The two primary sources Pedro Font’s Complete Diary of the Second Anza Expedition and An Historical, Political, and Natural Description of California by Don Pedro Fage both describe Native American practices as discovered by Spanish colonists exploring California in the late 1700’s.
Pedro Font was a missionary who was part of the settling of California in the 1700s, an entry in the translated copy of his diary account of the second Anza Expedition describes some members of the Yuma tribe which he observed to be what he called hermaphrodites and sodomites, men dressed and behaving as women. He writes, “Among the women I saw some men dressed like women, with whom they go about regularly, never joining the men. The commander called them amaricados, perhaps because the Yumas call effeminate men maricas, I asked who these men were, and they replied that they were not men lili:e the rest, and for this reason they went around cov- ered this way. From this I inferred they must be hermaphrodites, but from what I learned later I understood that they were sodomites, dedicated to nefarious practices. From all the foregoing I con- clude that in this matter of incontinence there will be much to do when the Holy Faith and the Christian religion are established among them.”[1] He goes on to discuss the various ways the natives were ignorant of God so could not be considered guilty of sin, but talks about how teaching them Christian beliefs and practices will change their behavior and save them.
In a similar account, Don Pedro Fages, a Spanish soldier and explorer traveling in California in the late 1700s, writes in his account of travels to discover Monteray California, “I have substantial evidence that those Indian men who, both here and farther inland, are observed in the dress, clothing, and character of women—there being two or three such in each village — pass as sodomites by profession (it being confirmed that all these Indians are much addicted to this abominable vice) and permit the heathen to practice the execrable, unnatural abuse of their bodies. They are called joyas, and are held in great esteem. Let this mention suffice for a matter which could not be omitted, on account of the bearing it may have on the discussion of the reduction of these natives, — with a promise to revert in another place to an excess so criminal that it seems even forbidden to speak its name.”[2] While Font, as a missionary, was horrified by the practices of the Natives and wanted them to be saved and redeemed by God, Fages was suggesting that the sexual practices make the native Americans so deviant that they may be reason for their extermination.
While Font, as a missionary, was horrified by the practices of the Natives and wanted them to be saved and redeemed by God, Fages was suggesting that the sexual practices make the native Americans so deviant that they may be reason for their extermination.
These sources both describe the practices of specific Native American tribes, who, in some instances, were more accepting of gender and sexual differences, and how the colonizers were disgusted by the practices and planned to eradicate the behavior, changing sexuality in America. The Spanish diaries hint at what was to happen to Native Americans who allowed sexual and gender differences to be accepted within their communities.
[1] Pedro Font, Complete Diary of the Second Anza Expedition, trans. Herbert Eugene Bolton ( Berkeley: University of California, 1930-31), 105.
[2] Don Pedro Fages, An Historical, Political, and Natural Description of California, trans. Herbert I. Priestly (Ramona, California: Ballena Press, 1972), 6.
Sexuality in the Colonial Period 
