Land of 10,000 Loves: A History of Queer Minnesota

1. What Is Queer Here? Looking for Experiences in Early Minnesota

13 1 What Is Queer Here? Looking for Experiences in Early Minnesota Having attracted the attention of a squabbling succession of world powers, the Upper Midwest region (often identified as the Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota , and Wisconsin) soon became the site of a race to secure the headwaters of the Mississippi River. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, existing Native American nations witnessed successive periods of encroachment from the French Empire, the British Crown, and a westward-spreading nation called the United States of America. Europeans and Americans wrested control of the river and, often through horrific measures, overtook the rest of the region. The race for control of the Mississippi ended in 1819, when the U.S. Army established an isolated fort near the Falls of St. Anthony to secure American interests in the area. The fort protected modest settlements that developed into towns and cities, and these contributed to a patchwork that would later become Minnesota. Fort Snelling is, in many respects, the place where the state began. Indigenous people had developed nuanced spectrums of gender and sexuality, and European colonizers judged these according to their own beliefs. Their observations ranged from bemusement to disgust, and their reactive punishment came swiftly. In particular, Americans did their best to extinguish any form of deviance from Judeo-Christian interpretations of sex and sexuality among Native people. Fort Snelling, a problematic site of state history, served as a base of operations for the systematic removal and destruction of Native American societies and cultures. In 1862 and 1863, the fort operated an internment camp for approximately 1,600 “noncombatants” (women, children, and the elderly) during the U.S.–Dakota War. What Is Queer Here? Wh at Is Q ue e r He re ? 14 The United States spread from coast to coast during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, growth that led to more efficient communication systems and means of conveyance. In part, the development of railroads and other transnational networks allowed the arbiters of “normal” sexuality—politicians, academics , physicians, teachers, and ministers—to convene and discuss national trends in sexual immorality, hygiene, and education.1 Their vocabulary on the subject, however, was comparatively limited. Although the German words Homosexualit ät and Heterosexualität existed, they would not achieve currency in the English language until the 1950s.2 Even long-familiar derogatory identifiers, such as sodomite , faggot, bulldyke, and pansy, were understood only in isolated corners of the English-speaking world.3 Before delving into Minnesota’s queer past, several terms should be defined in historical context. The word gay, while essential in the twenty-first century, was not widely used in its current sense during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; it will not be used here to describe these earlier times. Similarly, words like lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or straight are generally inappropriate in any historical analysis before the Second World War, unless individuals used that language. Left without such words, it is at first difficult to know how to proceed. What word can be used to describe sexual activity between members of the same gender? Can it also identify alternatives to the male–female gender dichotomy? Would those described by the word actually identify with it? Or would the word act as an artificial border that contextualized a spectrum of identities as it left them undisturbed? The admittedly imperfect answer is a word with a past of its own. A derogatory descriptor in the mid-twentieth century, the word queer has been embraced by scholars as appropriate for historical analysis. Shorter, more elegant, and ultimately more descriptive than the acronym “Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/ Questioning/Intersex” (LGBTQI), queer efficiently describes a host of identities that challenge the existence of sexual normalcy and the dominance of the gender dichotomy. A still fluid term, queer functions as an adjective when it is used to describe historic figures, places, and organizations. The word provokes and simultaneously defines the social order by calling its assumptions into question. Queer has come to describe many who are not easily categorized using contemporary terms. Concerning early examples of alternative sexual expression in Minnesota, “What is queer here?” is a question that often cannot be definitively answered. The 15 What Is Queer Here? following entries describe individuals, places, and phenomena from a time before sexual definitions became fixed and clinical. My selection process was necessarily informed by a certain amount of speculation, and—especially concerning...