1933    

Paper written entitled “The Cocopa” by Edward Winslow Gifford, printed under University of California Publications. [The Cocopa are from Colorado.] Page 277 below left states in Figure 4 about female transvestite. Below Right on page 294 is the definitions.

1935    

W. W. Hill published "The Status of the Hermaphrodite and Transvestite in Navaho Culture," an early American anthropological journal article attempting to sum up information about homosexuality within one tribe.

1940    

Anthropologist A.l. Kroeber, in a psychology journal essay, declared in a footnote that the time was ready for a "synthetic work" on homosexuality and transvestism in Native American culture.

1940    

Handbook of North American Indians, Wash. D.C.; Smithsonian Institute, 1978, Vol 8, editor Robert F Heizer, page 131, “Tolowa Indians, NW California, Nr. Oregon border.” Photograph: “Transvestite male shaman, a headman from the village of (native word)”.

1950    

Don W. Dragoo, a graduate student in anthropology at Indiana University prepared a paper on "Transvestites in North American Tribes".

1951   

S. Ford Clellan and Frank A. Beach published their often-quoted, influential book, Patterns of Sexual Behavior, with an important chapter summarizing the information on and attitudes toward "Homosexual Behavior" in 76 societies, including a number of American Indian tribes.

1955    

Anthropologist Marvin K. Oplar summarized and discussed earlier work on "Anthropological and Cross-Cultural Aspects of Homosexuality".

1959    

ONE Newspaper [gay newspaper] “Sexual Inversion and The Berdache Evidence”

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE Part 1

Research Paper by Donnie/Don Horn

The history of the LGBTQ movement has been and will continue to be documented. The Umbrella Project started and will continue to research, document, and share information on LGBTQ history in Oregon. At present, it has dealt with mostly the Caucasian race. Broadening the scope, The Umbrella Project seeks to work with other communities to bring their stories to the forefront and include them in the narrative.

One part of the community that has had a slim representation is that of Indigenous Peoples. How to begin? It became apparent that the history sought was narrowly represented in any document, conversation, or history book.

First was to understand the history of the Indigenous Peoples.

A timeline has been devised on the Indigenous Peoples of Oregon through Pacific University  [https://pacificu.libguides.com/c.php?g=1050460&p=7794169] Just a sprinkling of history:

15-13,000 B.P.   

The Missoula Floods bring massive walls of water, ice, and rock coursing down the Columbia and neighboring valleys. Oregon tribes like the Umatilla and Kalapuya tell stories of escaping huge floods by climbing sacred mountains.

8,500 B.P.    

Near Newberry Crater in central Oregon, Natives construct some of the oldest known house structures in the Americas.

1540s-1600s    

Several European ships may have sighted and/or visited the Oregon coast during this time period, but they are poorly attested. It is also suspected that smallpox may have spread to the Pacific Northwest during this time, but evidence has not yet been found.

Possibly one answer to why the history of what we shall call two-spirit gifts along with many other stories was not shared is because of what the European settlers did throughout their early time in the area we now know as Oregon.

1774    

Spain's Perez Expedition is the first well-documented visit of Euro-Americans to Oregon's coast, although the ship does not land in Oregon. The next year, the Bodega-Hezeta Expedition "discovers" the Columbia River (which of course, had been known to Natives for over 10,000 years). More Spanish expeditions follow.

1792    

The first documented European ship enters the Columbia River, captained by American Robert Gray. His ship fires on Native peoples in Tillamook Bay. The same year, British captain George Vancouver is the first European to send boats into the interior via the Columbia. The Vancouver expedition gives new European names to many landmarks, including Mount Hood.

1805    

Lewis & Clark, explorers representing the United States government, arrive in what is now Oregon. With assistance from Nez Perce people, they travel downs the Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia Rivers and winter near Astoria at Fort Clatsop. The notes and drawings made by this expedition are some of the first and only written records we have regarding tribes on the Columbia River, many of which would soon be decimated by epidemics.

1830-4    

Recurring epidemics of "fever and ague," believed to be malaria, kill an estimated 80-90% of the remaining indigenous populations of the Portland basin and Willamette Valley, as well as an unknown number of people in southern and eastern Oregon.

