The popular take on "how the West was won" evokes images of rowdy cowboys and brave Indians slugging it out, with the noble but obsolete Indians gradually falling back and fading away before the military might of the Europeans, and the moral force of "manifest destiny," the principle that the white American has a God-given mandate to conquer and rule the entire temperate zone of North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. All the while the Indian is seen as faithfully paired off with his "squaw," and the cowboy or the soldier as getting his rocks off on the run in the local bordello, under the tough but benign gaze of the hard-nosed madam: "Wham, bam, thank you m'am!"
Whatever may be the merits of that colonial mentality, still prevalent de facto and de jure throughout the U.S., the fact is that this image has little to do with how either the victor or the vanquished lived. But only a handful of scholars are likely to be aware of the rich veins of homoerotic tradition pervading the culture of the invaders as well as that of the First Nations whose lands they barged through. Of the intimate friendships and love affairs among cowboys we will have little to say here. And of the furtive kisses between soldiers, Walt Whitman has already said a great deal.
For the moment the ancient patterns of male love woven through the fiber of almost every (yes, variety allowed even for the occasional homophobic tribe) Native culture on the American continent is of greater interest. The many forms of this tradition have until recently been lumped by historians under the rubric of berdachism, "berdache" being defined by Webster's Dictionary as a "homosexual male Äì an American Indian transvestite assuming more or less permanently the dress, social status, and role of a woman."
Not surprisingly, the experience of Native peoples is something other than either the popular or the professional stereotype. Though it would be presumptuous to claim to represent its essence from the perspective of an outsider, we can still look at certain features of two-spirit life in Native cultures, features that delineate how First Nations peoples integrated individuals with uncommon gender identity into their society.
You will be more than welcome.