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.

Leighton and Kluckhohn's "Hermaphrodites or homosexuals," 1947

"Hermaphrodites or homosexuals"

In their 1947 book, Children of the People: The Navaho Individual and His Development, physician Leighton and anthropologist Kluckhohn write:

In the old days a few men (some of them probably hermaphrodites or homosexuals) donned women's clothing and took up women's occupations. Some such persons are still known, but all of them are middle-aged or older. It may be that the bachelors in their thirties who live in various communities today are individuals of these two types who fear the ridicule of white persons and so do not change clothing.[1]

References

Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (NY: Crowell, 1976) pg. 325.

Dorothea Leighton and Clyde Kluckhohn, Children of the People: The Navaho Individual and His Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1948), p. 78. Also see Gladys Amanda Reichard, Navaho Religion ... (N.Y.: Bollingen Foundation, Pantheon, 1950), p. 140-42.