Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics

by Jason Porath

  Funnily enough, this inquisition mirrored the one she’d received months earlier upon first meeting Charles VII. After lengthy examination of her nether regions to determine that she was, in fact, a virgin, the French friars in charge of determining that she was a legitimate prophet asked her what language her voices spoke. Her reply: “Better than yours.” When asked if she believed in God, she answered, “Yes, better than you.” In the end, the English found her guilty of a number of charges (most of which amounted to dressing as a man, an accusation that blithely overlooked the fact that a number of female Christian saints had done the exact same thing), and she was executed with extreme prejudice. She burned on her funeral pyre for a full 30 minutes, screaming to heaven for help. Her last recorded word, shrieked at the crowd as loudly as she could muster, was “Jesus.”

  It would be nice to say that Joan of Arc’s exploits brought an end to the Hundred Years’ War, but it dragged on for nearly 20 more years. However, in an oblique manner, she did provide the turning point for the war—by making the whole ordeal (including her trial) unreasonably expensive, Joan’s actions created friction between the English and their French allies. Yolande seized upon this weakness and used it to turn England’s French allies against England, thus finally ending the war.

  As for Yolande? She died at a ripe old age, having sent two of her protégés out into the world: Louis XI, the devious “Spider King” of France, and Margaret of Anjou, credited with later debilitating England by helping start the War of the Roses.

  Joan herself, having been a public figure for a mere 11 months, slid into the realms of legend for centuries. It was not until much later, when French historians, notably Jules Michelet, wrote passionately about Joan that she was brought back to prominence and canonized as a saint. It is in no small part due to these efforts that virtually every warrior woman written about since World War I—certainly a great many in this book—has been compared to Joan of Arc. She is, to many, the standard by which all others are compared.

  • ART NOTES •

  Joan’s flag is a replica of the one she brought into battle. It features Jesus flanked by angels, with the words JHESUS MARIA.

  To Joan’s right, riding a dragon, is Margaret of Antioch, one of the saints who spoke to her. Margaret’s claim to fame was that Satan, in the form of a dragon, swallowed her whole, but then she escaped when her cross caused him gastrointestinal distress.

  Lighting the cannon is the Archangel Michael, one of the other angels who spoke to Joan.

  In the background, giving orders to archers, is Yolande of Aragon, fittingly obscured in shadow.

  Osh-Tisch

  (LATE 19TH CENTURY–EARLY 20TH CENTURY, CROW NATION/UNITED STATES)

  Princess of Two Spirits

  You know you’re in for a treat when you’re writing about someone whose name translates to “Finds Them and Kills Them” in Crow. Osh-Tisch was an assigned-male-at-birth woman* and was one of the last of the Crow Nation baté (Two Spirit spiritual leaders)—oh, and you can be sure, she earned her name.

  She is also far from the only awesome lady in this story.

  As a baté, Osh-Tisch lived apart from the main area of the camp and had duties ranging from artist to medicine woman to shaman. She was not just any baté—she was Head Baté in Charge. Contemporary accounts described her as quietly dignified, almost regal.

  But during the incident that earned Osh-Tisch her name, she was not acting in her traditional roles at all. Instead, she had taken up arms with her male brethren and gone to war against the Lakota. This act, while, according to Native American historians, not unique in the history of Two Spirits, was so incredibly rare that this author has yet to find a similar story elsewhere.

  Osh-Tisch’s bravery would have been largely forgotten were it not for a Crow woman named Pretty Shield who spoke of it many years later. While recounting details of the Battle of the Rosebud (a battle in which the Crow fought in a coalition led by the US Army against the Lakota and Cheyenne tribes), Pretty Shield leaned forward and asked: “Did the men ever tell you anything about a woman who fought . . . on the Rosebud?”

  Surprised, the reporter replied, “No.” Pretty Shield chuckled, remarking that the men “do not like to tell of it.” She went on to tell a story of not just one but two take-charge women on the battlefield.

