The following excerpts are taken fromby Will Roscoe, a portion of which is included below

University of New Mexico Press

© 1991 Will Roscoe.

All Rights Reserved.

First Edition.

In 1886 the nation's capital hosted a remarkable cultural ambassador. The "Zuni maiden" named We'wha (WAY-wah) mingled with "the most enlightened society of the metropolis," demonstrated arts and crafts, befriended the Speaker of the House and other dignitaries, and appeared in a major charity event to the "deafening applause of an audience that included President Grover Cleveland.

Although he was the "tallest, certainly the strongest" member of his tribe, and despite his "rather large" features, no one in Washington doubted that We'wha was a woman.

It was a long way from the dusty pueblo in New Mexico where We'wha lived as a traditional Zuni berdache -- a man who preferred women's work and adopted female dress. But for such an individual exceptional behavior was expected. Zunis believed that men skilled at women's crafts (and women skilled in male activities) combined the two sexes. This made them extraordinary in every respect.

The Zuni Man-Woman focuses on the life of We'wha, perhaps the most famous berdache in American Indian history. Through We'wha's exceptional life, historian Will Roscoe creates a vivid picture of an alternative gender role whose history has been hidden and almost forgotten.

The account of We'wha is followed by a fascinating look at Zuni concepts of gender and sexuality and the religious and mythological dimensions of the berdache role. The Zuni Man-Woman also tells for the first time the story of the U.S. government's concerted but ultimately ineffective efforts to change Indian "morals" and suppress berdaches. Today the berdache tradition has been undergoing a surprising renewal among contemporary gay American Indians. WILL ROSCOE is the editor of Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology.



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. . . from the "Prologue, A Death That Caused Universal Regret", pp.4-6:





. . . as the setting sun lighted up the western windows, darkness and desolation entered the hearts of the mourners, for We'wha was dead. [4] Among the Zunis, the death of a berdache like We'wha elicited "universal regret and distress." But from the Spanish and Anglo-Americans who overran the Southwest, berdaches often evoked dismay, disgust, anger, or, at the least, ridicule. Berdaches were anomalies -- freaks of nature, demons, deviants, perverts, sinners, corrupters. They committed the "nefarious vice, " the "abominable sin." Over the centuries, Europeans have resorted to a bewildering variety of terms to describe them -- in Spanish, soméjticos (sodomites), amarionadas (from Mary, meaning "effeminate), mujerados (literally "made women"), putos (male prostitutes), and bardajes (from "bardaj," Persian and Arabic for "slave" or "kept boy"), and in English, "hermaphrodites," "sodomites," "men-women," "inverts," "homosexuals," "transvestites," and "transsexuals." [5]

Today, anthropologists have settled on the term berdache, a version of bardaje used by French explorers. In fact, variations of berdache were once current in Spanish, French, English, and Italian. The Oxford English Dictionary defines "bardash" as "a boy kept for unnatural purposes." Although such a practice has very little to do with the North American berdache role, Europeans had no better terms for such a status. Their languages forced them to make a choice between labeling the gender variation of berdaches (with terms like hermaphrodite and mujerado) or their sexual variation (with terms like sodomite and berdache). [6]

Male and female berdaches (that is, women who assumed male roles as warriors and chiefs or engaged in male work or occupations) have been documented in over 130 North American tribes, in every region of the continent, among every type of native culture, from the small bands of hunters in Alaska to the populous, hierarchical city-states of Florida. Among the Pueblo Indians of Arizona and New Mexico, male berdaches have been recorded at Acoma, Hopi, Isleta, Laguna, Santa Ana, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, San Juan, Tesuque, and Zuni. In the various languages spoken in these pueblos they were called kokwimu (Keres), hova (Hopi), lhunide (Tiwa), kwidó (Tewa), and lhamana (Zuni). [7]

In traditional native societies berdaches were not anomalous. They were integral, productive, and valued members of their communities. But the European culture transplanted to America lacked any comparable roles, and the Europeans who saw berdaches were unable to describe them accurately or comprehend their place in Indian societies. Indeed, through a long span of history, European social institutions have sought to suppress the very economic, social, and sexual behaviors typical of berdaches. Few aspects of European and American Indian cultures conflicted as much as they did in this.

