Haudenosaunee TraditionSpirits of Sustenance
The Three Sisters
Dion'he'kon(Dionhekon (Parker); De-o-ha-ko in 19th-century spellings)
Also known as Dionhekon, De-o-ha-ko, Our Life Supporters, Corn, Beans, and Squash
- corn, beans, and squash
- sustenance
- agriculture
The inseparable spirits of corn, beans, and squash, the crops Haudenosaunee farmers plant together, remembered as sisters and thanked as the sustainers of the people.
About The Three Sisters
Spirits of sustenance
Parker's Seneca material names the spirits of sustenance Dion'he'kon and describes them as the inseparable spirits of the corn, the bean, and the squash, sometimes called the three sisters; the old people, he writes, told of hearing them talk together in the fields where they grow side by side. The planting method itself, corn as a pole for climbing beans with squash spreading over the ground beneath, is the agricultural system of the Haudenosaunee and many other Indigenous nations of the Northeast, and it remains in use.
Where they come from
Many Haudenosaunee cosmologies connect the three crops with the grave of Sky Woman's daughter, the twins' mother, from whose body the food plants grow; others credit Sapling with making them. Tellings differ on the details.
Thanked today
The Three Sisters are named in the Thanksgiving Address and honoured in harvest observances; this site mentions those publicly shared practices without describing ceremonial detail.
Worship and cult
Temples, festivals, and practices recorded for The Three Sisters
The Three Sisters are thanked in the publicly shared Thanksgiving Address and remain a living agricultural practice; No ceremony is described here; this site follows the Haudenosaunee request that ceremonial and medicine-society matters not be published by outsiders.
Festivals
- Green Corn and harvest observances (named here, not described)
In the atlas
Where The Three Sisters appears
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Arthur C. Parker, Seneca Myths and Folk Tales
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Parallels are editorial comparisons across traditions: a shared role does not, by itself, establish a shared origin.