 'sa"see', and to a worse confusion as to 

 her native land. 



The uniform traditional statements that the mother of Deganawida 

 was a virgin mother indicated that underlying them there must be an 

 ideal figure, a symbolic type of womanhood and motherhood. But, 

 owing directly to the misapprehensions just mentioned, this noble 

 figure of a symbolic woman, the type of pure motherhood, was utterly 

 lost from the traditional accounts. This discovery led the writer to 

 see the need for a thorough search in the field for a living tradition 

 in which this ideal mother is fully expressed. Such an ideal enhances 

 the charm of the birth story of Deganawida and makes more en- 

 thralling the historicity of such a personage in the Stone Age of 

 America. 



The writer was highly gratified by his good fortune in recovering 

 two such traditions, although fragmentary. The one he obtained from 

 Chief Joseph Jacobs, a Cayuga, and Chief David Skye, an Onondaga, 

 both of whom have died since imparting this information ; the other 

 version was contributed by Chief David John, an Onondaga. 



Briefly, this new information recites that the mother of Deganawida 

 was called Djigo n 'sa"see'. This name signifies literally " She-Whose- 

 Face-is-Doubly-New " ; that is to say, having a face twice as pure 

 and innocent as that of a newly born infant ; a face which is pure, 

 unsoiled, the face of a virgin because uncontaminated by contact with 

 man or with any other earthly thing. 



In the ceremonies inaugurating the Chiefs of the first Federal 

 Council of the League, Djigo n 'sa"see', the mother of Deganawida, 

 took a prominent part as a Woman Federal Chieftainess to impress 

 dramatically upon the participants the serious lesson that all future 

 Woman Federal Chieftainesses, the Trustees of their several kinship 

 ohwachira (families) must be virtually Virgin Mothers — must be as 

 pure as was the mother of the great founder of the League. 



This forcefully ejects the erroneous " Wild Cat " interpretation 

 noted above, and completes the symbolic ideals embodied in the organic 

 structure of the League of the Five Nations of Iroquois. 



The writer also visited the Tuscarora near Niagara Falls ; here he 

 obtained several photographs of Indian women who were selling bead- 

 work in the Park at Niagara Falls, N. Y. 