What is it that American Indians saw in these men and women who bridged genders that Western civilization has overlooked or denied? And what was it like to be such a person? Although the answers that follow are based on a study of the male berdache role in a single tribe, and the career of a particular berdache, it is a story that could have been told hundreds of times over when the Europeans first arrived in North America, and may yet be told again, for all the tribes that recognized this status.

But first, we will begin with a visit to the home of the Zunis, the land they call the Middle Place; for this land and their relationship to it is at the heart of what makes the Zunis different from the non-Indians who are now their neighbors.





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. . . from Chapter 1, "The Middle Place", pp.18-28:





THE ROLES OF MEN AND WOMEN

Although Zuni women and men specialized in separate areas of economic, social, and spiritual life they enjoyed equal prestige and status. According to Edmund Ladd, "Men are responsible for the universe. Women are responsible for the family and the tribe." These roles were distinct but complementary; both were essential to the welfare of society as a whole. [30] For example, men constructed the houses, but women plastered the outside walls. And while men were responsible for growing corn, women were responsible for storing and distributing it. Men were not even allowed to enter the granaries. Men and women also specialized in different arts and crafts. Men wove blankets, made jewelry, and manufactured their own tools. They even knitted their wives' wool leggings -- a disturbing sight for the first Americans who visited the pueblo. [31] Pottery and ceramics, on the other hand, were made exclusively by women. And while weaving was usually a male craft among the Pueblos, at Zuni women also wove, usually with the smaller waist loom used to make belts and sashes.

Religion was the special concern of men. This is what Ladd referred to as being "responsible" for the universe; for in Zuni belief, religious ceremonies were necessary for the welfare of all living beings and the world itself. Some men, if they had a "good heart" and even temperament, and depending upon their clan membership, became priests. A priest or religious official, as one Zuni explained, "is not supposed to fight even though he is threatened. . . . When he is sworn in, he is supposed to love all the people and the animals." [32] Other Zuni men became warriors by defending the village or joining raiding parties. If they killed an enemy and returned with a scalp, they had to undergo initiation into the warrior society. This cleansed them from their exposure to violence and death and made them safe for contact with other Zunis.

While women's participation in Zuni religion was less institutionalized than that of men, it was no less important. Their religious roles were conceptualized as an extension of their responsibilities for "feeding" and "producing life." [33] For example, women regularly "fed" kachina masks stored in their houses by sprinkling them with sacred corn meal. Women also could join any of the medicine societies and "produce life" by learning the techniques of curing life-threatening illness and injury. Occasionally, women even joined the kachina society -- Stevenson reported four female members in 1902 -- and women often acquired extensive knowledge regarding the kachinas. In fact, until the turn of the century, the council of rain priests included the position of Shiwanoka, the "priestess of fecundity," and one of her prerogatives, according to Stevenson, was the right to dismiss the highest religious official of Zuni, the Bekwin or Sun Priest. [34]

Many of the more striking features of Zuni life were related to the high status and economic independence of Zuni women. Through their waffle gardens, the collection of wild foods, and their role in harvesting and storing corn, women made substantial contributions to food production. In fact, the role of Pueblo women in agriculture may have been even greater in prehistoric times, with the earliest permanent settlements organized along lines similar to the historic Navajos -- women and children tending nearby gardens while men roamed in small groups to hunt and retrieve distant resources. Cushing believed that traces of such a division of labor could be found in the ritual role of Zuni women in relation to corn. [35] The introduction of irrigation, however, may have been associated with a change in male and female roles. Elaborate diversion systems such as those constructed in Chaco Canyon, and the use of river and spring-fed irrigation by historic pueblos, are typically the work of organized male labor. [36]

If men did indeed take over responsibility for growing corn from women at some point during Southwest prehistory, women's status still remained high. Among the historic Zunis, this was reflected in such traditions as matrilineal descent and matrilocal residence (husbands lived with their wives' families); the ownership of houses by women, including their repair and periodic plastering; the control of the store rooms by women; and the assignment of fields by female-run households. Marriage was largely a private matter, transacted without ritual or ceremony. To divorce a husband, a woman simply set his possessions out on the doorstep. "When he comes home in the evening, " Ruth Benedict explained, "he sees the little bundle, picks it up and cries, and retums with it to his mother's house. He and his family weep and are regarded as unfortunate." Kroeber noted, "The woman's title to the house is absolute. . . . When a man has built such a house, and he and his wife quarrel and separate, even for no other reason than her flagrant infidelity, he walks out and leaves the edifice to her and his successor without the least thought of being deprived of anything that is his. . . . The Zuñi does not even have an inkling of having been chivalrous in such an abandonment. His conduct is as much a matter of course as resigning oneself to anything inevitable." [37] A possessive attitude on the part of fathers toward their offspring was also absent at Zuni. Men did not "own" children -- they belonged to their mothers' clans. In the case of divorce, children remained with their mother, and her next husband doted on them as if they were his own.