  During the battle, a Crow warrior was wounded and fell from his horse. Sensing an opportunity, the Lakota charged forward to collect his scalp. In response, Osh-Tisch jumped off her horse, stood over him, and started shooting at the approaching Lakota “as rapidly as she could load her gun.”

  Meanwhile, a second woman named The Other Magpie started to scream to create a distraction. Unlike Osh-Tisch, The Other Magpie (described as pretty, brave, wild, and unmarried) had no firearm. Instead, she had a stick. Not even a particularly good stick either: this was a coup stick.

  What’s a coup stick, you ask? Well, the supremely brave (and possibly crazy) among certain Native American tribes would use decorative sticks in battle instead of weapons. These were coup sticks. For each hit scored, they’d rack up points and prestige in the world’s most extreme game of tag. Hit enough people and your coup stick got to be pretty dang fancy. The Other Magpie’s was not fancy. It was a stick with a single feather tied to it.

  The Other Magpie, furious because her brother had recently been killed by the Lakota, rode into war with a simple coup stick at her side. Riding straight at the Lakota, she alternated between waving her stick wildly, spitting at them, and yelling, “My spit is my arrows.” Yeah.

  With the Lakota distracted by this utterly bizarre sight, The Other Magpie hit one of them with her coup stick. A second later, the same guy was dead from Osh-Tisch’s bullet, as if The Other Magpie was some sort of supernatural harbinger of death. This act earned Osh-Tisch her “Finds Them and Kills Them” moniker. As the surviving Lakota gave up their scalping mission and scattered, The Other Magpie dismounted and scalped the newly dead Lakota in return. In the end, it was one of only 10 scalps collected by the Crow during the battle. The Other Magpie cut it into many pieces, so that more people could join in the post-battle ceremonial dancing back at camp.

  Remember, kids, sharing is caring.

  In the years following the Battle of the Rosebud, the Crow were confined to reservations, and it is here that the story starts to get sad. The various missionaries and government agents who visited the reservations were not okay with Two Spirits or anything they considered deviant—which is to say, everything save missionary position with your wife with the lights off. In the late 1890s, this attitude reared its head when an agent named Briskow imprisoned Osh-Tisch and the other batés. He cut their hair and made them wear men’s clothing. Various Crow described this as “crazy” and “a tragedy.”

  The Crow Nation, however, rallied around Osh-Tisch. The tribal leaders did not hold much sway at this point in time with the US government, but they threw their full weight behind her and demanded that Briskow be fired. In short order, he was gone. To the Crow of the time, Osh-Tisch’s nature was not only completely accepted but even celebrated.

  Unfortunately, harsh treatment from whites was not at all uncommon during this time, and a great many Two Spirits from other tribes ended up committing suicide after being forced into binary gender roles. A Lakota man described the treatment thusly: “I heard sad stories of winktes [Lakota Two Spirits] committing suicide, hanging themselves rather than change . . . after that, those who remained would put on man’s clothing.”

  The handful of recorded interactions with Osh-Tisch support that. In every case, her white contemporaries (who usually referred to her as “him”) would ask her questions like why she wore women’s clothes. She’d reply that she was “inclined to be a woman, never a man.” When they asked what work she did, she said, “All woman’s work,” and, with no small amount of pride, produced an ornate dress she’d made. Her entire life she tried to explain and normalize what and who she was. Under her leadership, a quiet
inter-tribe outreach effort began to emerge, linking all the different tribes’ Two Spirits in secret communication in an attempt to facilitate understanding.

  Sadly, her efforts were for naught. She is one of the only Two Spirits whose name and story survive to the present day.