1834   

Methodist preacher Jason Lee is the first Protestant missionary to arrive in Oregon with the goal of converting the indigenous peoples to Christianity. By 1835, he had founded the first mission school for Natives, later named the Indian Manual Training School, near Salem. The school is not successful in its original goals, but it eventually grows to become Willamette University.

1835    

Due to malaria and other diseases, most indigenous villages in Portland and the Willamette Valley are abandoned. Survivors consolidate into the remaining villages. The Tualatin Kalapuyas who inhabit the area where Pacific University is today consolidates into one or two winter villages near present-day Gaston.

1851    

The 1851 Treaty with the Tualatin Kalapuyas is signed. The Tualatin Kalapuyas negotiate to keep several square miles as a reservation centered on Wapato Lake, near modern Gaston (see a map of the intended reservation). This treaty is not ratified by Congress.

1853-6

The Rogue River Wars result in the deaths of many Native people in southwestern Oregon. Most survivors, along with other people living on the coast, are forcibly removed to the Grand Ronde and Coast reservations. The removals are known as Oregon's Trail of Tears.

1855    

The 1855 "Treaty with the Kalapuyas, etc." is signed with Kalapuyan, Clackamas, and Molalla tribes. The Tualatin Kalapuyas are forced to give up all their traditional territory and move to a reservation 45 miles southwest, at Grand Ronde. (See an essay on the two treaties. The text of the treaties is in Mackey, The Kalapuyans: A Sourcebook.)

1855    

Treaties with northeastern Oregon tribes are signed, resulting in the removal of many tribes from their land, and creating the Nez Perce, Yakima, Umatilla, and Warm Springs reservations.

Per the article written for the Oregon Encyclopedia entitled, Coast Indian Reservation [https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/coast_indian_reservation/#:~:text=Beginning%20in%201853%2C%20Superintendent%20of%20Indian%20Affairs%20Joel,would%20cede%20their%20lands%20to%20the%20United%20States]:

“Beginning in 1853, Superintendent of Indian Affairs Joel Palmer negotiated treaties with the western Oregon tribes. The treaties stipulated that a permanent reservation, the Coast Reservation, would be set aside for all of the western Oregon tribes; in exchange, the tribes would cede their lands to the United States. The principal tribes that signed the treaties were the Umpquas, Athapaskans, Kalapuyans, Molalas, Chastas, and Chinookans. Eventually, seven treaties were negotiated with the tribes and ratified by Congress. An eighth treaty, the Coast Treaty, was negotiated during the summer of 1855 but was never ratified.

The federal government meant for the Coast Reservation to be the sole permanent reservation in western Oregon for the native peoples of the Willamette Valley, southwestern Oregon, and the coast. Most tribes were removed first to temporary reservations, established while the U.S. Army built the facilities for the permanent reservation. Superintendent Palmer first removed the tribes to the Table Rock Reservation, where the Rogue River, Takelma, and Chasta people lived for about two years (1854-1856). Palmer also removed the Cow Creek Umpqua tribe to a temporary reservation at Calapooia Creek in the Umpqua Valley.

In the spring of 1855, the Rogue River Indian War erupted in southwestern Oregon. White settlers and miners sought to permanently remove Indians from the region, and the tribes sought to defend their land from encroachment. Palmer quickly acted to begin the removal of the tribes from southwestern Oregon. In the summer of 1856, boats transported two large groups of Indians from Port Orford to Portland and then to the Yamhill Valley. Another group was marched to the Siletz coastal area. In early 1856, the tribes that remained on the Table Rock and Umpqua reservations and in the Willamette Valley were later moved to the new temporary reservation in the Yamhill Valley.

On November 9, 1855, President Franklin Pierce signed the executive order establishing the Coast Reservation. Between November 9 and December 21, Superintendent Palmer, in collaboration with U.S. Army General John Wool, decided to add the lands of the Yamhill River Valley to the Coast Reservation, changing the shape of the reservation from a rectangle to an inverted "L." There were two major agencies at the reservation, the Grand Ronde and Siletz agencies, and subagencies at Alsea, Yaquina, and Salmon River. The Coast Reservation contained more than a million acres on the west side of the Coast Range, stretching from Cape Lookout to the mouth of the Siltcoos River. All of the tribes from western Oregon—about twenty-seven tribes—lived there.