These practices addressed one of the fundamental questions all societies face -- the welfare of children. The Zuni solution, however, did not depend on the institution of marriage. Married, divorced, or single, women always had a home. And in a matrilineal system, there was no such thing as an illegitimate child. Children only needed mothers to be ensured membership in a household and a clan. Thus, Zuni women were free to choose sexual partners without economic or moral compulsion, to practice birth control (including abortion and natural contraceptives), in short, to control their own bodies. [38] "Trysting is an accepted Zuni pattern, and premarital sexual intercourse is expected as a part of the culture," one study concluded. "Courtship is often initiated by the girl and premarital affairs take place in her home. According to one male Zuni informant: `If a girl asks you to her house, you just sleep with her, and you leave before morning several times. Then one day you stay later and you're seen, and then everyone knows you're married.'" [39] Another anthropologist, who observed the flirtation between girls and boys every evening at the community well and the furtive comings and goings of adults, concluded that the "open-air evenings at Zuñi are magically charged . . . everybody seems to be sneaking around in a sneaking atmosphere." [40] !

A telling measure of the status of Zuni women was the response of children to a test administered in the 1950s. When Zuni boys were asked who they would like to be if they could change themselves into anything else, 10 percent wanted to be their sisters or mothers. Such a high percentage cannot be explained as an epidemic of gender dysphoria, but simply as a reflection of the prestige of female roles. (It is interesting to note that no Zuni girls made cross-sex choices.) [41] In fact, Zuni folk tales and kachinas included a variety of role models for women, an indication of the range of behaviors open to them.

Benedict described the Zunis as Apollonian, "a people who value sobriety and inoffensiveness above all other virtues." According to Ruth Bunzel, "The most honored personality traits are a pleasing address, a yielding disposition, and a generous heart. All the sterner virtues -- initiative, ambition, an uncompromising sense of honor and justice, intense personal loyalties -- not only are not admired but are heartily deplored. The woman who cleaves to her husband through misfortune and family quarrels, the man who speaks his mind where flattery would be much more comfortable, the man, above all, who thirsts for power or knowledge, who wishes to be, as they scornfully phrase it, `a leader of his people,' receives nothing but censure." Benedict added, "Even in contests of skill like their foot-races, if a man wins habitually, he is debarred from running. They are interested in a game that a number can play with even chances, and an outstanding runner spoils the game: they will have none of him." [42]

The Zunis referred to these ideals with the term k'okshi which meant at once "be good, be obedient, be attractive." [43] For the Zunis, k'okshiwas anything that promoted human survival and happiness. Being good, obedient, attractive was the way to live in balance and travel on the Good Road, "the way of life of the ideal cooperative and economically productive family man, who deeply desires an harmonious existence with his fellows, who is hard working, self-effacing and moderate in all things." [44] As the term suggests, moral good was also aesthetically pleasing. One Zuni might say of another, "A pretty personality [that is, k'okshi; he's happy all the time and always joking." [45] This concept is easier to appreciate when we consider the kachina who portrays this ideal -- Kokk'okshi (k'okshi with the prefix ko-, from kokko or gods) -- the stately rain dancer considered the oldest and most sacred kachina. As a Zuni explained to Bunzel, "Kokokci never makes people frightened or angry. He is always happy and gentle, and he dances to make the world green. . . . During the war with the Kana.kwe they were the only ones who did not fight. They never fight, because they are always kind and gentle." [46]

