Missionaries seeking converts to Catholicism had been a part of New France since the colony’s birth. In the 1640s, the missionary effort expanded with the founding of Montreal.
The Jesuits – an order of monks and priests with highly-disciplined, almost military training – were the Catholic Church’s shock troops in the war for souls. They spread out, travelling along trade routes and setting up missions among the peoples they encountered.
They also sent a newsletter back to France, publicizing their work in hopes of encouraging donations. Around the time that the Seigneur de St-Michel was defending himself in court, the Jesuits began encountering a new “vice” among the Native peoples – a vice proper to a group of people in Native societies that the Jesuits came to call “berdaches.” These were people who were physically of one sex but who dressed and took on the roles of the opposite sex, including in many cases having husbands (if physically male) or wives (if physically female).
Now, “berdache” is not from any Native language, and probably any Native person this was applied to would have been offended to have found out that the word comes from bardaj — Persian for slave, especially a boy slave kept for sexual purposes. First Nations people now use the word Two-Spirit in English to describe what Europeans called the “berdache,” so that’s the term I’ll be using as well.
The oldest description I’ve found of a Two-Spirit – the description given in 1674 by Jesuit explorer Jacques Marquette – suggests that the these people were anything but “slaves”:
“I do not know by what superstition some Illiniwek, as well as some Sioux, take on women’s clothing while still young, and keep it all their lives: there is some mystery, as they never get married, and lower themselves by doing everything that women do; they go, however, to war, but they can only use clubs, and not the bow and arrow which are the proper weapons a man; they attend all performances and the solemn dances made in honour of the medicine pipe, they sing but may not dance; they are called to the Council, where nothing may be decided without their advice; finally, their claim of living an extraordinary life lets them pass for manitous, that is to say great spirits, or important people.” (Translation mine)
French explorer and soldier Baron de Lahontan was more expicit:
“Among the Illinese there are several Hermaphrodites, who go in Womans Habit, but frequent the company of both sexes. These Illinese are strangely given to sodomy, as well as the other Savages that live near the River Missisipi.” (anonymously translated, 1703)
Lahontan also described another kind of Two-Spirit folk in the area:
“…but I ought to have added that some young Women will not hear of a Husband, through a principle of Debauchery. That sort of Women are call’d Ickoue ne Kioussa, i.e. Hunting Women : for they commonly accompany the Huntsmen in their Diversions. To justify their Conduct, they alledge that they find themselves too indifferent a temper to brook the Conjugal yoak, to be careless for the bringing up of children, and too impatient to bear the passing of the whole Winter in the Villages. thus it is that they cover and disguise their Lewdness. Their Parents or relations dare not censure their Vicious Conduct ; on the contrary, they often approve of it…”
Later European missionaries and explorers encountered these Two-Spirit folk in dozens of different nations over the next 200 years. French, Spanish, and British accounts put them in most Native civilizations of North America. Not every Native society was as welcoming as the Illiniwek were of their Two-Spirits, however. French explorer Bacqueville de La Potherie gave this description of the Iroquois in his third volume of Histoire de l’Amérique septentrionale
“Perhaps these male Iroquois are so horrified by [doing] women’s work because they have seen among the nations of the south some men who act like women, and give up men’s clothing for those of women. You see this very rarely among the Iroquois and they condemn this way of life by the light of Reason.” (Translation mine)
Later narratives by explorers give accounts that backed up those of the French missionaries and military men. Both Alexander Henry and John Tanner, on separate voyages, encountered a person named Ozawwendib, the child of an Ojibwe chief, who was, in Henry’s words “a curious compound between a man and a woman” who “is a man both as to his members and courage, but pretends to be womanish, and dresses as such.”
Explorer and artist George Catlin may have been the first European to document “The Dance of the Berdash,” a ceremony among the Sauk and Foxes people living on the western shore of Lake Huron. Catlin was horrified by the concept of Two-Spirit folk, and called the role a “disgraceful degradation.” Nevertheless, he admitted that the Two-Spirit was looked upon as “medicine and sacred.” During the dance, young men came forward and boasted something to the Two-Spirit – something Catlin was apparently too disgusted by to translate into English, and so he left it in the original Sauk. He then called for the Two-Spirit tradition to “be extinguished before it can be more fully recorded.”
Catlin, sadly, got his wish. Missionaries struggled to bring homophobia to the peoples they encountered, as part of the effort of conversion. When the reserve system began, and First Nations’ land was stolen in violation of all the treaties Britain had signed with them, Native peoples came more fully under British and then Canadian criminal law. Under those legal codes, of course, homosexuality was punishable with death or imprisonment.
There has since been a cultural Renaissance in Native communities, and a reclaiming of the Two-Spirit tradition is part of that. For now, though, we return to New France, and to Bishop Saint-Vallier’s moral crusade.
HI my name is Judy and i need to know all the explores
Hi!
I’m not quite sure I understand. Did you mean you need to know about the explorers?
There were huge numbers of them. A page has a list of Europeans who reported on their mother countries.
Of course, the Native peoples had long since explored the same land.
Jesuit missionaries like Marquette were hoping to convert people to Catholicism, and were new lands where they could do that.
Soldiers like Baron de Lahontan searched out the land for military reasons. Traders like George Catlin were looking for new sources of furs, and new markets for European goods.
[…] 11, 2009 by Hamish I’ve already written about the European reaction upon learning that the First Peoples of North America did not share their neurotic prejudi… against homosexuality and gender […]
Hi Hamish!
You have some great works covering the two-spirited people of North America and kudo’s on backing up your views with information!
Great work, Great content, Good Job!
Jack Saddleback
Thank you! And sorry for the late response! I’ve been on a long hiatus with other projects!
I’d like to know more about the water they drank, food they ate and the preparation and storage of food. Why? I believe heavy metal exposure is a likely reason for the Two Spirited individuals described. Cooking in crude clay and/or metal pots, storing food, water or any food substances in clay or crude metal. Materials used in everyday living practices.
Very true. I was going to get to that when I reach more recent history.
I fail to understand how cooking utensils and pots and foods eaten would be likely reason for the Two Spirited individuals. The entire band or tribe would be eating the same foods and eating out of the same housewares. Also, you would need to compare food stuffs and pots and pans to contemporary usage. To give you a start, I had fried chicken, potato salad, baked
a beans, and kool-aid. Good Luck!
Your comment makes it sounds like being Two-Spirit is a sickness or abnormality. Did you miss the point of the article?
Maybe we should look into the possible heavy metal poisoning of hetero or cis gendered people. Maybe a cure for their condition can be found, even today.
Just a note of interest about the word “berdache”, it was used in the late seventies as the title of the first gay magazine in quebec.
I don’t know if you are still active, but 1st, thank you for your posts, they are great! And don’t worry, Catlin didn’t get his wish. The Meskwaki settlement in Iowa still remembers it’s traditions around êyêhkwêwa (what Catlin called the i-coo-coo-a, or Berdache). I was trying to figure out what Agokwa (as John Tanner calls it meant) and when I saw Catlin’s i-coo-coo-a I figured they were the same word. Anyway, got in touch with some great people at the Meskwaki museum in Tama, and everyone in the Museum knew the word straight away and remembered fondly a êyêhkwêwa name Reba (if I remember correctly) that had passed away in the early 2000s.
That is wonderful to know, and thank you! I’ve been neglecting this site for the last few years, but I am trying to be more active with it, so sorry for the late response!