Over the next twenty years, the reservation was reduced by several congressional and presidential acts. On June 30, 1857, a presidential executive order created the Grand Ronde Reservation, 108 miles square, which separated the region around the Yamhill Valley from the Coast Reservation. On December 21, 1865, two large sections of land were removed in the central and southern portions. On March 3, 1875, two additional coastal sections were removed, including the Alsea and Salmon River subagencies. The Coast Reservation ceased to exist, and the remaining Indians were removed to the Siletz and Grand Ronde reservations.”

In a paper entitled “Two Spirited: Native Lesbians and Gays” by Richard La Fortune and Terry Tafoya, they cite: “Most American citizens are unaware of Native history and reality. For example, American Indians did not become citizens of the United States until 1924. When the reservations were created by the federal government, the superintendents of the reservation were all appointed Christian missionaries of various denominations, with the mandate to "civilize" American Indians by converting them to Christianity, often by withholding food and starving them into submission. Federal Boarding Schools were set up for Natives (American Indians and Alaskan Natives were not permitted to attend public school until the mid-1930s). There are still a number of Indian Boarding Schools operating today. Children were forcibly removed from their parents, sometimes at gunpoint, to deliberately prevent them from growing up with the influence of their culture and language.

This forced segregation and isolation had a devastating impact on Native communities as a whole. Critical teachings and attitudes regarding sexuality and gender that would have been provided at the time of puberty, for example, were never passed on in many families and tribes because the young person was away at Boarding School. Such things were not permitted to be discussed. In addition, there was an incredible loss of Native lives through exposure to European diseases to which Native people had no immunity (a situation that has a number of parallels to the AIDS epidemic…some newspapers of the 1880s of the Pacific Northwest condemn Native Americans for having unacceptable sexual behaviors and multiple partners and declared their deaths by infectious disease to be "God's punishment"). It is estimated that in the Pacific Northwest, 80% of the Native population died within two generations of European contact.”

Continuing with [https://pacificu.libguides.com/c.php?g=1050460&p=7794169]:

1953    

The Termination of Tribes begins: Congress passes resolutions that promote the dissolution of tribes. Special interests in Oregon push for termination, which would allow for the takeover of remaining tribal lands as well as the loss of legal tribal sovereignty. Oregon tribes that were terminated in 1954 include Grand Ronde, Siletz, Coquille, Coos, Lower Umpqua, Siuslaw, and Klamath.

1956    

The Indian Relocation Act: following on the heels of the Termination of Tribes, Congress passes an act that encourages Natives to leave reservations and assimilate into the general population. Many Oregon Natives from terminated tribes leave reservations like Grand Ronde and Siletz and look for work in Portland, California, and other locations. Natives from other parts of the United States also move into the Portland area, becoming part of the "Urban Indian" population.

The next step.

It is very clear that through this history, the once thriving tribes now reduced to a minute portion of what they were, did not get to thrive and be who they had been. Tribes passed down their history through storytelling from their first existence. Writing down stories as we know it didn’t begin to take place until around 2150 BCE in Egypt and the middle east. They were all but forced to assimilate and not be who they had always been, storytellers.

Looking through books, articles, and web postings it became very clear that little was written or passed down dealing with gifts known today as “two spirits”.

The next step was reaching out to individuals who handle Oregon history. One such person was Scott Daniels of the Oregon Historical Society. He suggested talking to David G. Lewis, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde who holds a PhD and is the Assistant Professor of Anthropology & Ethnic Studies, teaching Native Studies.

The first step was through an email, “David, one thing that isn’t talked about is the Native American Two Spirit-Twin Spirit portion here in Oregon. I was told by Scott Daniels at the Oregon Historical Society that you might be one to chat with about this.” His reply was, “You will have to approach tribes to ask this question. LGTBQ is a very new concept that does not match what tribes thought about people who were two-spirited. There are few studies and like many in the present community, people in the past kept their status secretive or private.” When asked, if he would be interested in assisting in the history of Indigenous LGBTQ people and he said, “No.”