These values were evident in the attitudes of Zuni men toward women. Dennis Tedlock has recorded a story told by a Zuni in which one of the trickster War Gods passes as a woman by placing a bottle-necked gourd between his legs to simulate a vagina. Although quite explicit about other details, the storyteller never used the common Zuni name for "that which gives a woman her being." When Tedlock persisted in asking why he had not been more explicit, the storyteller's son gave him a lecture "in an irritated tone of voice, not unlike the lectures that are given the young man in the story": Didn't I know that the bodies of women are tehya -- precious, valuable, guarded? No, it wasn't just a matter of sex: "That's secondary. It's their bodies that are tehya." Finally, in one last effort to make me understand, he crossed the horizon of my own mythic world and said, "It's like Eve. She found she wanted to be tehya at that spot, so she put a big leaf to it." And so there she was, Eve as a Zuni saw her, not discovering evil and shame, but choosing to make a part of herself precious, valued, and guarded. [47]



THE ZUNI BERDACHE

While the traditional roles of men and women were well defined, the Zunis viewed gender as an acquired rather than an inborn trait. Biological sex did not dictate the roles individuals assumed. Nor did Zuni thought limit gender to only two versions. Zuni berdaches occupied an "alternative" gender, a status anthropologists have termed berdache and the Zunis called lhamana. [48]

Stevenson defined berdaches as men who "do woman's work and wear woman's dress." The decision to become a lhamana was made by the boy in childhood and based on a preference for "hanging about the house." It became final at puberty when the youth adopted female dress. The women of the family "are inclined to look upon him with favor, since it means that he will remain a member of the household and do almost double the work of a woman, who necessarily ceases at times from her labors at the mill and other duties to bear children and to look after the little ones; but the ko'thlama [lhamana] is ever ready for service, and is expected to perform the hardest labors of the female department." Stevenson had known five lhamanas at Zuni. Two were among "the finest potters and weavers in the tribe." [49]

Another early, although less sympathetic, observer was Mary Dissette, who began teaching at the Presbyterian mission school at Zuni in 1888. Over thirty-five years later, Dissette recorded her recollections of Zuni berdaches in a letter preserved in the papers of the Indian Rights Association. [50] Dissette had known five lhamanas, whom she considered "victims of a religious superstition." Two died shortly after her arrival; one, named Manna, had done some weaving for her. Most interesting is her account of a younger lhamana "in course of training." Kwiwishdi ("Que-wish-ty") was the cousin of a Zuni girl named Daisy, whom Dissette had adopted. At the time that Dissette first offered him a regular meal, enrollment in the mission school, and a dollar a week for doing chores and laundry, he had not yet formally entered lhamana status -- that is, he still wore male clothing. But he already manifested several traits typical of Zuni berdaches, especially his enthusiasm for hard work. As Dissette recalled, "He was so strong and so quick and willing." Kwiwishdi's blossoming as a lhamana, however, left the school teacher bewildered and dismayed: He was with us a year or two and always spoken of as a boy by us and by the Inds. [Indians]. After a time he began to wear the `Petone' [bidonne] or large square of cloth over the shoulders [a traditional article of women's clothing] and was in great demand at grinding bees and other female activities in the village. In another year he had quite an illness it appeared and came to tell me of it, and that he could not work for me any longer. . . . I did not see him at all that winter but in the spring [of 1890] a camping party which included Dr. Fewkes came to Zuni and hired Quewishty as cook and he came out in full female attire. Not long after this, Kwiwishdi formed a relationship with a young Zuni man and the couple set up housekeeping.

Dissette found Kwiwishdi's behavior incomprehensible. When she asked him (through Daisy as interpreter) the reason he had adopted women's clothing, he replied that it was because he did women's work. "But I often do a man's work, Quewishty," she responded, "and I do not put on a man's clothes to do it." Daisy spoke to Kwiwishdi for several minutes and then told the teacher, "He say[s] you do not love all peoples in the world as much as he do[es], and that's why he do[es] that." Still confused, Dissette concluded, "This accounts for a kind of spiritual arrogance that is peculiar to those creatures."



By all indications, the berdache role was an ancient one. It has been documented in tribes in every region of North America, with every type of social and economic organization. Kroeber believed that some form of berdache practices, such as cross-dressing and homosexual relations by shamans, existed among the ancient Siberians who began migrating from Asia to North America thirty thousand years ago. In North America, however, a distinction between shamans and berdaches developed that is not apparent in Asia. [51]

