Passing as native American celebrities : textual performance and the creation of
authenticity in A sketch of the life of Okah Tubbee
著者（英） Keiko Shirakawa
journal or
publication title
Doshisha literature
number 56‑57
page range 1‑18
year 2014‑03‑15
権利（英） English Literary Society of Doshisha University
URL http://doi.org/10.14988/pa.2017.0000014870
Passing as Native American Celebrities: Textual Performance and the Creation of Authenticity in A Sketch of the Life of Okah Tubbee
KEIKO SHIRAKAWA
1. Performing Text, Performative Self
One of the most interesting, yet obscure, cases informing the politics of racial identity in antebellum America is that of Warner McCary, also known as William McCary, Warner William McCary, William Chubbee, William McChubbee, and most famously, Okah Tubbee. He was allegedly a N ativeAmerican itinerant musician and a skillful Indian doctor (sometimes called Dr. OK), as well as an advocate of unity and friendship between Native and European Americans. Among the many legends and stories concerning great Native American warriors and chiefs, McCary's narrative is idiosyncratic, because his life story is considered to have been narrated and transcribed to disguise his identity purportedly as a fugitive slave. He manipulated his racial identity in ways favorable to himself and acceptable in the antebellum South: he "passed" as a Native American showman named Okah Tubbee, talented in flute-playing and inventing musical instruments. Having effaced the social stigma of a slave, he adjusted to every local scene, masquerading, for instance, as a "lost son" of Choctaw chief Mushulatubbee, as a self-acclaimed, albeit quack, Indian medicine man, and even as aN ative American rights activist.
Despite his illiteracy, thanks to his educated wife, he must have recognized the political power of written words. Understanding the formula of both captivity and slave narratives, as well as appropriating the name
of the protagonist in William Gilmore Simms' popular short story titled
"Oakatibbee; or, the Choctaw Sampson" (1845), McCary created a curious life as a proud Indian with an independent spirit, who had been captured and forced to live in slavery (Littlefield xviii). The "authorized" edition of his autobiography, A Sketch of the Life of Okah Tubbee, (Called) William Chubbee, Son of the Head Chief, Mashaleh Tubbee, of the Chactaw Nation of Indians. By Laah Ceil Manatai Ellah Tubbee, His Wife (1852)1 was dictated to and edited by his literate wife. Similar to slave narratives popular around the time of the autobiography's publication, A Sketch includes authenticating material: a prefatory essay by Rev. L. L. Allen (albeit whose name is deleted in this edition) on the "Indian Character," an account of the "Indian Covenant" supplied by an Indian elder named Pochongehala, and many official letters and references, all of which appear to ratify his life story. Thus, endorsed by validating documents, Warner McCary, a Mississippi slave, artfully transformed himself into Okah Tubbee, a Native American celebrity. Eventually, McCary came to live in Toronto, Canada, the ultimate sanctuary for fugitive slaves.
In addition to realizing the power of narratives, McCary must have known how antebellum audiences favored and applauded romanticized Indian plays, such as John Augustus Stone's Metamora; or, the Last of the Wampanoags (1829), an enormous hit with a run of approximately 60 years. While Stone's eponymous Native American protagonist was portrayed by a white actor, the disguised Edwin Forrest, "Okah Tubbee"
was enacted by a former slave, Warner McCary. Interestingly, McCary's mixed racial status-that is, his double racial identity as a Southern slave and a Native American chief's son-reflects his performance style: a mixture of Indian play and black minstrel show.
The entertainment staged by the McCarys rhetorically and/or literally authenticated his autobiography, as A Sketch opens with a reprint
of their performance handbill.2 This demonstrates how intensely the McCarys attempted to enhance the veracity of his shaky background.