He did suggest Anthony Hudson, who identifies as a Two-Spirit person registered member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and a descendant of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. Hudson is known for their character Carla Rossi, Portland’s Premier Drag Clown. Carla Rossi’s persona was developed as a way for Anthony to explore Indigenous Identity and white privilege through performance. [portions taken from https://www.orartswatch.org/reconnection-and-resilience-an-interview-with-anthony-hudson/]

During email exchanges, Anthony stated, “I’m currently working on a long-term research project with the Tribe relating to our own queer histories, and I talked about this with one of my co-researchers and colleagues. We want to complete (if that’s ever really possible) our research and findings and present that to the community first before we share it elsewhere. Part of that is traditionally how we do things. After we’ve shared everything, I think we’d be open more to writing and sharing our research with wider and non-Native communities.”

Their closing statement was, “I agree that it’s important that it’s not forgotten, but it’s also not forgotten—we just have to teach it back to our people first.”

In one further email of March 6, 2023, when stating that the story of the Native Americans needs to be told and brought into the community as a whole, Anthony’s comment was, “And don’t worry, we are telling our stories and getting them told!”

A third person, Jesse L. Jackson, M. Ed |Education Programs Officer Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians/Roseburg. Over a Zoom call on February 14, 2023, Jesse stated several things. “Pre-European settlers, history was handed down through storytellers not written down. When the Europeans came, those who wanted to assimilate and survive learned how to read and write and not speak in their native tongue. He feels that the word ‘two-spirit’ is not the word that should be used, in fact, even the term male/female should be reevaluated. At this moment the separation of male and female there is then a third called ‘other’.” “But isn’t there a grey area in each?” He indicated that the Cow Creek tribe does not have a history that has been written down, however, he is more than willing to assist in finding storytellers and others to gather information to embrace historical stories. He stated that one of his professors at Oregon State University, Dr. Deanna Paniataaq Kingston, professor of anthropology at Oregon State University (OSU) and prominent Arctic social scientist, died on 2 December 2011. Jesse said that during one of her classes, she shared that her father, who was from Alaska, was the first transexual in Oregon. The first article in an Oregon gay newspaper dealing with a transgender individual is in the June 1972 issue of The Fountain, page 13 ‘PARRISH – An Interview with a Transexual [cannot copy as it is too light though ends with] I went to the interview expecting to meet a man, almost pathologically bound to a stereo-typed feminine role. (Such was the case in my only other contact with transexuals.) I found a happy human being, committed to women’s lib and gay lib alike, but most important of all, to her own liberation. Right on, sister-and thanks. Steve Fulmer. Cannot verify that Deanna’s father was the first but will continue to seek out their story.

Three people corresponded and stated a very obvious lack of information dealing with the gifted individuals who are known today as Two-Spirit. One correspondent stated that even the word Two Spirits doesn’t clearly define those who possess this certain gift, “It is a gift, not a word.”

From “Two Spirited: Native Lesbians and Gays by Richard La Fortune and Terry Tafoya: “Of the 250 or so Native languages still spoken in the United States, at least 168 of them have been identified as having terms for people who were not considered male or female,” and later, “The rigidity of the English language prevents even many self-identified Gay/Bisexual/Lesbian Natives from dealing with the fluidity of gender and sexual roles if the only categories that exist in a valued way are "homosexual/heterosexual". Native tradition emphasizes transformation and change, and the idea that an individual is expected to go through many changes in a lifetime. Indeed, many tribes anticipate that someone will change his or her name more than once since a person at age 45 is not the same person he or she was at ten. Hence, a name change seems most appropriate.

While hardly identifying as "Asexual" (a lesser used category used by some researchers to indicate a Gay or Lesbian who is not active with males or females), some Two-Spirited people will not be involved on a sexual level with a biologically same-gendered partner, although an emotional/affectionate bonding can occur. This may be a matter of personal choice, an individual's medicine path (a traditional Native term that indicates one's spiritual behavior and connotates a combination of destiny and free choice), or a result of a specific spiritual vision/perception of their appropriate behavior. This should in no way distract from the fact that a number of Native people very strongly identify as members of the Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual community.”  [The date of this paper is unknown at this time, but possibly 1993, and not once is the mention of ‘gift’, more about terminology).

