Osh-Tisch

Osh-Tisch (Crow: "Finds Them and Kills Them")[1][2] was a Crow badé. A badé (also spelled baté) is a male-bodied person in a Crow community who takes part in some of the social and ceremonial roles usually filled by women in that culture.

Osh-Tisch fought in the 1876 Battle of the Rosebud, as recounted by Pretty Shield.[3] During the battle, Osh-Tisch and a woman named The Other Magpie saved Bull Snake, and Osh-Tisch later shot a Lakota warrior, for which Osh-Tisch received her name.[3][4]

In the late 1890s, an American agent named Briskow, tasked with forcing the Plains Indians to assimilate into the dominant culture, jailed Osh-Tisch and the other badés, and forced them to get masculine haircuts, wear masculine clothing, and perform manual labor such as planting trees. The Crow, who considered their badés valuable members of their community, particularly known for their needlework and cooking,[5] were outraged, saying this abuse went against their nature.[6] Chief Pretty Eagle used what power he had to compel the agent to resign and leave tribal lands.[2] Crow historian Joe Medicine Crow, delivering this oral history in 1982 said, "It was a tragedy, trying to change them."[7]

Osh-Tisch was one of the last known badés of the Crow Nation, and the institution of the badé is said to have gone into decline during Osh-Tisch's life.[8] With modern LGBT communities providing more options in current society, some contemporary badé people may participate in a revival of these traditions, or in the modern, pan-Indian two-spirit or LGBT communities.

Sources
  1. Also spelled Ohchiish; from óhchikaapi "find".
  2. Will Roscoe (2000). Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 25, 35. ISBN 0-312-22479-6.
  3. Joseph Agonito (2016). Brave Hearts: Indian Women of the Plains. pp. 9–10. ISBN 978-1493019069. Pretty Shield [...revealed] the role Finds Them and Kills Them (Pretty Shield and Linderman referred to Osh Tisch by the English rendering of her name) and The Other Magpie played in the fight against the Lakotas that took place on Rosebud Creek [...Pretty Shield] described how Finds Them and Kills Them "[...] wore woman's clothes; and she had the heart of a woman.["...] Pretty Shield respected the womanly side of Finds Them and Kills Them by always referring to "her" with feminine pronouns. [...] During the fight at the Rosebud, these two women fought bravely, expecting death at the hands of the enemy. For this reason, Finds Them and Kills Them changed into men's clothing before the fighting began. [...] Bull Snake fell from his horse, badly wounded. Finds Them and Kills Them rode to his defense, firing her gun at the advancing Lakotas. [...] Bull Snake was saved.
  4. David W. Machacek; Melissa M. Wilcox (2003). Sexuality and the World's Religions. p. 53. ISBN 1576073599. Osh-Tisch (which means "Finds Them and Kills Them"), a Crow boté discussed by Roscoe (1998), Walter Williams (1992), and Lang (1998), considered herself to be the last boté. Osh-Tisch received her name during the Battle of the Rosebud.
  5. Transgender Warriors by Leslie Feinberg, Beacon Press, Massachusetts, 1996, p. 26.
  6. The Crow Indians (1983, ISBN 0803279094)
  7. Transgender Warriors by Leslie Feinberg, Beacon Press, Massachusetts, 1996, pp. 22–23.
  8. Sabine Lang (1998). Men as women, women as men: changing gender in Native American cultures. University of Texas Press. p. 117. ISBN 0-292-74701-2.
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