In the late 60s I discovered Richard Amory's classic "Song of the Loon". Though Amory made no claims for historical accuracy (he'd "taken certain very European characters from the novels of Jorge de Montemayor and Gaspar Gil Polo, painted them a gay aesthetic red, and transplanted them to the American wilderness"), it was a story readers /wanted/ to be true. How can a novel about cowboys, indians, and mountain men not get your blood racing?If you haven't read any of the three Loon books, you'll be surprised at their quality -- at least as good (and often better) than the average best-seller. Though sexually explicit, they aren't the cheesy "breechcloth rippers" you might expect. And though Amory was an English teacher, the details suggest he spent time at least hiking the woods. This is unlike James Fennimore Cooper, who knew little about "the subtle art of the woodsman" and made many mistakes. (See Mark Twain's devastating critique of Cooper.)Among the things Amory got right was the fact that the American frontier had, from the beginning, been described as a "paradise of bachelors". Many men -- most heterosexual -- wanted to escape from civilization to a homosocial environment, away from annoying females. * In the Loon novels, //there are no women//. Except for the mention of a female witch at the beginning of the first book, women simply don't exist, explicitly or implicitly.Indeed, /reproduction/ doesn't exist. The word "sex" -- as activity or gender -- is never used. An alien reading these books would have no idea how humans procreated. For Amory, what men do with other men is "make love". Though there are many "brief encounters", the stories focus on romantic relationships. In the first novel, Ephraim (a young man coming to grips with his sexuality) meets Cyrus, a trapper who can best be described as Dan Haggerty on steroids. Were there actually such real-world relationships? "Men in Eden" says "Yes, definitely"."Men in Eden" is principally a biography of William Drummond Stewart, a flamboyant (that's the euphemism) Scots noble who was nevertheless an excellent horseman, a keen shot, and a natural leader of men who earned their respect. (Jim Bridger liked him.) He played a minor role in the fur trade and rubbed shoulders with most of the better-known participants.Starting with "Male-Male Intimacy in Early America", William Benemann has been putting same-sex relationships in historical context, a refutation of historians who deny that gay men //have// any history. Benemann's work is characterized by vigorous (and sometimes wickedly amusing) writing, seemingly careful research, and an "if it quacks" attitude. The latter is important because historians have traditionally taken heterosexual behavior as a needn't-be-justified given, whereas homosexual activity requires absolute proof. (An earlier Stewart biographer invents a wife and child, ** while others cannot understand why he brought men along as companions.) For Benemann, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck -- it's a duck. William Drummond Stewart was very much a duck. (There's a joke in there, I believe. See the "Bells" episode of "Blackadder II".)Benemann also examines the question of how hunters, trappers, and other pioneers gratified their sexual urges. It's well-known they often married native women. The latter had good reason to marry white men, because their lives would be easier (indian women were apparently little more than drudges), and learning a European language would improve their status, as a social and economic go-between. A white man would therefore have had little trouble finding a bride.But Benemann unearths statistics that show about 1/6 of these men never married, and it was not uncommon for elderly bachelors to settle down in pairs (as occurred among cowhands -- see "The Far Country"). There are multiple obvious reasons for this -- one of which is that some (if not many) of these relationships were affectional or sexual.Emphatically recommended.* Men of the 18th and 19th centuries sometimes wondered why God had created humans "male and female". Men were sexually attracted to women, but that didn't mean they liked being around them. Couldn't God have arranged reproduction in some other manner?** This biographer apparently overlooked the child Stewart had by a maid. He saw that the child was properly taken care of, and a fake marriage license created, dated nine months prior to the birth.