Content provided in partnership with

Making the American berdache: Choice or constraint?

Journal of Social History, Spring, 2002 by Richard C. Trexler

<< Page 1 Continued from page 4. Previous | Next

But certainly our main source for the berdaches on the frontiers of the Spanish empire in more recent times is an ethnographic description of these figures in the area around present-day Los Angeles by the Franciscan Geronimo Boscana, who had lived with these natives for many years. This friar wrote in the 1820s, and at that point, he says, the berdaches in this area had largely if not totally passed into history, so that it was the more important to record information about them. The picture of them that emerges from the friar's script is largely unchanged from what we know from earlier Mexican sources, especially as regards their origins. (20) They were "selected" to be berdaches though they were only "infants" or "little children" (chiquitos), Boscana tells us. Then "as they increased in age they were instructed in the duties of women." The capitanes or heads of villages often married them, since they were more robust than women, though with their husbands' permission they could commonly remain prostitute s (rameras) and circulate among the different villages. These berdaches never used a bow and arrow as did other males, Boscana states, thus "giving notice that they were the most despised people of all." Significantly, Boscana compared his berdaches to those described by his Franciscan predecessor Juan de Torquemada writing in the early seventeenth century, and in doing so established an important variant: Boscana says that he had met one berdache who had actually married a Christian woman and had two sons by her, something unheard of in the previous literature but which we will encounter later, among the Christianized Inuits of eastern Greenland. (21) This solitary berdache, transvested since childhood but marrying after all, perhaps represented a bridge between the native custom of remaining a berdache for life and Christian insistence on marriage. Yet for all intents and purposes, these California berdaches seem largely identical to those described by Torquemada two hundred years earlier.

Most Popular Articles in Reference: The importance of understanding organizational culture; Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students; What factors attract foreign direct investment?; Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...; How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques; More »

2. Arctic Berdaches.

Westerners learned about the far northern berdaches (though I here for the first time apply that name to them) soon after the first European explorations in this part of the world. The Billing Expedition of 1791--92, which explored parts of the Aleutian chain near Kodiak, documented these persons apparently for the first time. Even before the Russians colonized the area, we learn, the natives were accustomed to raise especially handsome boys as women. While growing, these boys engaged in homosexual behavior as passives. (22) The records of the 1805 Langsdorff voyage to the Aleutian Islands confirmed the practice of raising pretty boys as girls, and added details. Their parents instructed them in being women. They depilated all signs of such children's facial hair, tatooed their chins to resemble those of women, cur their hair like a woman's, and outfitted them with ornamental glass beads, all so they might serve as concubines. (23) A final source for the voyages in this part of the world, the account of Chor is' Voyages in 1822, specified what type of a "husband" might want such a creature: Before the Russians came, the Unalaskas, out from Kodiak, gave these berdaches to a rich man in marriage when they reached 15 or 16 years of age. (24)

Making the American berdache: Choice or constraint?

Journal of Social History, Spring, 2002 by Richard C. Trexler

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Reference

Most Popular Articles in Reference

Most Popular Publications in Reference