Archaeological remains may provide some evidence of prehistoric berdaches. At the Zuni village of Hawikku, which was occupied until the time of the Pueblo Revolt, men and women were often buried with implements that indicated their occupations and social roles (a practice that continues to this day). Women, for example, were sometimes buried with pottery-making tools or an unfired ball of clay. A ball of clay in at least one male burial at Hawikku, therefore, may indicate the presence of a male berdache who engaged in the female craft of pottery-making. Equally suggestive are the baskets included in some male burials, another female craft, and, in one case, the burial of a woman wearing both a dress and a man's dance kilt. [52] Other clues are provided by comparing the portrayal of the Zuni berdache kachina -- the subject of Chapter 6 -- to examples of prehistoric rock art and kiva murals. This figure has a characteristic hairstyle: one side wound around a board in a whorl, a female style, while the other side was allowed to hang straight in the male style (Figure 26). The same arrangement appears on a figure from the kiva murals at Pottery Mound some one hundred miles northeast of Zuni, dated between A.D. 1300 and 1425. Like the Zuni berdache kachina, who carries a bow and arrows in one hand and corn in the other, this figure carries a bow and arrows and a basketry plaque -- male and female symbols, respectively (Figure 6). [53] A similar hairstyle appears on a figure scratched into the rocks at Indian Petroglyph State Park in the bluffs overlooking Albuquerque (Figure 7). Although both sites are in the prehistoric culture area of the Keres Indians, the Zunis' Pueblo neighbors to the east, the similarity of this iconography is suggestive.

The earliest American account of Pueblo berdaches was that of William A. Hammond, a former surgeon general of the army, published in 1882. While stationed in New Mexico in the early 1850s, Hammond had conducted medical examinations of two men dressed as women, called mujerados, at Acoma and Laguna. [54] "Of course the most important parts to be inspected were the genital organs," he reported, but these were normal. [55] Like many authorities of his time, Hammond believed that if an individual did not conform to the social role considered appropriate for his sex, there had to be a physiological cause -- namely, hermaphroditism.

Berdaches have been referred to as hermaphrodites since the time of Columbus. In his 1881 census of the Zunis, Cushing recorded We'wha's gender as "hermaphrodite," and Alexander M. Stephen, who lived among the Hopis, noted in his 1893 journal: "We'we is a man, but of the abominable sort known to the Hopi as ho'va, to the Navajo as nûtlehi, to the Zuñi as lah'ma i.e. hermaphrodite." While some berdaches may indeed have been individuals born with anomalous genitals, the known incidence of such a condition is too rare to account for their numbers among the Zunis and other tribes. As Dissette observed, "While nature might make a blunder once in awhile, she did not make them systematically." [56]

In any case, the meaning of hermaphrodite, like that of berdache, has changed significantly over time. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, while providing the familiar zoological and botanical definitions, also defines hermaphrodite as "an effeminate man or virile woman, a catamite," and "a person or thing in which any two opposite attributes or qualities are combined. In the late nineteenth century, slang variants of hermaphrodite -- hermaphy, moff, morph, morphdite, muffie, murfidai, maphro, and so on -- were used by Americans to refer to flamboyant male homosexuals. [57] The same terms were sometimes applied to berdaches. In 1892, anthropologist J. Walter Fewkes identified a Hopi man who "wore woman's clothes throughout life and performed a woman's duties," as Morphy. [58] The restriction of the term hermaphrodite to a physiological condition is a twentieth-century development.

Adolph Bandelier, another early investigator of the Pueblo Indians, mentioned berdaches only once in his writings, and then only in his private journal. In 1882, he made note of a "singular being" he had met in an Acoma village named "Mariano Amugereado," adding that there were four amugereados (compare mujerado) at Acoma and two, at least, at Santo Domingo. Bandelier was particularly curious about berdache sexual practices. "They have no inclination for women," he confided, "but pay men to sleep with them. When such propensities show themselves in a man, the tribe dresses him in a woman's dress and treats him kindly but still as a woman." In 1900, Sumner Matteson photographed an Acoma berdache and noted, "He is far more particular of dress than the women." [59]