  After Osh-Tisch died in 1929, the restrictive moral code of Western missionaries took hold in the Crow Nation and became internalized. With no others to take up the role of baté, the institution died out, and its ancient knowledge with it. This happened across almost all Native American tribes. Even though there has been a modern movement to reinstitute the idea of Two Spirits among the tribes, it has been met with great resistance. Modern-day Two Spirits suffer persecution and hate crimes even by members of their own tribe. While everyone agrees that Two Spirits existed, the tradition, wisdom, and acceptance of these roles has been lost to history. It is important to remember and to honor them.

  So here’s to Osh-Tisch: a bridge between genders, between worlds, between tribes.

  • ART NOTES AND TRIVIA •

  Initially, this entry was going to be entirely on Osh-Tisch, but The Other Magpie just couldn’t be left out.

  Osh-Tisch is wearing the same outfit as in the one surviving picture of her. This is actually not historically accurate, since she wore men’s clothing to the battle. She is portrayed, instead, as she liked to portray herself.

  The plants beside her in the picture are a nod to her shamanistic medicine woman role.

  Both The Other Magpie and Osh-Tisch have long, luxurious hair. Anthropologist George Catlin described at length how the Crow took pride in their hair.

  The Other Magpie is, of course, spitting.

  Osh-Tisch is firing a period-accurate Winchester rifle, although the Crow might have been using other guns, like Springfield rifles, at the Battle of the Rosebud.

  And as a final aside: the names of Pretty Shield’s parents were Kills in the Night and Crazy Sister-in-Law. Which is pretty rad.

  The Term “Two Spirit”

  “Two Spirit” is a term likely to trip up a lot of people. Virtually all Native American tribes subscribe to the idea of more than two genders, encompassing identities such as women born as men and vice versa, as well as homosexual, pansexual, asexual people, and the like. “Two Spirit” is most closely analogous to “transgender,” but it’s not a direct synonym and should not be used in this case, as many Two Spirits take exception to being lumped under, or appropriated by, the term “transgender.” So that word’s out.

  Back in the day, Two Spirits were referred to as berdache. This is a term that absolutely nobody should ever, ever use, as its origins are somewhere between the French word for “male prostitute” and the Persian word for “slave.” You’ll find it a lot in old literature on the subject, but that word’s definitely out.

  Earlier online drafts of this entry used the terms “male-bodied” and “female-bodied,” which some find troublesome, so those are out too. Subsequent drafts used “biologically malesexed,” which some still didn’t like. The preferred term as of this writing is “assigned male/female at birth”—which, unfortunately, may not be accurate in this case. Not all native tribes assign gender at birth (some wait as late as four years old), and there’s no evidence that Osh-Tisch was ever assigned male by her tribe. However, given that most native children were assigned gender at birth, it seems reasonable to use that language.

  Lastly, since each tribe has totally different numbers, kinds, social roles, and even words for said genders, many take exception to even being lumped under the umbrella of Two Spirit. So that word would arguably be out, except there’s really no other word to use for the phenomenon.

  English is imperfect, y’all!

  The Night Witches

  (C. 1940, RUSSIA)

  The Civilian Pilots Who Became the Nazis’ Worst Nightmare

  The Nazi soldiers on the Eastern Front couldn’t sleep. Every night, as they settled into their beds, the same noise would visit them, faint at first but slowly getting louder. It was the whistling of faintly displaced wind, like a witch on a broomstick. Then they’d hear a noisy engine roar to life overhead, and they knew they had mere seconds to scatter before . . . BOOM.

  Thus did the Nazis come to fear the Soviet 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment,* known to them as the Nachthexen—the Night Witches.

  The Night Witches mark one of the greatest underdog accomplishments in military history. Handed a bunch of slow, flammable trainer planes that had been designed only to dust crops, an all-female group of untrained civilians became one of the most decorated divisions of the entire Soviet military. Flying without armor, guns, sights, radio, cockpits, brakes, parachutes, or virtually any navigation machinery, they dropped bombs on the Germans every three minutes, like clockwork, every night for three years.

  And they did this while completely upending Soviet military culture.

