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.

Jean-Bernard Bossu: "Most are addicted to sodomy," 1751-62

Bossu's work in French, translated as Travels in the Interior of North America, 1751-1762, speaks of sodomy and "perversion" among the Choctaws.

The people of this nation are generally of a brutal and coarse nature. You can talk to them as much as you want about the mysteries of our religion; they always reply that all of that is beyond their comprehension. They are morally quite perverted, and most of them are addicted to sodomy. These corrupt men, who have long hair and wear short skirts like women, are held in great contempt.[1]

References

Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (NY: Crowell, 1976) pg. 291.

Jean-Bernard Bossu's Travels in the Interior of North America, 1751- 1762, trans. and ed. Seymour Feiler (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1962), p. 169.