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.

Gifford's "Kamia origin story," 1931

Gifford's study of The Kamia of Imperial Valley, published in the Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin in 1931, describes a tribal "origin story":

The Kamia ancestors camped on the eastern side of Salton Sea, from which place they later scattered ... The dispersal of the people from their camping place at Salton Sea was due to fear created by the appearance from the north of a female transvestite (Warharmi) and two male twins called Madkwahomai. These were the introducers of Kamia culture ... the transvestite and the twins ... were the bearers of the seeds of cultivated plants.[1]

References

Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (NY: Crowell, 1976) pg. 324.

E. W. Gifford, "The Kamia of Imperial Valley," U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, no, 97 (Washington, D,C.: Govt. Ptg. Ofc. 1931), p. 12.