Name Jigonhsasee Jigonhsasee | ||
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Jigonhsasee (aka Jikonsase or Jikonhsaseh) was a pre-colonial Native American who was a co-founder, along with The Great Peacemaker and Hiawatha, of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy sometime between AD 1142 and 1570-1600. Jigonhsasee has been called the Mother of Nations by the anthropologist John Brown Childs.
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Jigonhsasee means "she who lives on the road to war." Jacon Needleman claims that Jigonhsasee means "New Face." He writes that the Great Peacemaker, who brought Hiawatha and Jigonhsasee together to create the Iroquois confederacy, called her New Face because "it is in your countenance that a New Mind is manifest" and that out of the "womb of the new mind" new nations will be born.
It has been suggested by some scholars that the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy became a basis for the U.S. Constitution.
Legend
Jigonhsasee was known for housing warriors as they traveled to and from battlegrounds and homes. Her hearth became what amounted to a United Nations, where the warriors of the various factions could come, eat her food, and she acted as council to resolve their disputes. It is in this context that Deganawidah came to her and described his vision for a peace built upon a confederacy of the currently warring nations. Because she interacted with the various tribes, Deganawidah gave her the task of appointing which men should sit at the peace gathering. For becoming the first ally in his peace movement, Deganawidah called her Mother of Nations.
Popular culture
Her name, under a variant spelling (Djigonasee) is used today to denote one of the five Human mitochondrial DNA haplogroups found among Native American populations.