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SPEAKER_00: This Pride Month, Womanaka is brought to you exclusively by Mercedes-Benz. Together, we're honoring people who've expanded the norms of gender and sexuality in the performing arts. Mercedes-Benz embraces the freedom of individual expression and continues to support and stand with the LGBTQIA plus community. Listen all month long as we share stories of proud individuals whose authentic expression in their lives and bodies of work have challenged norms, driving society forward.
SPEAKER_02: Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Carmen Borca Carrillo and this is Womanaka. June is Pride Month and to celebrate, we're highlighting queer stars of the stage and screen. They're women who expanded the norms of gender and sexuality in the limelight and behind the scenes. I helped curate the month and I'm so excited to guest host this episode. Today, we're talking about one of the first indigenous women to appear on an American stage and the first native male impersonator. Let's talk about Gowango Mohawk. Gowango was born on a Seneca reservation in Western New York in 1859. She was also given an English name, Caroline Mohawk, and went by Carrie in her early years. Her father was a medicine man. To the surrounding community, he was known as Dr. Allen, a popular doctor and talented horseman. Gowango's mother, according to some records, was a white woman named Lydia Hale. Not much is known about Gowango's early years. The details we do have mostly come from interviews and articles, which often use her background and her identity for publicity stunts. But here's what we do know. We know that she grew up riding horses, hunting, fishing, and rowing. We know that her father died when she was nine. She had no brothers or sisters, and she moved to Ohio with her mother after her father's death. When Gowango was 12, her mother remarried. Two years later, her mother died. Some sources indicate it may have been from abortion complications. There is some evidence that Gowango attended a girls' school in Ohio, and that it was there that she first caught the acting bug. When Gowango was 18, she married James Ryder, a 31-year-old Civil War veteran. A few years later, in 1883, she earned a small role in a play, and her acting career took off. Gowango appeared on stage in New York and Philadelphia. She met her second husband, Charles W. Charles, working on a show. They wed, despite each still being married to their former partners. A lot of Americans at this time were infatuated with the Wild West. Frontier plays and traveling shows created a binary of stories, that the West was unoccupied and free for the taking, or that native people were the aggressors, violent and dangerous to white settlers. Neither, of course, was anywhere near the truth. So after a few years in show business, Gowango decided to flip the script. In 1888, she wrote the play, Wep Ton No Ma, The Indian Mail Carrier. It was an action-packed, five-act melodrama featuring trained horses and knife fights. Gowango cast herself as the male lead. The programs billed her as the only Indian actress in her great, sensational, and thrilling picture of frontier life. But when the show opened in New York, the first reviews were terrible. Gowango didn't fit with white people's ideas of an indigenous person. She was tall and thin and light-skinned and spoke English without an accent. Despite the reviews, audiences kept coming, and in 1892, Gowango took her play overseas. For the next five years, she toured Europe and grew into a fierce activist for native rights. When she came back to the US, she performed to sold-out theaters. In 1900, Gowango took on another role, the male lead in Lincoln Carter's play, The Flaming Arrow. Gowango played White Eagle, competing for the heart of the fort commander's daughter, Mary. White Eagle beat back the other two male villains and won the girl, which hinted at both same-sex and interracial couples. Gowango broke barriers as the first native male impersonator and not just that, but as a native hero in a period when indigenous people were treated as the enemy. Gowango died in 1924. Her childhood home in Green, New York is now a historical monument. All month, we're talking about Pride on stage. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at Womanica Podcast. Special thanks to Jenny and Liz Kaplan for inviting me to guest host. Talk to you tomorrow.
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