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Kaúxuma Núpika

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Kaúxuma Núpika
Ktunaxa leader
Personal details
DiedEarly 19th century

Kaúxuma Núpika ("Gone to the Spirits"),[a] also known as Qánqon Kámek Klaúla ("Sitting in the Water Grizzly") or Manlike Woman, was a Kutenai[b] person who lived in the early 19th century.[4][5]

First marriage and gender change

Kaúxuma is mentioned in David Thompson's Columbia River journals, around 1811, as a prophet who had changed gender and was then a "man-like woman" with a wife.[4] Kaúxuma was initially married to a Canadian man, to whom Ria Brodell says "she was essentially a slave wife".[5] Thompson describes Kaúxuma as initially a sort of second wife to one of his men named Boisverd in 1803, and reports that she "became so common that I had to send her to her relations; as all the Indian men are married, a courtesan is neglected by the men and hated by the women."[citation needed] Upon leaving this husband and returning to the Kutenai, Kaúxuma said that the man had changed her sex or gender, thereafter adopting men's clothing and weapons and taking a wife.[5]

Travels as a prophet

Kaúxuma traveled throughout the Pacific Northwest, serving as a courier and guide to fur trappers and traders,[5] and as a prophetic figure, predicting the arrival of deadly diseases among the peoples of the area.[4][5] Thompson encountered her next on Rainy Lake, near the Upper Columbia River, in July 1809, where he says "she had set herself up for a prophetess and gradually had gained, by her shrewdness, some influence among the natives as a dreamer, and expounder of dreams. She recollected me before I did her, and gave a haughty look of defiance, as much to say, I am now out of your power."[citation needed] It was 1811 before Thompson ran into her again, when she walked into his camp seeking asylum; Thompson describes her as "apparently a young man, well dressed in leather, carrying a Bow and Quiver of Arrows, with his Wife, a young woman in good clothing".[citation needed] Thompson says Manlike Woman was in trouble with her adopted tribe, the Chinooks, for predicting diseases.[citation needed] Thompson says nothing of his response to the asylum request, but notes that his men found it a tale worth repeating.[citation needed] On August 2, his journal states that "the story of the Woman that carried a Bow and Arrows and had a Wife, was to them a romance to which they paid great attention".[citation needed] John Robert Colombo, author of Mysterious Canada: Strange Sights, Extraordinary Events, and Peculiar Places, extracted the quotes about Manlike Woman from David Thompson's Narrative of His Explorations in Western America: 1784-1812 (1916), edited by J.B. Tyrrell.

In 1823, John Franklin (of the Franklin Expedition to look for a Northwest Passage) wrote that eight years earlier (in 1815) a "manlike woman" had been present at Fort Chipewyan, near Lake Athabasca, with "supernatural abilities", who predicted great change would come to Native peoples in the area.[4] "A Kutenai woman wearing men's clothing" (and fluent in French) is also recorded in 1825 at the Flathead trading post, serving as an interpreter to the fort's factor,[4] who was Franklin's source, a Mr. Stewart of the Hudson's Bay Company.[citation needed]

Thompson never gives the "Woman that carried a Bow and Arrows and had a Wife" a name; it was John Franklin who refers to "the Manlike Woman" in his Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea (1928), and suggests the designation was one given to her by the native people she influenced.[citation needed] Stewart said Manlike Woman was believed to be supernatural because she excelled in male roles despite her "delicate frame",[citation needed] and Lee Irwin writes that "gender switching was often interpreted as indicating [...] shamanic ability".[4] Franklin's contribution ends with a fuzzy reference to a journey by Manlike Woman to carry a packet between two Hudson Bay Company posts, "through a tract of country which had not, at that time, been passed by the traders, and which was known to be infested by several hostile tribes"; she undertook this journey with her wife, and was attacked and wounded in the process, but achieved her objective.[citation needed]

Kaúxuma acquired the name Qánqon Kámek Klaúla, "Sitting in the Water Grizzly",[4][5] after crouching while crossing a stream (returning from an unsuccessful raid) so others would not "discern his sex".[5] Kaúxuma was killed while attempting to negotiate peace between two tribes.[5][6] In older accounts, Kaúxuma's death "is described as magical, his wounds healing each time he was struck until finally his enemy had to cut out his heart."[5]

Legacy and interpretations

Kaúxuma "is remembered among the Kutenai as a respected shamanic healer"; in 1935, some Kutenai recollected relatives whom Kaúxuma had healed.[4] Francis Saxa recorded Kaúxuma as a prophet and "peace messenger" who helped his father Ignace La Moose, an Iroquois missionary, proselytize Catholicism to the Flatheads.[4]

Will Roscoe argues that Kaúxuma is best inderstood "in contemporary terms as a transgender man.[7]

See also

References

Notes
  1. ^ Older references give spellings like Ko-come-ne Pe-ca and say it meant "Manlike Woman" in Kutenai.[1] Some references give "Bowdash" as another name.[2] Bowdash is apparently a form of the berdache[3] (perhaps specifically of Chinook Jargon "burdash").
  2. ^ Most early[4] and later[5] sources identify Kaúxuma as Kutenai, though a few have suggested that the prophet could alternatively have been Ojibwa.[4]
Citations
  1. ^ Pacific Northwest Quarterly (1930), volume 21, p. 127.
  2. ^ Elizabeth Jameson, Susan Hodge Armitage, Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West (1997), p. 51: "The story of Sitting-in-the-Water-Grizzly/Bowdash (Kutenai)"
  3. ^ GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (1995), p. 203
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Lee Irwin, Coming Down From Above (2014), p. 241-242
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Ria Brodell, Butch Heroes (2018), p. 24
  6. ^ Barbara Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman's Body (2009), p. 263
  7. ^ Will Roscoe, Sexual and Gender Diversity in Native America and the Pacific Islands, Identities and Place (2019, ed. by Megan E. Springate, Katherine Crawford-Lackey, ), p. 68.

Further reading

  • Jessica Amanda Salmonson, The Encyclopedia of Amazons (1991, ISBN 1-55778-420-5, Paragon House), pp. 39 and 267.
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