However, when it comes to any mention of early gifted individuals/presently known as Two-Spirit is almost nonexistent in publications and in photos available in libraries, on the internet, and other sources. Researching various books and articles all claiming to present the history of the LGBTQ community such as the Encyclopedia of American Social Movements, The Early Homosexual Rights Movement [1864-1935], Making History [The struggle for gay and Lesbian equal rights 1945-1990], Gay/Lesbian Almanac [had only five pages out of 719], Homosexuals in History, Long Before Stonewall [Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America, North American Indians, Life Amongst the Modoc’s [Unwritten History] and even prominent well-respected historian/author Peter Boag in his books Same-Sex Affairs and Re-dressing [American’s Frontier Past] all have little or nothing on tribes in Oregon.

That brings the question: Were/are there any (what are commonly understood as) LGBTQ persons in Oregon tribes, historically or even the present day? The answer is imagined to be yes; however little can be found, little has been shared, and why? Why are Oregon’s tribes silent with their history? Was history shared, but used incorrectly? Or had it never been documented or shared outside the various tribes?

One answer possibly is through word usage. When searching for anyone gay throughout history, word identifiers have become particularly important. For instance, the word gay dates to 12th century France with the spelling of ‘gai’ meaning ‘full of joy or mirth’.  In the 16th century gay meant ‘happy’ ‘bright’ ‘joyful’ ‘carefree’.  ‘Gay woman’ was a euphemism for female sex worker and a ‘gay man’ was a womanizer. It wasn’t until around the 16th century, some early meanings of gay included being “hedonistic” or “frivolous” and in the 18th century “gay houses” was another term for brothels [most generally opposite-sex brothels]. In 1951 the word gay first appeared in the Oxford Dictionary as a slang word for homosexual. It wasn’t until the mid to late 1960s, that the word gay became more widely used and this time by liberation activists arguing for the decriminalization of same-sex relationships and equality in all aspects of public life.

Using the word homosexual or gay to find those in the Indigenous community didn’t register any information. So, what word was it? Per the website https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/two-spirits-one-heart-five-genders: “Before the 20th century, anthropologists were widely using the term “Berdache” as a generic term to reference Two Spirit people. The term is based on the French “Bardache,” to imply a male prostitute and the word originates from the Arabic “Bardaj,” meaning “captive” or “slave.”

Each tribal language had its own terms for such individuals and each term reflects distinct beliefs, traditions, and social customs. In Crow, a male two spirit was called boté, in Lakota winkte, in Zuni lhamana, in Navajo nádleehí.  Terms for a female two spirit include hwame: in Mohave, hetaneman in Cheyenne, and tayagigux‘in Aleut. Sometimes the same word was used for both male and female two spirits: tw!inna´ek in Klamath, t‘übás in Northern Paiute, and tangowaip in western Shoshone. Some of these terms can be translated as “manwoman” but many cannot. Nádleehí, for example, literally means “one who is changing”.

Many had felt, and justly so, that the word Berdache or Bardache was derogatory and needed to be changed. Per Wikipedia, in 1990 at the Indigenous lesbian and gay international gathering in Winnipeg the term Two-Spirit (original form chosen) was created, and "specifically chosen to distinguish and distance Native American/First Nations people from non-Native peoples". The primary purpose of coining a new term was to encourage the replacement of the outdated and considered offensive, anthropological term, berdache.

Per the article “Native American Sexuality TWO SPIRITS TWO WORDS” by F. THOMAS EDWARDS (CREE): “Berdache was never used in any Native communities!" says Wesley Thomas (Dine), a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Washington. "I get irate when I hear Native Americans use the B-word to describe themselves. The berdache concept is not of Native cultures. It gives no meaning to our histories." In fact Berdache derives from an Arabic word, bardadj, which was used to describe male slaves who served as (anally receptive) prostitutes. Anthropologists popularized the term to represent a transvestite Native American man who functioned in a feminine role.

