Hodinǫ̱hsǫ́:nih Women & the 1914 Cayuga Indian Festival
As a land-grant university, Cornell became one of the first institutions in New York state to develop outreach programs that brought scientific information to rural, Black, and Indigenous women. Initially, the New York State College of Agriculture offered women instruction through the Cornell Reading Course for Farmer’s Wives, which Martha Van Rensselaer developed under the direction of the College’s first dean, Liberty Hyde Bailey, in 1900. In 1907, Van Rensselaer and her co-director, Flora Rose, gained a stronger foothold in the University by establishing the Department of Home Economics. To justify their presence within the College of Agriculture, Van Rensselaer and Rose emphasized scientific approaches to homemaking and family life. They believed that liberating women from the drudgery of household labor would, in turn, allow them to engage in activities outside of the home and farm like politics.
"The Life of Primitive Woman"
This is exemplified within the array of courses Van Rensselaer and her colleagues created that encouraged Cornell students and rural women to become informed citizens and eventually, voters. For example, Professor Blanche Hazard’s course entitled “The Life of the Primitive Woman” asked students and rural women to consider how they would address the “Indian problem” once given the opportunity to vote. As citizens and future voters, Hazard argued that it was important for women to understand the material, intellectual, and spiritual practices of those Indigenous communities who were denied forced citizenship and designated as “wards of the state.” The course was offered every spring from 1914 to 1918 on Cornell’s campus and later, transformed into a reading course that was distributed throughout the state.
Image: Cover of "The Life of Primitive Woman" from Cornell Reading Courses for the Home, Vol. 4, no. 52. New York State College of Agriculture, July 1, 1915.
Hazard’s course not only exposed Cornell students and rural women to sources of inspiration she had on loan from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, but also privileged them with the opportunity to learn directly from Hodinǫ̱hsǫ́:nih (Haudenosaunee) women. With the assistance of the New York state archaeologist, Arthur C. Parker, Hazard invited two women from the Onoñda’gegá’ (Onondaga) Nation to come to Cornell’s campus and give her class a cooking and basket-making demonstration in spring 1914. The demonstrations were given by goyá:neh (clan mother), Mrs. Phoebe Lyons, née Patterson, and Mrs. Alice Van Every, née Green, wife of hoyá:neh (condoled chief) George Van Every.
Image: Mrs. Phoebe Lyons, née Patterson (Skarù·rę’) from Syracuse Journal, March 22, 1924, 2.
1914 Cayuga Indian Festival
Mrs. Lyons and Mrs. Van Every's demonstrations coincided with the 1914 Cayuga Indian Festival, an event that took place on May 27th near the shores of Beebe Lake. According to the program, Mrs. Lyons and Mrs. Van Every supervised the preparation of meals and basketry, while Onoñda’gegá’ Faithkeeper, Eli Schenandoah, oversaw the reenactment of religious ceremonies by Cornell’s faculty and students. This event marks the first exchange between the Onoñda’gegá’ Nation and Cornell’s Department of Home Economics.
While Mrs. Lyons and Mrs. Van Every directed how their cultural practices were shared with Cornell’s community through homemaking demonstrations, the 1914 Cayuga Indian Festival ultimately allowed Cornell faculty and students to extract and exploit Indigenous knowledge for their own benefit. This is seen through the costumes they wore which appropriated aspects of Hodinǫhsǫ́:nih design, as well as their engagement in black or brownface. Hazard’s course and its subsequent circulation was progressive as well as problematic.
1914 Cayuga Indian Festival Scrapbook
This booklet contains newspapers clippings and photographs concerning the 1914 Cayuga Indian Festival, which took place on the shores of Bebee Lake on May 27th.
Courtesy of Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, #23-2-749, Box 49
Over the next several years, Cornell’s female faculty developed extension programming that encouraged rural and Indigenous women to improve the home environment through science. The following pages illustrate how Hodinǫ̱hsǫ́:nih women negotiated and directed the educational programs home economists carried out on their territories in the early twentieth century.
Archival Collections
Letter from Arthur C. Parker to Blanche Hazard, May 12, 1915, Miscellaneous Collections and Research, Arthur C. Parker papers, Research Box 2, Native American Ethnography, New York State Museum, Albany, NY.
Letter from Pliny E. Goddard to Blanche Hazard, October 9, 1922, Box 5, Folder 11, New York State College of Home Economics records, #23-2-749, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY.
“The Cayuga Indian Festival” program, Box 49, New York State College of Home Economics records, #23-2-749, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY.
Additional Sources
Berlage, Nancy. “Home Bureau and the Science of the Separate Spheres.” In Farmers Helping Farmers: The Rise of the Farm and Home Bureaus 1914-1935. Edited by Nancy Berlage, 123-157. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State Press, 2016.
Dreilinger, Daneille. The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2021.
Earle, Corey Ryan. “An Overlooked Pioneer: Blanche Evans Hazard, Cornell’s First Professor of Women’s Studies, 1914-1922.” New York State College of Human Ecology, 2006.
Elias, Megan. “Model Mamas: The Domestic Partnership of Home Economics Pioneers Flora Rose and Martha Van Rensselaer.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 15, no. 1 (2006): 65-88.
Hazard, Blanche. The Life of a Primitive Woman,” Cornell Reading Courses for the Home, July 1, 1915.
Hazard, Blanche. “Civic Duties of Women,” Cornell Bulletin for Homemakers, August 1, 1918.
“Indian Festival on Shore of Beebe Lake,” Cornell Daily Sun, May 27, 1914, 6.
Smith, Ruby Green. The People’s Colleges: A History of the New York State Extension Service in Cornell University and the State 1876-1948. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1949.
Thompson, Natalie B. “Faculty: Blanche Hazard,” Cornell Countryman, May 1914, 277.