In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French explorers, traders, and missionaries in the Mississippi Valley occasionally encountered Native Americans who could be classified neither as men nor women. They called such individuals berdaches, a French term for younger partners in male homosexual relationships. In fact, Plains Indian berdaches are best described as occupying an alternative or third gender role, in which traits of men and women are combined with those unique to berdache status. Male berdaches did women's work, cross-dressed or combined male and female clothing, and formed relationships with non-berdache men.
Plains Indian women often engaged in hunting and warfare, but a female role equivalent to that of male berdaches, although common west of the Rockies, has been documented in the Plains only among the Cheyennes (the hetaneman). Even so, some Plains Indian women became notable warriors and leaders and behaved much like berdaches. In the early nineteenth century, Running Eagle of the Piegans wore male clothing on war parties, while Woman Chief of the Crows had four wives.
Male berdaches were known among the Arapahos (hoxuxunó), Arikaras, Assiniboines (winktan'), Blackfoot (ake:śkassi), Cheyennes (he'eman), Comanches, Plains Crees (ayekkwe), Crows (boté), Gros Ventres, Hidatsas (miáti), Kansas (minquge), Kiowas, Mandans (mihdeke), Plains Ojibwas (agokwa), Omahas (minquga), Osages (mixu'ga), Otoes (mixo'ge), Pawnees, Poncas (minquga), Potawatomis (m'nuktokwae), Quapaws, Winnebagos (shiéngge), and the various Siouan-speaking tribes (winkte, Lakota; winkta, Dakota). The two most common reasons cited for individuals becoming berdaches were childhood preference for work of the other sex and/or certain dreams or visions. The Lakotas credited dreams of Double Woman with influencing men to become winkte; others credited the Moon. Such dreams also conveyed valued skills–in particular, proficiency in women's arts, such as quilling, tanning, and beading. Among the Dakotas the saying "fine possessions like a berdache's" was the highest compliment one could pay a household.
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