Assisted by his wife and "introduced with testimonials from his kind [white] friends" who reinforced his entertainment ability and personality, McCary as Tubbee would appear onstage, where he played curious musical instruments, such as the Sauce Pan ana and the Musical Tomahawk. It is likely that he would recite some episode from his narrative. Meanwhile, his wife called Laah Ceil Manatoi Ellah Tubbee would offer "an interesting account of her people." Of course "their rich and much admired Indian costume," especially their two-year-old son's "full attire of the Indian Brave," would attract audiences. The descriptions from this program, inserted at the beginning of McCary's autobiography, combine written text with spectacle, thereby inspiring the readers' visual imaginations and providing a strong impression of the McCary family's Native American- ness. Thus, McCary's text begins its performance even before the start of the narrative.
However, another idiosyncrasy of this narrative is that what it omits reveals much about the McCary's hidden lives, which are closely related to Mormonism and its notorious denial of priesthood along racial lines. Thus, this paper introduces and analyzes this version of Warner William McCary's/Okah Tubbee's autobiography and the McCarys' curious racial performance in the Mormon camps and the antebellum South. But before discussing their involvement with Mormonism, I elucidate some ambiguous facts regarding the life of McCary.
2. Concealment of Truth, Creation of Authenticity
According to A Sketch and Daniel Littlefield Jr.'s archival research,
"Okah Tubbee's" life plays out as follows. He was born around 1810 in Natchez, Mississippi as Warner McCary, the son of an Mrican American
slave woman called Francis or Franky, who was owned by James McCary, originally a Pennsylvania cabinetmaker living at the place around that time. There exist theories which claim that James McCary was his father, but his paternity remains a mystery. As he was simply described as a mulatto, he might be of Choctaw lineage, as Warner McCary himself insisted and literary critic Jonathan Brennan speculates. However, in contemporary legal terms, it is irrelevant, because regardless of his father's identity-Native American or white planter-Warner McCary was legally considered to be a black slave.
Franky had two older children, but McCary was purportedly treated worse than his siblings. When the planter James McCary died, Franky and the older children were manumitted and even bequeathed property; on the other hand, Warner McCary was declared by the master's will to be held as a slave throughout his lifetime, for the benefit of his two siblings. This difference in status, as Littlefield suggests, probably led to his rejection of his Mrican origin and desire to belong to another race (x). As it is well- known that the Indian Removal and the expansion of the Southern plantation system are closely related, both races were in fact commingling around Natchez when the western portion of Mississippi Territory was newly joined to the Union as a state in 1817 (Hudson Chapter 5-6).
Littlefield remarks as well that, at the time of Warner McCary's birth, Choctaw Indians commonly lived around Natchez, and social and economic interactions among whites, slaves, and Native Americans were well established in the local market (xi). Thus, asserting himself as a kidnapped Choctaw chief's son was a quick, relatively easy way for McCary to be liberated from slavery.
From the first page of his narrative, McCary emphasizes his childhood memories of his father: "The first recollections of my childhood are scenes of sorrow; though I have an imperfect recollection of a kind father, who was
a very large man, with dark, red skin, and his head was adorned with feathers of a most beautiful plumage." With his red father he seems "to have been happy then," but such a vague memory suddenly changes, "for I had a new father, or a man who took me to a new home, which proves to have been Natchez Mississippi." McCary soon realized that man "was not my own father, neither in appearance nor in action, and began to understand that I could have but one father. This man was white, and a slave woman [FrankyJ had the management of his house ... yet they obliged me to call her mother" (17-18). Later in the narrative, another slave woman named Sally Kelly, who had witnessed her master selling the stolen baby of "old Bill Chubbee, the chief of some tribe of Mississippi Indians" (45) to James McCary, testified to the truth ofMcCary's "imperfect" yet plausible memory"
above (42-45).
In addition, not only McCary's swift adaptation to the wilderness but also his "violent and unconquerable temper" (27) indicate his Native American lineage. An episode in which he was imprisoned and severely whipped, because of his violent response to a white lad who denigrated him, effectively suggest his nobility and untamed spirit as a Choctaw chief's son (27-29). Occasionally, McCary constructs favorable relationships with Native Americans in neighboring villages and towns, and visits the Creeks, Seminoles, or the Florida Indians, introducing into his narrative their patriarchal customs of burial, naming, and worship of the Great Spirits (57-62). When visiting the Choctaw nations, he reports that he was narrated the history and fate of the Choctaws as well as recognized as the lost child of Mushulatubbee by Puch-Chee-Nubee, an old acquaintance of McCary's purported father (62-68; 81-83).