These roles varied within each Nation. For example, We'wha (1849-1896) lived his life as a female member of the Zuni Nation and was accepted by his people as a lhamana. It isn't clear whether We'wha was sexually active or merely took on the social roles (and look) of a woman. Thomas describes himself as naleeh-like, which is Dine (a/k/a Navajo) for "being in a constant state of change." When he is in the greater Native American circle, Thomas identifies himself as Two-Spirit, while in Western society, he identifies himself as gay-but momentarily-in order to be understood.

The original meaning of these words has been lost to our Nations. Homophobia was taught to us as a component of Western education and religion. We were presented with an entirely new set of taboos, which did not correspond to our own models, and which focused on sexual behavior rather than the intricate roles Two-Spirit people played. As a result of this misrepresentation, our Nations no longer accepted us as they once had. Many Native Americans had to come to terms with their sexuality in urban settings, separate from our cultures. We had to ‘come out' in the Western world. But the journey into the mainstream left many of us lonesome for our homes.

In 1988, contemporary Natives coined the term “Two Spirit”. It refers to a Native American who is of two spirits male and female. The term doesn't necessarily have a sexual meaning; some transgendered heterosexuals identify themselves as Two-Spirit but not as gay. Naming ourselves distanced us from colonial words like berdache. Based on histories from anthropologists and elders, we were able to gather stories of our roles in the indigenous cultures as healers, teachers, and leaders. Many of us embody this history through our work as health educators in Native communities.”

The word berdache is not universally used, and some people prefer other terms, such as “LGBTQ” or “Two-Spirit and Proud.” One article published online states, “Rather than emphasizing the sexuality of gay and lesbian people, many Native Americans focused on their spiritual gifts. Even today, American Indian traditionalists tend to see a person's basic character as a reflection of their spirit. Androgynous or transgender persons are seen as doubly blessed, having both the spirit of a man and the spirit of a woman, since everything that exists is thought to come from the spirit world.” [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/twospirit-people-gays-acc_b_1677851] The narrative for the Indigenous North Americans has not been placed on the same level as other portions of the LGBTQ community. Through this document, our goal is to obtain funding to research, document, validate, and honor the histories and stories of the gay, lesbian, or Two-Spirited in the Indigenous North Americas portion of the LGBTQ community which has vastly been left aside and not recognized in the mainstream and unfortunately vastly passed over even in the LGBTQ community. Our focus will be on those here in Oregon.

This changed the search and minor discoveries were uncovered. As stated in the beginning, documenting early LGBTQ history has been going on for some time, and new information is updated on nearly a daily basis. The LGBTQ community began finding its voice during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and ’30s through the Pansy Craze and since the mid-50s through various actions which are documented, such as the Cooper Do-nuts Riot (a small uprising in response to police harassment of LGBT people at the 24-hour Cooper Do-nuts Cafe in Los Angeles in May 1959), Dewey’s Diner in Philadelphia (April 25, 1965, a sit-in protest) as well as the “Annual Reminders” march on July 4 at Independence Hall beginning in 1965, The Black Cat riots in Los Angeles in 1965, the “sip-in” in 1966,  where a trio of gay rights activists staged a small but significant protest at Julius' Bar in Greenwich Village and the much-publicized New York City police raid of the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969. Those have been researched and documented.

During the emergence of the largely white gay movement within the United States in the 1960s, a smaller movement was born, that of Gay American Indians (GAI). As its name indicates, this group placed individuals squarely within a Western gay framework of homosexuality rather than emphasizing the gender diversity that has historically been so crucial to Native gender and sexual alterity. In the 1990s, the Two-Spirit movement formed, not necessarily counter to GAI and groups like it, but with a different emphasis and goal: to acknowledge the distinctive identities of individuals who might have been considered simply ‘gay Indians’ within traditional, pre-contact Native culture(s). [More Than Just 'Gay Indians': Intersecting Articulations of Two-Spirit Gender, Sexuality, and Indigenousness by Jenny L. Davis]

There were many events in Oregon as well: the crackdown in 1949 by the OLCC and Mayor Dorothy McCullough Lee closing several venues because of “homosexual activity”, again in 1965 where nine bars were on the ‘hit list’ by the City of Portland, but the OLCC intervened. By the end, only one, the Harbor Club, was forced to close its doors. Most Oregonians remember Measure 9 in 1992 which sought to criminalize being gay.

