Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America

2. Weibe-Town and the Delawares-as-Women: Gender Crossing and Same-Sex Relations in Eighteenth-Century Northeastern Indian Culture

Chapter 2 Weibe-Town and the Delawares-as-Women Gender-Crossing and Same-Sex Relations in Eighteenth-Century Northeastern Indian Culture Gunlög Fur European Encounters with Indian Practices of Gender and Sex In the morning we soon came to a Women’s Town (Weibe-Town) of 5 to 6 huts, where none but unmarried womenfolk live, who do not want to take any husbands. In May 1770, Moravian missionary David Zeisberger was acutely discomforted when he came upon a “Women’s Town” on the banks of Beaver Creek in northwestern Pennsylvania. Zeisberger’s company had paddled up the river to find a good location for a new mission site when they encountered a village of unmarried women. Zeisberger spent most of his life among Indians in eastern North America and his diaries and historical accounts of Indians demonstrate both his understanding of and struggle against cultural expressions that he deemed alien. His encounters with Delaware, Mohican, and Iroquois Indians introduced him to radically different gender perceptions and norms of sexual conduct than his own. Many of these he found completely unacceptable. References to this women’s town are tantalizingly meager, yet it is clear that its location hindered Christian men from choosing this area for a settlement. There are reports from other tribes that berdaches camped together at some distance from their countrymen. Is it possible that this was a village of female berdaches ?1 Native American sexuality caused comment, consternation, and condemnation widely among European travelers, missionaries, and colonial 32 administrators from the very first occasions of contact and onward. Sometimes comments were clearly based on stereotypical expectations, such as when Peter Lindeström wrote about Lenape and Susquehannock Indians who inhabited the region surrounding the New Sweden colony along the Delaware River that they “have their mixing together with father and mother, brother and sister like soulless beasts, no one quite knowing, who is the father of the child.” At other times, however, real encounters and specific observations of practices and rhetoric introduced European colonists to Indian practices of organizing gender and sexuality. This essay uses missionary diaries and diplomatic minutes from encounters between Europeans and Delaware and Iroquois peoples in eastern North America during the eighteenth century to discuss interpretations of gender crossing and deviant sexual behaviors among Indians. But it also attempts to go behind the fascination and judgment to ask what these sources can tell us about Indian understandings and practices of gender and same-sex relations . Studying gender and sexuality in Native American contexts leads us to question binary divisions into male/female and masculine/feminine, as well as hetero/homosexual.2 German pietists, known as Moravians, began in the early 1740s to establish a string of Indian missions across Pennsylvania and into Ohio and appeared, for a while, to be most successful in converting Delaware, Mohican , and other Indians in the region. At the same time, constant negotitations over land and trade embroiled these peoples in interactions and conflicts with Pennsylvania officials and with the Iroqouis confederacy. In both these settings practices and talk about sexuality and gender perceptions entered into the encounters and left their mark on the source material . There is much evidence of cultural (mis)understandings surrounding gender and gender crossing, some of which is explicitly linked to same-sex sexual practices. One of the most remarkable cases of gender crossing in eastern North America was the metaphor of women used for the entire Delaware nation during a large portion of the eighteenth century. Contemporary reactions and ensuing scholarly debates surrounding this usage reveals fears regarding feminized masculinity and homosexuality. Similarly , although in a much more obscure way, the occurrence of WeibeTown produced anxiety about gender inversion in contemporaries. There exists a large body of evidence from Native North America regarding gender variation, recognized by specialized vocabulary and descriptions of combinations of male and female tasks and clothing. Often these descriptions included open or veiled references to homosexual sex. Weibe-Town and the Delawares-as-Women 33 When Spanish colonists arrived in the New World they reacted strongly against the sight of men dressed in women’s attire and having sex with men. In sixteenth-century Spain vigorous efforts went into combating sodomy, which was perceived as connected to Moorish enemies. Now they found same-sex acts to be prevalent also in this hitherto unknown world. Early Spanish visitors and chroniclers commented on sexual behaviors, imagery, and...