McCary strongly insisted on this version of his origin, and at the same time he also claimed free status on the basis of completing his apprenticeship under a blacksmith (31). However, his legal status as a
slave never changed. As his mistress, his mother Franky severely abused him, telling him that if he desired freedom, he should purchase it (45-47).
Even if he had been liberated, Mississippi laws required that "all free blacks between the ages of 16 to 50 leave the state within 90 days or face sale into slavery for 5 years. Those who could demonstrate good character before the probate court could obtain a license to remain" (139-40). Some local whites who believed him attempted to help McCary obtain the license, but he failed and consequently fled the state. Owing to his musical talent, which he had already exerted as a fife player for the Natchez Cadets, he joined itinerant musical bands. This allowed him to travel and perform on board ships on the Mississippi and at various frontier locations (51-52).
Littlefield surmises that McCary would meet his wife Laah Ceil around the time when he returned to New Orleans from a trip up the Ohio, during which time he visited some Indian tribes (xvi). As McCary remarks, Laah Ceil and he "made an engagement the first day, made an acquaintance the next, and was married so soon" (88).3 Their fateful encounter episode as such, together with Laah Ceil's parentage, was also introduced to the audience. In her own narrative inserted in A Sketch, which seems to be a part of her onstage performance, she remarks that she was born in New York in 1817 to "a Mohawk Chief," who was "a great friend to civilization,"
and a "Delaware" mother, "who believed .the Bible" (88). She was well educated in a Christian school and dreamed of bringing Christianity to her people.
Laah Ceil had a significant influence on her husband. For instance, Littlefield implies that McCary started to adopt the pose as the son of Moshulatubbee probably around 1847, which by and large coincides with the time of their marriage. Laah Ceil may have invented the name from her readings. She was probably aware of the works of William Gilmore Simms and James Fenimore Cooper (Littlefield xviii). The similitude ofthe
names-McCary's alias and the eponym ofSimms' short story-is striking.
Moreover, Laah Ceil's remark, "[ilt is generally supposed by many novel readers, that the Mohican tribe of Indians has become extinct; this, however, is not exactly the case" (95) is an apparent reaction to Cooper's famous Indian romance (that is, The Last of the Mohicans).
The McCarys collaborated, evolved their performing identity, and established their stage routine: McCary presented himself as an Indian musician, lecturer, and medicine man, and Laah Ceil also appeared, addressing the audience by moral suasion, on such topics as temperance, brotherly love, and the Native Americans' tribulations. Furthermore, she was aware that the audience favored romantic stories, and to capture their imaginations, she not only included the story of their courtship but quite likely also recited to audiences a love poem to her husband, which had been inserted into A Sketch (98-99). Around 1847, for more than a year, they successfully toured eastern states such as Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Moreover, they were invited to perform at the Baltimore Museum and Gallery of the Fine Arts, which, ironically, did not admit colored people (Littlefield xxii).
However, Laah Ceil's most profound contribution to her husband's identity and career was the publication of A Sketch of Okah Tubbee.
Between 1848 and 1852, they published several editions to legitimize their purported Native American status. Soon after the publication of the first edition, A Thrilling Sketch of the Life of the Distinguished Chief Okah TubbeeAlias, Wm. Chubbee, Son of the Head Chief, Mosholeh Tubbee, of the Choctaw Nation of Indians. By Rev. L. L. Allen (1848), they produced the revised edition, in which Laah Ceil replaced the name of reverend as the editor and gained control of the narrative. In this process, she also removed unfavorable sections, such as the local controversy concerning McCary's slave status. At the same time, to underscore evidence of his Indian
heritage she expanded certain episodes, in particular, adding a section on McCary's trip to the Indian Territory and introducing several colorful Choctaw names. As I mentioned above, to enhance their Indian-ness, she even inserted biographical information about herself as aN ative American princess. Eventually, in the Toronto edition (1852), as many as 36 references comprising the final 20 pages of the narrative testifY to McCary's authenticity as a celebrated Native American with remarkable musical talent and medical skills.