The documentation of the Oregon LGBTQ community’s history has slowly been taking place. How far back can gifted/Two-Spirit people of the Indigenous North Americans here in Oregon (and the Pacific Northwest) be documented?

Per the website https://www.travelportland.com/culture/lgbtq-history/:

“Portland’s LGBTQ+ history likely goes back to the first human inhabitants of the area. According to the First Nations Two-Spirit Collective, native people have celebrated gender and sexual minorities for millennia. Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark noted a number of encounters with such individuals in Oregon. While some tribes have struggled to keep these traditions alive in the face of colonial influences, the Portland Two-Spirit Society is evidence of the resurgence of Two-Spirit pride.

It is understood that in the documentation of any same-sex relations, behavior was limited. Research shows that most tribes believed that Two-Spirt people possessed a gift. As stated in an article  https://www.the-numinous.com/2016/07/06/native-american-two-spirits/ it states, “People who had both female and male characteristics were viewed as gifted by nature, and therefore, able to see both sides of everything. According to Duane Brayboy, writing in Indian Country Today, all native communities acknowledged the following gender roles: “Female, Male, Two Spirit Female, Two Spirit Male, and Transgendered.”

The article goes on to describe how: “Each tribe has their own specific term, but there was a need for a universal term that the general population could understand. The Navajo refer to two spirits as nádleehí (one who is transformed); among the Lakota is winkté (indicative of a male who has the compulsion to behave as a female), niizh manidoowag (two-spirit); in Ojibwe, hemaneh (half man, half woman), to name a few.”

As the purpose of ‘Two-Spirit’ is to be used as a universal term in the English language, it is not always translatable with the same meaning in native languages. For example, in the Iroquois Cherokee language, there is no way to translate the term, but the Cherokee do have gender variance terms for ‘women who feel like men’ and vice versa.”

The article cites George Catlin (1796-1872) an adventurer, lawyer, painter, author, and traveler, who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the Old West who visited various tribes, and documented them through painting. Over 500 paintings are at the Smithsonian Museum. He stated that the Two Spirit tradition had to be eradicated before it could go into history books or as he is known to say, “must be extinguished before it can be more fully recorded.” [https://www.the-numinous.com/2016/07/06/native-american-two-spirits/] See North American Indians by George Catlin.

Before the Europeans came to the Americas tribal histories were not written down as we know it. The Europeans who later became known as Americans began to document and thus, the research for this project is gleaned from papers, books, and articles written beginning in the early 1800s. The earliest known on the west coast was Captain Alarcon's brief observation in 1540, “There were among these Indians three or four men in women’s apparel.” Cited in the book by Hernando de Alarcon, The Relation of the Navigation and Discovery which Captaine Fernando Alarchon Made, vol. 4 of The 'Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation. ed. Richard Hakluyt 12 vols, (Glasgow: J. MacLehose, N.Y.: Macmillan, 1903-05), p. 286. There are various statements in the Midwest, east coast, and south.

It wasn’t until 1775 when Jesuit Father Font during his second journey to California, with the expedition of Juan Bautista de Anza, 1775-76, wrote in his diary. Again, this is not Oregon, but still on the West Coast, “Among the women I saw some men dressed like women, with whom they go about regularly, never joining the men. The commander called them amaricados, perhaps because the Yumas call effeminate men maricas. I asked who these men were, and they replied that they were not men like the rest, and for this reason, they went around covered this way.

From this, I inferred they must be hermaphrodites, but from what I learned later I understood that they were sodomites, dedicated to nefarious practices. From all the foregoing I conclude that in this matter of incontinence, there will be much to do when the Holy Faith and the Christian religion are established among them.”

Since the end of the nineteenth century, pioneering researchers have attempted to bring together information and documentary accounts and to sum up what is known about LGBTQ+ people in Native American tribes.

