Indians.  Holder examined bote who was splendidly made, prepossessing, and in perfect health.  With much reluctance he agreed to a careful examination.  The sexual organs were quite normal, though perhaps not quite so large as his physique would suggest, but he had never had intercourse with a woman.  On removing his clothes he pressed his thighs together, as a timid woman would, so as to conceal completely the sexual organs; Holder says that the thighs “really, or to my fancy,” had the feminine rotundity.  He has heard a bote “beg a male Indian to submit to his caress,” and he tells that “one little fellow, while in the agency boarding-school, was found frequently surreptitiously wearing female attire.  He was punished, but finally escaped from school and became a bote, which vocation he has since followed.”

At Tahiti at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Turnbull[34] found that “there are a set of men in this country whose open profession is of such abomination that the laudable delicacy of our language will not admit it to be mentioned.  These are called by the natives Mahoos; they assume the dress, attitude, and manners of women, and affect all the fantastic oddities and coquetries of the vainest of females.  They mostly associate with the women, who court their acquaintance.  With the manners of the women they adopt their peculiar employments, making cloth, bonnets, and mats; and so completely are they unsexed that had they not been pointed out to me I should not have known them but as women.  I add, with some satisfaction, that the encouragement of this abomination is almost solely confined to the chiefs.”

Among the Sakalaves of Madagascar there are certain boys called sekatra, as described by Lasnet, who are apparently chosen from childhood on account of weak or delicate appearance and brought up as girls.  They live like women and have intercourse with men, with or without sodomy, paying the men who please them.[35]

Among the negro population of Zanzibar forms of homosexuality which are believed to be congenital (as well as acquired forms) are said to be fairly common.  Their frequency is thought to be due to Arab influence.  The male congenital inverts show from their earliest years no aptitude for men’s occupations, but are attracted toward female occupations.  As they grow older they wear women’s clothes, dress their hair in women’s fashion, and behave altogether like women.  They associate only with women and with male prostitutes, and they obtain sexual satisfaction by passive pederasty or in ways simulating coitus.  In appearance they resemble ordinary male prostitutes, who are common in Zanzibar, but it is noteworthy that the natives make a clear distinction between them and men prostitutes.  The latter are looked down on with contempt, while the former, as being what they are “by the will of God,” are tolerated.[36]

Homosexuality; occurs in various parts of Africa.  Cases of effeminatio and passive sodomy have been reported from Unyamwezi and Uganda.  Among the Bangala of the Upper Congo sodomy between men is very common, especially when they are away from home, in strange towns, or in fishing camps.  If, however, a man had intercourse with a woman per anum he was at one time liable to be put to death.[37]