Biddle's "Men Dressed in Squars Clothes", 1804-10
The Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expeditions ... contains diary notes by Nicholas Biddle which report of the Mandan Indians that on Saturday, December 22, 1804,
a number of Squars & men Dressed in Squars Clothes Came with Corn to Sell to the men for little things....[1]
Notes by Biddle, dating to April 1810, among the letters and documents of the Lewis and Clark expedition, report:
Among Minitarees if a boy shows any symptoms of effeminacy or girlish inclinations he is put among the girls, dressed in their way, brought up with them, & sometimes married to men. They submit as women to all the duties of a wife. I have seen them-the French call them Birdashes. [2]
References
Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (NY: Crowell, 1976) pg. 292.
- ↑ [Nicholas Biddle], Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expeditions, 18041806 ... ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites, 8 vols. (N.Y. Dodd. Mead. 1904-05), vol. I. p. 239.
- ↑ [Nicholas Biddle], Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, with Related Documents, 1783-1854, ed. Donald Jackson (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1962), p. 531.
