[4] Lafitau, Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains, i. 603, 607 sqq.
Homosexual practices are, or have been, very prominent among the peoples in the neighbourhood of Behring Sea.[5] In Kadiak it was the custom for parents who had a girl-like son to dress and rear him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at woman’s work, and letting him associate only with women and girls. Arriving at the age of ten or fifteen years, he was married to some wealthy man and was then called an achnuchik or shoopan.[6] Dr. Bogoraz gives the following account of a similar practice prevalent among the Chukchi:—“It happens frequently that, under the supernatural influence of one of their shamans, or priests, a Chukchi lad at sixteen years of age will suddenly relinquish his sex and imagine himself to be a woman. He adopts a woman’s attire, lets his hair grow, and devotes himself altogether to female occupation. Furthermore, this disowner of his sex takes a husband into the yurt and does all the work which is usually incumbent on the wife in most unnatural and voluntary subjection. Thus it frequently happens in a yurt that the husband is a woman, while the wife is a man! These abnormal changes of sex imply the most abject immorality in the community, and appear to be strongly encouraged by the shamans, who interpret such cases as an injunction of their individual deity.” The change of sex was usually accompanied by future shamanship; indeed, nearly all the shamans were former delinquents of their sex.[7] Among the Chukchi male shamans who are clothed in woman’s attire and are believed to be transformed physically into women are still quite common; and traces of the change of a shaman’s sex into that of a woman may be found among many other Siberian tribes.[8] In some cases at least there can be no doubt that these transformations were connected with homosexual practices. In his description of the Koriaks, Krasheninnikoff makes mention of the ke’yev, that is, men occupying the position of concubines; and he compares them with the Kamchadale koe’kčuč, as he calls them, that is, men transformed into women. Every koe’kčuč, he says, is regarded as a magician and interpreter of dreams; but from his confused description Mr. Jochelson thinks it may be inferred that the most important feature of the institution of the koe’kčuč lay, not in their shamanistic power, but in their position with regard to the satisfaction of the unnatural inclinations of the Kamchadales. The koe’kčuč wore women’s clothes, did women’s work, and were in the position of wives or concubines.[9]
[5] Dall, Alaska, p. 402; Bancroft, op. cit. i. 92; Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iii. 314 (Aleuts), von Langsdorf, Voyages and Travels, ii. 48 (natives of Oonalaska). Steller, Kamtschatka, p. 289, n. a; Georgi, Russia, iii. 132 sq. (Kamchadales).
[6] Davydow, quoted by Holmberg, ‘Ethnographische Skizzen über die Völker des russischen Amerika,’ in Acta Soc. Scientiarum Fennicæ, iv. 400 sq. Lisiansky, Voyage Round the World, p. 199. von Langsdorf, op. cit. ii. 64. Sauer, Billing’s Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia, p. 176. Sarytschew, ‘Voyage of Discovery to the North-East of Siberia,’ in Collection of Modern and Contemporary Voyages, vi. 16.
[7] Bogoraz, quoted by Demidoff, Shooting Trip to Kamchatka, p. 74 sq.
[8] Jochelson, Koryak Religion and Myth, pp. 52, 53 n. 3.
[9] Jochelson, op. cit. p. 52 sq.
In the Malay Archipelago homosexual love is common,[10] though not in all of the islands.[11] It is widely spread among the Bataks of Sumatra.[12] In Bali it is practised openly, and there are persons who make it a profession.[13] The basir of the Dyaks are men who make their living by witchcraft and debauchery. They “are dressed as women, they are made use of at idolatrous feasts and for sodomitic abominations, and many of them are formally married to other men.”[14] Dr. Haddon says that he never heard of any unnatural offences in Torres Straits;[15] but in the Rigo district of British New Guinea several instances of pederasty have been met with,[16] and at Mowat in Daudai it is regularly indulged in.[17] Homosexual love is reported as common among the Marshall Islanders[18] and in Hawaii.[19] From Tahiti we hear of a set of men called by the natives mahoos, who “assume the dress, attitude, and manners, of women, and affect all the fantastic oddities and coquetries of the vainest of females. They mostly associate with the women, who court their acquaintance. With the manners of the women, they adopt their peculiar employments…. The encouragement of this abomination is almost solely confined to the chiefs.”[20] Of the New Caledonians M. Foley writes:—“La plus grande fraternité n’est pas chez eux la fraternité uterine, mais la fraternité des armes. Il en est ainsi surtout au village de Poepo. Il est vrai que cette fraternité des armes est compliquée de pédérastie.”[21]
[10] Wilken, ‘Plechtigheden en gebruiken bij verlovingen en huwelijken bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,’ in Bijdragen tot de taal- land- en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, xxxiii. (ser. v. vol. iv.) p. 457 sqq.
[11] Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago, iii. 139. Marsden, History of Sumatra, p. 261.