1. John M. Gunn, Sehat-Chen: History, Traditions and Narratives of the Queres Indians of Laguna and Aroma. Albuquerque, New Mexico: Albright and Anderson, 1917. (Reprinted, New York: AMS, 1980.) Gunn, my mother’s great uncle, lived among the Lagunas all of his adult life. He spoke Laguna (Keres) and gathered information in somewhat informal ways while sitting in the sun visiting with older people. He married Meta Atseye, my grandmother, years after her husband (John Gunn’s brother) died, and may have taken much of his information from her stories or explanations of Laguna ceremonial events. She had a way of “translating” terms and concepts from Keres into English and from a Laguna conceptual framework into an American one—as she understood it. For example, she used to refer to the Navajo people as “gypsies,” probably because they traveled in covered wagons.
2. For a detailed exposition of what this dynamic consists of, see Adrienne Rich, “Compulsive Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society Vol. 4, No. 4 (Summer 1980). Rpt. as a pamphlet with an updated foreword (Denver: Antelope Publications, 1982), 1612 St. Paul, Denver, Colorado 80206.
3. For a detailed analysis of the term and the deliberate misinformation regarding the status of women in those cultures Anglo colonizers were earliest in contact with, see Robert Steven Grumet’s article, “Skunksquaws, Shamans and Tradeswomen: Middle Atlantic Coastal Algonkian Women During the 17th and 18th Centuries,” in Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, eds. (New York: Praeger Special Studies, J. F. Bergine Publishers, 1980), pp. 46–53. According to Grumet the English equivalence-term for Skunksquaw was “Queen” or even “Empress.”