  The Night Witches were one of three all-female divisions started by flying ace Marina Raskova, and the only one that stayed strictly female. A national celebrity on par with Amelia Earhart even before World War II began,* Raskova had the ear of Stalin. He agreed to let her recruit women into the military, seeing their inclusion largely as a morale booster. Raskova fielded over 2,000 inquiries and interviewed all applicants herself. She ended up with a team of civilian volunteers, mostly ages 17 to 26, almost none with military experience. They’d have to be trained.

  The instruction was brutal. Due to a severe need for help on the front lines, the recruits had three years of training crammed into four months. They worked 14 hours a day, sleeping in a converted school or a recently vacated cow shed, without even the benefit of paper to write down notes.

  Their first sortie was disastrous. On one of the first runs, two of their Po-2 bomber craft crashed, killing all four on board. With the women clearly despondent and shell-shocked, their commander sent them back out immediately, giving them an easy target. They carried out their mission swiftly and came back with renewed morale.

  As their missions continued, the Night Witches began to develop their own tactics to deal with their lousy equipment. Knowing that their planes had insanely noisy engines, they would cut them well before reaching the target, then glide in so low to the ground they had to speak in a whisper lest the Germans on the ground hear them. The characteristic whoosh of the air over their wings was what earned them their name.

  Each pilot created custom markings on her plane’s wings to use as makeshift “sights”—they had to, since each pilot was a different height. They began using “decoy” planes—while one would glide in soundlessly, another would swing by, engines roaring, catching the Germans’ attention and allowing the real attack to go off without a hitch. The bombers’ aim was so good that rumors spread among the Nazis that the pilots had been given an experimental serum that gave them perfect night vision.*

  Some of their innovations even went against regulation. Instead of working only on their own planes, the Night Witches dogpiled whatever plane needed help. This “brigade” system enabled them to turn around a plane in five minutes, allowing them to run 10 to 12 sorties a night. Unable to lift the 50-kilogram bombs by themselves, they loaded the bombs in teams. They would even eat and sleep in their planes so as not to lose any opportunities when there were breaks in the weather. The men didn’t do this.

  The men didn’t do a lot of what the Night Witches did.

  Beyond facing the terror of the Nazis’ flak cannons, which could easily ignite their cotton-and-plywood planes, the Night Witches had to confront the patronizing attitude of their male comrades. They often heard comments attacking their femininity, like “If you go to the front, no young men will want to go to the movies with you.”

  With no female uniforms available, they were given ill-fitting men’s uniforms and had to stuff their oversized boots with newspaper. They cut their hair short, shedding what was, for many, a source of great pride. And then there was homesickness: many had never left home before, an
d some were barely even adults.

  But the Night Witches made their barracks a home. They altered their uniforms to fit better and decorated them with embroidery. They gave each other manicures and new hairdos, decorated their barracks with rugs and pillows, and had dancing and singing contests when the weather was bad. They even, in a total reversal of military policy, referred to each other by their first names.

  Simultaneously, they displayed an intense level of discipline. Nobody drank, although they were rationed a regular amount of vodka. (Russia, everyone!) Even when they suffered staggering losses during a July raid, not a drop of liquor was consumed. They were very strict about fraternization and considered wartime romance shameful. This last point, however, was not always enforced—not only were there affairs (both hetero- and homosexual), but there was at least one pregnancy. However, when the commanders regretfully relayed the news of the childbirth to their superiors, they received laughter and congratulations: “This means she bombed the Germans while pregnant! That’s amazing!”

  By 1944, the Night Witches had established such a tight-knit community that, as a journalist noted, visiting men behaved “as if they were standing on a minefield, not a runway.” Yevgeniya Rudneva, an astronomer and poet turned Night Witch, summed up the division’s attitude in a letter to her parents: “Now beauty lies not in lipstick or a manicure, not in clothes or a hairdo, but in what we actually do . . . our desire to smash the Germans as quickly and practically as possible makes us beautiful.”