Real Native Genius: How an Ex-Slave and a White Mormon Became Famous Indians

by Angela Pulley Hudson

In the mid-1840s, Warner McCary, an ex-slave from Mississippi, claimed a new identity for himself, traveling around the nation as Choctaw performer "Okah Tubbee." He soon married Lucy Stanton, a divorced white Mormon woman from New York, who likewise claimed to be an Indian and used the name "Laah Ceil." Together, they embarked on an astounding, sometimes scandalous journey across the United States and Canada, performing as American Indians for sectarian worshippers, theater audiences, and patent medicine seekers. Along the way, they used widespread notions of "Indianness" to disguise their backgrounds, justify their marriage, and make a living. In doing so, they reflected and shaped popular ideas about what it meant to be an American Indian in the mid-nineteenth century.

Weaving together histories of slavery, Mormonism, popular culture, and American medicine, Angela Pulley Hudson offers a fascinating tale of ingenuity, imposture, and identity. While illuminating the complex relationship between race, religion, and gender in nineteenth-century North America, Hudson reveals how the idea of the "Indian" influenced many of the era's social movements. Through the remarkable lives of Tubbee and Ceil, Hudson uncovers both the complex and fluid nature of antebellum identities and the place of "Indianness" at the very heart of American culture.

Genres: History, Biography

272 pages, Paperback

First published July 16, 2015

Reviews

[Christopher Angulo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun little history about an unusual couple (they wouldve flourished in this reality rv day and age). I thought the author handled the Mormon portion very well. Ive read a lot on the subject during the 1840's and learned a few new things here. The book was repetitive about the couple's desire to be seen as Indians (it was repeated often). But, overall, it was a deep look into society and its views on race.

[Domenica · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of my very favorite types of history books are about historical curiosities that make history especially interesting. This book concerns two people in the middle of 19th century America that represented the rigidity and fluidity of racial identity. One of those people, was a white Morman woman and the other a half-white, half-black male - both pretended to be Native Americans. The reasons why they did this remains somewhat of a mystery. The author surmises that especially in the case of the man, William McCary, he wished to escape the very rigid confines of being a black man in America. We don't really get a sense of why the woman, Lucy Stanton, also decided to take on the identity of a Native American, although it is definitely tied up in her being Mormon, which at the time, was a repressed population.

The story of these two individuals and the antebellum America they navigated is a fascinating one. This is a well-written book that alludes to the complexities of racial identity during the time but doesn't go deep enough. The book ends by calling for more research on the fluidity of identities during this time in America, but I wanted more analysis to back up the intriguing premise of this book.

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is well written. It entailed diligent research which is truly impressive. That research, however, led to a limited amount of narrative that is plagued by speculation and conjecture. Many of the questions one who would want answered are left begging. This account might have been better presented as a journal article. There is a just indictment of the cultural and political tropes used to define race and control non-whites around the time of the Civil War. But what of the featured couple themselves? They are hardly sympathetic characters. Is there no calling to account for individuals as there is for the environments that made them? Are we only victims of our circumstances, not capable of being called to account apart from our society? The author never gave me enough historical empathy for our protagonists. That made this a tough read.

[Raye · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has its ups and downs; while I appreciated the historical context and many of the footnotes, I did feel the actual information about the Tubbees was stretched a bit to make it the length it was. Some very good information about Natchez, the antebellum South, and the early Mormon movement, but I found myself much less interested in the Tubbees.