28 December 2009

The transvestites of 16th century America


I just finished reading Charles Hudson's The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Exploration of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566-1568 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990). The book recounts some of the journeys of Spanish explorers in North America in the mid-16th century.

It was almost two years ago that I blogged a piece about the epic journey of Cabeza de Vaca. That book made me want to read more about deSoto and the other Spaniards in North America. Juan Pardo travelled from South Carolina up to North Carolina and then west as far as what is nowadays Johnson City and Knoxville, Tennessee.

One of the more curious incidents recorded in the book is an ethnographic observation of the local Indians:
"...in Cauchi they saw an Indian man who was dressed as a woman and walking in the company of women. When Pardo asked Cauchi Orata for an explanation he said that the man was his "brother," but because he was not a man for war or for doing the things that men do, he went about as a woman and did a woman's tasks..."
The illustration in the book, reproduced above, is Plate XXIII from the famous set of engravings by Jacques Le Moyne: "Timucuan male transvestites carrying packbaskets of food. Females are shown loading the packbaskets... Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution."

I've not added this book to TYWKIWDBI's list of now 30 recommended books, because the content will probably not be of interest to most readers of this blog, but it would certainly appeal to those with an interest in North American prehistory.

Image credit.

6 comments:

  1. Transvestites as outer manifestation of hermaphrodites were probably frequent phenomenon in pre-Columbus America as result of the genetic encapsulation and inbreeding of the tribes especially the small ones. I got into kind of culture shock when established that homosexual orientation is not that rare among Native Americans and is also openly on display in Mexico City. Similar as with the Egyptian Pharaohs-hermaphrodites but for a different reason.

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  2. Is this an instance where it's cultural role? I have a vague recollection of reading a text that described native tribes who maintained a sort of honorable tribal position that required a man to assume the roles and dress of a woman. He became an honorable and gender neutral figure in their society.

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  3. Maggie, I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but they have something similar in Samoa.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fa'afafine

    "Fa'afafine is a third gender specific to Samoan culture.
    Fa'afafine are biologically men who in childhood choose by their nature to be raised to assume female gender roles..It was mistakenly attributed in Western anthropology that Samoan parents with too many sons and not enough daughters will dress one of the boys as a girl and assign him to perform girls' chores, such as housecleaning."

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  4. Transvestites as outer manifestation of hermaphrodites were probably frequent phenomenon in pre-Columbus America as result of the genetic encapsulation and inbreeding of the tribes especially the small ones.

    If that's the case, then it should have been as frequently seen in royalty across Europe as well.

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  5. These are not "transvestites" and they certainly aren't hermaphrodites (and incidentally, what the hell makes you think the Indians were inbred?!? There were MILLIONS of Indians living in the Southeastern US alone before European diseases wiped most of them out in the 16th and 17th centuries). These are exactly what it says "men living as women". Now, whether they were homosexuals are not is unclear from the documentation, but probably. Homosexuality was institutionalized among all North American Indians; they declared themselves and dressed as the opposite sex. Since sexual roles were strongly defined, they did work associated with the opposite sex. You will note that I have not used men/male or woman/female in this description. That's because it worked for either sex; there are a number of recorded female warriors just as there are male wives from all over North America.

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  6. @ Nitahoyo
    "These are not "transvestites" and they certainly aren't hermaphrodites (and incidentally, what the hell makes you think the Indians were inbred?!?"
    A picture is worth a thousand words. As clearly seen they DO display secondary marks of sexual dimorphism typical for the opposite sex( well-developed mammary glands). As to the existence of MILLIONS of Indians as you describe it, it is not an argument per se for lack of inbreeding. For sure there were hundreds if not thousands of different tribes clearly seen from the extremely extended linguistic tree of Indian languages. Second, they definitely did not live in cooperation, otherwise they would not let a bunch of stranded greedy assholes conquer them. If "homosexuality was institutionalized" among them and they dresses as the opposite sex, they were "transvestite" homosexuals. With this I rest my case.
    @Steve
    Royalty across Europe did restrain from very close linkage that could lead to such a phenomenon and it was in no way encapsulated but rather diverse although there are several clearly traceable royalty lines they were "enriched" or shared whenever power and influence were on the line.

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