In spite ofthese efforts, around this time, an individual who damaged McCary's reputation as a doctor (97-98) appeared. He may have been aware of McCary's slave status (147). As his harassment and threats persisted, the McCarys were forced to move to Toronto in 1851, the year following the passage of the Compromise of 1850, an omnibus bill which included the Fugitive Slave Act. Ironically, McCary's false Indian status awarded him ultimate freedom in Canada, where he continued his medical career even after a local patient accused McCary of malpractice and swindling, an accusation that forced him to refund the patient's fee. As a result, the Toronto daily Globe referred to him as an "Indian quack Doctor"
and accorded him the dubious "notoriety of the charlatan" (Littlefield xxxv). This incident may have been positive for McCary, because it gained him recognition as a Native American. He lived in Toronto at least until 1856 as Okah Tubbee, but his subsequent life is shrouded in mystery.
3. Missing Discourse of Mormonism
Warner McCary's/Okah Tubbee's life of double identity is flamboyant in this way. However, what is far more sensational is a concealed episode in his Sketch. No literary critics have hitherto explored this secret aspect of McCary's life, nor have they supposed the McCarys had been deeply involved with Mormonism. Besides, they have never questioned the racial
identity ofLaah Ceil. Yet the interdisciplinary study ofliterary explorations of A Sketch, and of the early Mormon's views as to black priesthood, make it possible to understand why the McCarys must have been a lost son of Choctaw chief and a Mohawk princess. In fact, several Mormon researchers have uncovered the most sensational and scandalous aspect about McCary:
his creation of commotion among early Mormons and his committing what was then generally regarded as a crime-miscegenation.4 Obviously, the McCarys eliminated this information from A Sketch because, if they had revealed it, their racial disguise would have been exposed and McCary's life story as Okah Tubbee would have been rendered incredible.
What made McCary get involved with Mormonism is uncertain, but according to several researchers,5 Warner (aka William) McCary, "a self- proclaimed black Indian prophet," (Bringhurst, Saints 84) probably around 1845-46, came to the Mormon Camp in Nauvoo, Illinois, where he was accepted by Brigham Young and other Church leaders, and entertained them with his musical talent. Then in 1846 he was baptized and ordained an Elder by Apostle Orson Hyde, who married him to "a white sister" (see O'Donovan, the section entitled "Inter-racial Marriage at N auvoo" in his "I would confine them to their own species"). However, soon afterward this
"Lamanite prophet" lost Mormon favor. He was said to be "an eccentric character" ("Lucy Celesta Stanton" in "Rhinehart & Bassett Family Tree"), and when he used his mesmerism and ventriloquism as an alleged supernatural power to claim identity as certain Old and New Testament figures, such as the ancient Apostle Thomas, Adam and even Christ, he was eventually excommunicated for apostasy.
In addition, his marriage to a white woman, the daughter of Daniel Stanton, Nauvoo Stake President and ex-wife of Oliver Harmon Bassett (whom she had married in about 1833 and divorced in 1843), was apparently never welcomed, if not completely denied. Citing Joseph Smith's words-
10
"Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them [sicl to their own species"-O'Donovan indicates that this was the general Mormon attitude toward interracial marriage, one of whose hideous cases was just caused by McCary. The white woman was none other than Lucile Ann Celesta Stanton Bassett, whom A Sketch introduces as McCary' Indian wife, Laah Ceil Monatoi Ellah Tubbee.6
These setbacks did not end McCary's scandalous actions. Even after his excommunication, he established his own rival Mormon group, exerting his pseudo-religious influence and attracting followers, including some from Brigham Young's flock. He practiced polygamy within his group, having several white women scandalously seal to him. This further angered Mormon leaders, as well as the relatives of McCary's female disciples, consequently prompting Young to ban blacks from the priesthood.