1780's-1837 Ktunaxa Nation  Sitting in the Water Grizzly was born into the Ktunaxa Nation (Kutenai or Kootenai).  After leaving a marriage to a Canadian servant in which she was essentially a “slave wife,” she returned to her tribe, declaring that her husband had used supernatural powers to change her sex and she was henceforth a man.  She changed her name to Kaúxuma Núpika or Gone to the Spirits, adopted men’s attire and weapons, and took a wife.

Traveling extensively throughout the Pacific Northwest, Kaúxuma Núpika served as a courier and guide to the fur trappers and traders.  To the tribes of the region, he was a prophet (predicting large numbers of white men bringing diseases), a peace mediator, and a warrior.  On one journey, after an unsuccessful trip to raid horses with other Ktunaxa warriors, Kaúxuma Núpika crouched down while crossing a stream so that his brother could not discern his sex (for it had not physically been transformed).  After this event he changed his name to Sitting in the Water Grizzly or Qánqon Kámek Klaúla.

Qánqon Kámek Klaúla was killed while trying to broker peace between the Salish and the Blackfeet.  His death is described as magical, his wounds healing each time he was struck until finally, his enemy had to cut out his heart.  He is remembered as a hero, a healer, and a supernatural being.

Per https://www.riabrodell.com/sitting-in-the-water-grizzly

1875    

Hubert Howe Bancroft's five volumes on The Native Races of tile Pacific States of North America (1875). Early collection of footnoted documentary sources which does not shy away from the explicit discussion of sodomy.

1908    

Edward Westermarck's two-volume historical analysis of The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas (1908) contains a chapter on "Homosexual Love" with numerous primary references to Native Americans.

1911    

One product of the early German homosexual emancipation movement was Ferdinand KerschHaack's research and writing a homosexuality among native peoples, collected in 1911 in Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Naturvölker (The Same-sex Life of Primitive Peoples), still a major collection of source materials on the subject.

1911 & 1914    

Pioneering English homosexual emancipationist Edward Carpenter began to write on "intermedia types" among native peoples, later collecting these articles in his Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk: A Study in Social Evolution (1914).

1932    

Paper written entitled “Ethnography of the Surprise Valley Paiute” by Isabel Truesdell Kelly, printed under University of California Publications.

1981 December issue of Blueboy magazine, a gay periodical had an article in it: Berdache: The ancient gays of North America written by Michael L Starr. [cannot located magazine]

1985 October 29, 1985, The Advocate magazine [a gay magazine] “Gay Native American Awakening”

1990    

While each Indigenous culture has their own names for these individuals,[10] a modern, pan-Indian term that was adopted in 1990. 

"Two-Spirit".[11]   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_homosexuality

2011    

Documentary “Two-Spirit” https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/two-spirits/

2017    

“Two-Spirit” Documentary on YouTube https://youtu.be/eaIWR27sg1c

There’s definitely more history, what has been assembled is the beginning. More research is needed.

History in the Indigenous communities is harder than most to gather as in years past writing down stories wasn’t done, it was passed from generation to generation through story telling. Tracking down and documenting most history is hard, with that Part 2 is where the Oregon history begins and we will start  with the oldest historical facts found.

1966    

Anthropologist David Sonenschein wrote on "Homosexuality as a Subject of Anthropological Inquiry", an important "plea for research" and a discussion of methodologies.

1968    

Anthropologist Sue-Ellen Jacobs published "Berdache: A Brief Review of the Literature".

1971    

Dr. Francisco Guerra's documentary anthology, The Pre-Columbian Mind: A Study into the Aberrant Nature of Sexual Drives, Drugs Affecting Behavior, and the Attitudes 'Towards life and Death, [a few references to homosexuality among Natives of what is now the United States were included]

1975    

Donald A. Forgey discussed “The Institution of the Berdache Among the North American Plains Indians". Forgey commented in passing that "a thorough, comprehensive investigation" of the berdache among Native Americans was still lacking. The present historical survey attempts to show that documentary materials for a large-scale study do exist.

1976    

The Advocate [gay magazine] January 28, 1976 “RECLAIMING THE OLD WORLD” – Gay was good with Native Americans.