Biography
Go-Won-Go Mohawk was a trailblazing indigenous actress and playwright in the 1880s. Unsatisfied with the roles being offered to her as a Native American woman, she wrote, directed, and starred in her own, highly successful productions, often casting herself as the heroic male lead.
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Go-Won-Go Mohawk was a trailblazing indigenous actress and playwright in the 1880s. Unsatisfied with the roles being offered to her as a Native American woman, she wrote, directed, and starred in her own, highly successful productions, often casting herself as the heroic male lead. Through her stage career she became an advocate and activist for Native American rights.
Go-Won-Go decided to write her own roles, ultimately carving out a groundbreaking career in which she told stories onstage about Indigenous people as the heroes of their own lives. And she did it while performing as a man. Her primary work was “Wep-ton-no-mah, the Indian Mail Carrier” (1892), which follows the title character, a young Indigenous man, as he saves a young white woman from a stampede, winning her heart and earning the respect of her family. The play presented themes of interracial coupling and Indigenous power and autonomy that were rare at the time. Mohawk herself played Wep-ton-no-mah, riding horses, fighting and performing stage combat with knives. She was the powerful Indigenous woman in the role of the powerful man, the hero and not the villain or the victim.
“It is natural for me to write,” she told The Liverpool Weekly Courier in 1893 while on tour in England, “and besides that, I never had a part in a play which seemed suitable to me, and therefore I made one for myself.” Go-Won-Go made her Broadway debut in 1900 as the lead in “The Flaming Arrow,” a melodrama written by Lincoln J. Carter, playing a male Indigenous character named White Eagle who falls in love with a white woman. She became so popular in England that she toured the country for almost a decade, first from 1893 to 1897 and then from 1903 to 1908. Go-Won-Go is an inspiration, a strong woman who never let the limits of her caste define or deter her from doing what she wanted to do.
- Lifespan
- 1859-1924
- Nationality
- Mohawk
- Occupations
- Cultural Figure, Performer
- Era
- 19th Century
- Born
- 1859 Reviewed
- Died
- 1924 Reviewed
- Tags
- Mohawk, 19th Century, Cultural Figure, Performer
- Themes
- Arts and Culture, Global History