Reclaiming Burlesque - Meet Go-Won-Go Mohawk

Picture of Go-Won-Go Mohawk (1860 - 1924)

Burlesque has many Legends who are known for their contributions to the industry as we know it today. One in particular who has played a key role in not only vaudeville - but also drag - is Seneca performer and playwright, Go-Won-Go Mohawk, who was active within vaudeville between 1889 - 1910. Born Carrie A. Mohawk, they eventually took the name of Go-Won-Go Mohawk when they entered into vaudeville. Claim to fame and innovation can be made by many performers of the time, but in Christine Bold's book Vaudeville Indians, Go-Won-Go is noted as the “mother of all Vaudeville Indians."

To say that I admire Go-Won-Go deeply is an understatement. They were a complete badass in my eyes. 

They were known for their horse trick riding on horses and strength. At the time, most women who would ride horses would do so side saddle, but Go-Won-Go would straddle the horse for intense tricks that required strength and a firm grasp. They were also known for their whip routines and lariat work. They were not afraid to showcase their strength. Because of this and the way Go-Won-Go would showcase their performance, there is a lot of speculation that they were 2-Spirit, as they were also frequently seen moving between gender representation and performance throughout the stages they existed. 

A quote by them that's noted in Vaudeville Indians:

'I grew tired of being cast in uncongenial roles. I said to myself that I must have something free and wild that would fit my own nature. I wanted to ride and wrestle, and I thought, Well, I can't do that as a woman, I must act like a man, or better, a boy."

This was the reasoning behind the first time they wrote themselves as a male character in one of their plays, Wep-ton-no-Mah. They didn’t feel connected to the female spirit being portrayed onstage, so they created the role they needed for themself. As described by Roger Hall, At the time, women could be seen onstage dressed as men, but were often scripted as women in disguise as men. However, Go-Won-Go wasn’t in disguise. They WERE the man, and therefore flipped the audience’s expectations of both Indigenous people and women onstage. Similarly, through Go-Won-Go's plays, they not only highlighted Indigenous actors and stories, but their work was some of the first noted for portraying Indigenous characters as the heroes.

And can you guess what happened next? 

The rebellious spirit being shown in this way opened the floodgates for others' commentary and twisting of the narrative. One of the biggest (cheap) publishers of the time, Beadle and Adams would produce novel series that referenced Go-Won-Go as an Indian savage who was extremely heteronormative. But despite this constant back and forth of who “owns the narrative”, Go-Won-Go would continue to have a successful career for many years. This experience with the media is not an uncommon experience, even today. Indigenous performers and creators have always been in the middle of needing to adapt to the realities of the world while pushing back to insert their stories and culture. And at the same time, many of us are also conscious of how and where we present our art. When I create an act that leans into cultural elements, such as through costuming, dance style, or narrative, I am very conscious of which stages it is intended for. I don't

accept an invitation to perform those acts if I feel the act is being tokenized or if I don't have the space needed backstage for me to properly ground into the routine before and after I present it. How can we tell stories in burlesque that reclaim something like sexuality when the media and Society for so long has portrayed Indigenous women as either squ*ws or pure maidens meant to be paraded around for the white man? And how can 2-Spirit people share all sides of themselves, masculine and feminine, when a lot of Society still views them as only one gender. It's a very nuanced conversation, one that I can't go into too far within this piece, but I often wonder what it must have been like for other performers like Go-Won-Go Mohawk at the time when the media coverage was so much louder and racism more explicit. The need to be conscious of both one's own safety and telling stories in a way so they land with the audience while also remaining authentic and pushing as far as you can without getting lost.

I first learned about Go-Won-Go Mohawk from Vaudeville Indians. And after doing some more online digging over a handful of months, it appears that they are more recently being returned to the limelight. Many of the articles and research articles I found are from post 2020, with a few exceptions written in the early 2010s. Nearly 100 years after their departure from vaudeville, they are now being talked about again. Go-Won-Go is one of the few vaudeville Legends who has many articles and research papers that exist about them and their influence on the industry. There are many more Indigenous Vaudeville and Burlesque Legends who are still hidden waiting to be rediscovered, and I will share more overtime. But before we can move forward to today, I felt it was important to highlight one of the origins of Indigenous burlesque. There were others, even from the same time as Go-Won-Go, but I am so grateful for their contributions. They led the path for many Indigenous performers, playwrights, and actors to follow.

Sources:

Bold, C. (2022). Vaudeville Indians on Global Circuits, 1880s-1930s. Book. Yale University Press.

Dick, M. 1889 – 1910 Gowongo Mohawk: https://www.dragkinghistory.com/1889-1910-gowongo-mohawk/

Go-Wan-Go Mohawk: Intermezzo Two-Step: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uz0cvaNTdA

Kaplan, J. (2022). Pride on Stage: Gowongo Mohawk. Podcast. Womanica. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/pride-on-stage-gowongo-mohawk/id1464524725?i=1000567474876

Otis, M. (2017). From Iroquoia to Broadway: The Careers of Carrie A. Mohawk and Esther Deer. Carlton University. 3:43. https://www.iroquoia.org/Iroquoia%20-%20journal/Iroquoia%20-%202017%20-%20sample.pdf

Simas, R. (2023). “Biography of Go-Won-Go Mohawk” by Seneca performer Rosy Simas. https://thepeopleandthetext.ca/21April2023