The lynx is a large wild cat native to Canada, and it represents Niska’s spirituality and her connection to nature in Three Day Road. Niska is her clan’s hookimaw, or spiritual leader, and when she builds a matatosowin (sweat lodge) and summons the animal spirits during her very first sweat lodge ceremony, it is the spirit of the lynx that comes to her “most strongly.” The lynx is Niska’s spirit animal, and it shows her the “secrets of the forest.” When Niska is taken by the wemistikoshiw (European) priest to the residential school, she “fights like a lynx,” “biting” and “scratching,” and when Niska’s heart is broken by the wemistikowshiw trapper, she prays to the spirit of the lynx to “find the source” of her pain and “extinguish it.” As a Cree Indian, Niska has a strong cultural connection to nature and her Indigenous land, which is also the source of her spirituality, and the lynx is highly symbolic of this connection.
As Elijah and Xavier make their way toward Moose Factory to enlist in the war, they track a lynx through the woods and are confused when the tracks suddenly disappear. These mysterious tracks are mirrored in the “trickster” games Niska plays with the wemistikoshiw trapper—she swings from a tree to conceal her tracks—which implies that Niska is never far as Elijah and Xavier make the three-day journey to town. On the last night before Elijah and Xavier join the army, a lynx circles their tent in the woods and cries. The lynx sounds “hurt,” like a “mother who’s lost her children.” Boyden implies that this wounded lynx is the spirit of Niska, mourning the loss of Xavier and Elijah—her “children” for all intents and purposes—as they go off to war. At the end of the novel, as Niska and Xavier climb out of the matatosowin for the last time, there is a sense of hope and optimism as a lynx in the distance keeps “watch with her yellow eyes.” Niska and Xavier are protected by the spirit of the lynx as they complete their journey home, suggesting that their spiritual connection with nature as Indigenous people is what gives them strength.
The Lynx Quotes in Three Day Road
The awawatuk accepted that I was the natural extension of my father, the new limb through which my family's power travelled. By the time I was living my seventeenth winter, men would come to me not for what men usually seek women out for, but to ask questions and advice. Most often, they wanted to know where to find game, and so I divined for them, placing the shoulder blade of the animal on coals and dripping water onto it as I had watched my father do. The rare hunter came to me wanting to understand the symbol of a dream and sometimes to learn his future. If I had not experienced a fit in some time, I constructed a shaking tent and crawled into it, summoned the spirits of the forest animals to come inside and join me, so many of them sometimes that the walls of my tent puffed out and drew in with their breath, becoming a living thing all its own. Most often, though, it was the spirit of the lynx that came to me first and stayed through the night, showing through its sharp eyes the secrets of the forest.
Tonight I do not worry about making camp. I just pull our blankets from the canoe and we curl up in them and watch the fire. In a little while I will have to add more wood to keep the chill away. Nephew breathes calmly. I listen to the sounds of the night animals not so far away. I hear the fox and the marten chasing mice. I hear the whoosh of great wings as an Arctic owl sweeps close by, and after that the almost silent step of a bigger animal, a lynx perhaps, keeping watch with her yellow eyes. I lie here and look at the sky, then at the river, the black line of it heading north. By tomorrow we'll be home.
The Lynx Symbol Timeline in Three Day Road
