The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

Hwame, Koshkalaka, and the Rest:
Lesbians in American Indian
Cultures
The lesbian is to the American Indian what the Indian is to the
American—invisible. According to ethnographers’ accounts,
among the tribes there were women warriors, women leaders,
women shamans, women husbands, but whether any of these
were lesbians is seldom mentioned. On the few occasions
lesbianism is referred to, it is with regard to a specific
individual who is noted because she is a lesbian. This fosters the
impression of uniform heterosexuality among Indian women
except for a very few who deviate from that norm. It is an
impression that is false.
In all the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of books and articles
about American Indians that I have read while pursuing my
studies or preparing for the variety of courses in American
Indian studies that I have taught, I have encountered no reference
to lesbians except one. 1 That one was contained in a novel by
Fred Manfred, The Manly-Hearted Woman, 2 and though its
protagonist dresses as a man and rejects her feminine role and
though she marries a woman, the writer is very explicit: she and
her wife do not share sexual intimacies, a possibility that seems
beyond the writer’s ability to envision. Indeed, the protagonist
eventually falls in love with a rather strange young warrior who
possesses enormous sexual prowess (given him by spirit power
and a curious genetic circumstance). After the warrior’s death