Native American LGBTQ+ People, 1528-1976, by Jonathan Ned Katz

These documents about LGBTQ+ Native Americans present years of testimony from a wide variety of observers: military men, missionaries, explorers, trappers, traders, settlers, and later, medical doctors, anthropologists, homosexual emancipationists, and LGBTQ+ activists.

In a few rare instances, the voices of LGBTQ+ Native Americans are heard.

This is adapted from Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (NY: Crowell, 1976). The notes to these documents contain numbers of additional sources.

Published originally on OutHistory in 2011; last edited June 21, 2024.

Nicholas Biddle: "Men Dressed in Squars Clothes", 1804-10

The Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expeditions contains diary notes by Nicholas Biddle which report of the Mandan Indians that on Saturday, December 22, 1804:

a number of Squars & men Dressed in Squars Clothes Came with Corn to Sell to the men for little things...[1]

Notes by Biddle, dating to April 1810, among the letters and documents of the Lewis and Clark expedition, report:

Among Minitarees if a boy shows any symptoms of effeminacy or girlish inclinations he is put among the girls, dressed in their way, brought up with them, & sometimes married to men. They submit as women to all the duties of a wife. I have seen them-the French call them Birdashes.[2]

References

Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (NY: Crowell, 1976) pg. 292.

[Nicholas Biddle], Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expeditions, 1804-1806 ... ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites, 8 vols. (N.Y. Dodd. Mead. 1904-05), vol. I. p. 239. Another edition: [Nicholas Biddle], Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, with Related Documents, 1783-1854, ed. Donald Jackson (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1962), p. 531.