Real Native Genius: How an Ex-Slave and a White Mormon Became Famous Indians by Angela Pulley Hudson (review)

This intriguing work delves into reporting and analyzing America’s history of cultural appropriation and exploitation and cultural definitions as methods of identity development and identity interaction. Angela Pulley Hudson introduces the reader to Warner McCary, a former slave turned Native American and sometime conman, and Lucy Stanton, a sometime Mormon who interspersed her identity claims with those of Native American identity. Pulley Hudson traces McCary (Okah Tubbee) and Stanton (Laah Ceil) as they develop their Indian identities, tour the country as Indians, and end their marriage and career. While this work contextualizes and discusses possible motives for Tubbee’s and Ceil’s choices, Pulley Hudson’s writing explores less of what their Indian performances say about themselves and more of what their performances said and did for Americans and American identity in making it more complex and diverse than categorical versions of American identities. Her work contributes to the discussion of racial distinctions and disruptions and the idea of Indianness as essentially American even as it was rejected as Other by America.

Americanness is explored in Pulley Hudson’s researched discussion of Indianness, blackness, and Mormonism. Pulley Hudson analyzes Tubbee’s and Ceil’s upbringing and contexts in the first two chapters, offering readers an in-depth look at the racial tensions of nineteenth-century America, America’s fascination with the myth of the vanishing Indian, and Mormonism’s role in America’s developing culture. The context and impact of the Fugitive Slave Act, the Indian Removal Act, Native celebrity, and the role of autobiographies in establishing American identities on both small and large scales are demonstrated through the stories of the two main “characters.” The impact of Mormonism, museum culture, and America’s interest in capturing and examining the essence of Indians are explored in chapters 3 and 4 as Okah Tubbee and Laah Ceil leave the Mormon Church, play across America as Indians, and profit from autobiographies and performances in museums. The concluding chapters (5 and 6) discuss the impact of the development of transportation and print technology on America, as well as Tubbee’s and Ceil’s Indian performances, in which racial distinctions became even more vitriolic and defined. In addition, these chapters reflect on social conditions for women (Laah Ceil became an independent working woman when Okah Tubbee disappeared), on marriage (Tubbee married another wife, thus solidifying Ceil’s Indian identity as her plight was sentimentalized in print culture while Tubbee was positioned as a con artist, as print revealed and connected his various identities across geographical regions), and on abortion practices (as Laah Ceil may have dabbled in the field).

Okah Tubbee used Indian performance as a way to escape some of the racist ideologies concerning African Americans during the nineteenth century. Tubbee’s former position as a slave gave him insight into how African Americans were thought of and socially categorized at the time. Additionally, his musical abilities and physical appearance gave him enough leeway that his claims to Indian heritage were plausible (at best). Throughout his career within a framework of hucksters, conmen, and Indian celebrities, his claim to be an Indian chief’s lost son was believed by some, questioned by others, and downright refuted by people who remembered McCary’s rise as a Negro musician. Tubbee is an example of an individual interacting with social mores and codes to create his own social position rather than become a victim of existing racial norms. While Indians were still relegated to a lower class, they were simultaneously praised for their character traits and cultural traditions. Being seen as an Indian allowed Tubbee freedoms and interactions that a Negro McCary would never have been afforded.

Laah Ceil is also discussed in her own right. As Tubbee’s Indian identity was falling apart after his second marriage, Ceil’s was confirmed even more. Rather than emphasizing the connection between...