Stevenson was less forthcoming when it came to the subject of sexuality. "There is a side to the lives of these men," she wrote, "which must remain untold. They never marry women, and it is understood that they seldom have any relations with them." Dissette, on the other hand, confided that "these creatures practice Sodomy." In fact, the evidence shows that lhamanas were typically homosexual, although perhaps not exclusively so. That is, they formed sexual and emotional relationships with non-berdache men, often long term in nature. One of the lhamanas Stevenson knew, for example, was among "the richest men of the village" when he "allied himself" to another man. "They were two of the hardest workers in the pueblo and among the most prosperous." Parsons also described marriages between berdache and non-berdache men. Some lhamanas, however, appear to have enjoyed more casual relations. In the 1940s, anthropologist Omer Stewart observed a lhamana whose home was the site of frequent male socializing. The Zunis joked about his ability to attract young men to his house. [60] Other lhamanas may have had sexual relations with women. In fact, Stevenson reported rumors that We'wha was a father -- although there is no other evidence to confirm it, and it is more likely that children used parental kinship terms with We'wha out of respect or to acknowledge the role he played in their relationship. [61] In any case, if some berdaches were not exclusively homosexual, non-berdache men were not always heterosexual since some formed relationships with lhamanas. [62]

After Stevenson, Parsons was the next anthropologist to take an interest in Zuni berdaches. On her first visit to Zuni in 1915, she observed three adult lhamanas and a six-year-old boy considered to be a future lhamana. She described two of the adults as masculine. Kasineli had "the facial expression and stature of a man," she wrote, and Tsalatitse walked with a long, heavy stride. The lhamanas were skilled potters, plasterers, and weavers, their presence especially welcomed in households with a shortage of daughters. One, named U'k, was developmentally disabled. The Zunis considered U'k a simpleton because he spoke and acted like a child. Parsons watched him in a kachina dance during the Sha'lako festival. When he fell out of line for a moment, the audience grinned and chuckled. "She is a great joke," Parsons's host took pains to explain, "not because she is a la'mana, but because she is half-witted." One of Parsons's informants had known nine lhamanas. Two had married men. [63]

Ruth Benedict and Ruth Bunzel first visited Zuni together in the summer of 1924. Although Bunzel recorded little on the subject of the lhamana, except to document the berdache kachina, Benedict used the example of Zuni berdaches in her famous book Patterns of Culture. Summarizing We'wha's career, she concluded, "There are obviously several reasons why a person becomes a berdache in Zuni, but whatever the reason, men who have chosen openly to assume women's dress have the same chance as any other persons to establish themselves as functioning members of the society. Their response is socially recognized. If they have native ability, they can give it scope; if they are weak creatures, they fail in terms of their weakness of character, not in terms of their inversion." [64]

Parsons was the only anthropologist to record information on the female counterpart of the male lhamana. She described a woman named Nancy, who was jokingly referred to as "the girl-man," or katsotstsi'. Of the katsotse I saw quite a little, for she worked by the day in our household. She was an unusually competent worker, "a girl I can always depend on," said her employer. She had a rather lean, spare build and her gait was comparatively quick and alert. It occurred to me once that she might be a la'mana. "If she is," said her employer, "she is not so openly like the others. Besides she's been too much married for one." She was, I concluded, a "strong-minded woman," a Zuni "new woman," a large part of her male. Elsewhere, Parsons defined katsotstsi' as mannish, . . . girl-man, a tomboy," and reported that Nancy was in demand as a worker among American employers. [65]

Nancy had been initiated into the kiva society -- according to Parsons, to do "kiva work." In an important ceremony discussed in Chapter 6, she wore the mask of the berdache kachina, a mask usually worn by a male lhamana. [66] In other words, the Zunis linked both men and women who preferred the work of the other sex to the same supernatural archetype. Zunis typically referred to women who became members of the kachina society or engaged in vigorous activities, including men's work, as `otstsi', or manly, or with the verb lhamanaye, literally, "being lhamana," that is, like a berdache. Such a woman might be married and otherwise fulfill the usual roles of a woman, but at least some Zuni women, like Nancy, formally occupied lhamana status. That female lhamanas were often among those women initiated into the kachina society -- and that they should be the ones, with their male counterparts, to impersonate the berdache kachina -- is not surprising. [67]



The Zuni berdache role was assumed by individuals with a wide range of traits and abilities. Some were unlikable; others lazy or incompetent; still others, like U'k, limited in capacity at birth. It is the exceptional berdache, the one who enjoyed what Benedict called "native ability," that we must turn to in order to map the full scope of this role and its place in Zuni society. An examination of such a case also promises insight into the relationship of individual and social factors in the development of gender identity and sexuality. Thus, we turn to the life of We'wha, Zuni's most famous berdache and perhaps the most renowned "man-woman" in recorded American Indian history.

NOTES