Eventually, threatened by an irate Mormon who tried to shoot him, McCary and Lucy escaped in 1847 (Bringhurst 85). The expelled couple later pretended to be Native Americans, the Choctaw chief Okah Tubbee and the Mohawk princess Laah Ceil. As previously explained, they performed from the frontier to northeastern and southeastern cities. Ignoring the events in the Mormon camp, the McCarys transformed themselves into Indian celebrities and successfully published the collaborative autobiography, A Sketch of the Life.
The McCarys' sensational scandal reveals a significant racial ambivalence not only in Mormonism but also as an important theme in American Literature: the coexistence of Negrophobia and Negrophilia. On the one hand, McCary's miscegenation with Lucile and his indecent
"sealing ordinance" with several white Mormon women became a factor in the banning of black priests, which was based on Negrophobia. On the other hand, Lucile, a central figure in the scandal, might have felt Negrophilia since before she encountered McCary she had ardently
followed Black Pete, the first African American Mormon. Black Pete was regarded as a self-styled "revelator," attracting worshippers from within and outside Mormonism. O'Donovan tells us how Lucile was captivated by two manipulative black men:
When Lucy Stanton was about 15, she had become enthralled by the very first black Mormon, Black Pete. Along with her sisters, she became caught up in Black Pete's charismatic and revelatory experiences at Kirtland, such as catching letters from heaven, and being "taken by spirit" in pentecostalesque convulsions. Here in N auvoo fifteen years later, the now divorced woman and mother of three, married another controversial black Mormon as her second husband, Warner aka William McCary. ... ("Inter-racial Marriage at N auvoo" in "I would confine them to their own species," par. 5)
As Hammond suggests, Lucile's brother-in-law, who would later become her third-husband, seemed to be also a follower of Black Pete7, and several male as well as female believers strongly supported him. Interestingly, both Pete and McCary's religious charisma clearly involved racial and sexual undertones. For McCary, the Mormon camp was the mise en scene in which he could become increasingly skilled at his theatrical performance as a black self, at the same time securing his enchanted white partner.
McCary's N auvoo Mormon episode reveals the racial dynamics and politics of performance in Mormonism as well as in the antebellum South and its neighboring frontiers. The black Mormons' revelatory religion and the McCarys' concealment of their interracial scandal underscore anew the strange utility of Native American-ness, which seems to neutralize both whiteness and blackness. The McCarys' double passing is indeed a rare example, but their geographical, social, and narrative space made this unusual passing case plausible.
12
For Warner McCary and Lucy Stanton, the dual passing was indispensable in order to nullify the racial stigma of slavery as well as white Negrophilia. In addition, it allowed them to practically conceal their miscegenation. If Lucy derived her husband's name from Simms's
"Okatibbe," she might have recognized an exigent need to eschew the interracial marriage all the more, since this short story not only reports the result of a hypothetical social experiment to "take a copper-colored boy from his people, while yet an infant, to a remote region" (144) to be brought up among white people, but also describes the ominous repercussions of that experiment. The narrator exclaims to his Mississippi planter friend:
What, if the Indian student, on whom the "experiment" was tried, had paid his addresses to a white maiden! What a revulsion of the moral and social sense would have followed his proposition in the mind of the Saxon damsel; -and, were she to consent, what a commotion in the community in which she lived. And this revulsion and commotion would have been perfectly natural, and, accordingly, perfectly proper. God has made an obvious distinction between certain races of men, setting them apart, and requiring them to be kept so, by subjecting them to the resistance and rebuke of one of the most jealous sentinels of sense which we possess-the eye. (146)
To outwit the prejudice that prevailed in antebellum America, the McCarys had to be Native Americans.
During the mid-19th century, people romanticized the "vanishing"
Indians as noble savages. Meanwhile, the slavery controversy was rapidly intensifying; this rendered interracial marriage between a fugitive slave and a white woman impossible. In this situation, effacing the inconvenient past and wearing the mask of Native American-ness enabled Okah and Laah Ceil Tubbee's survival. Their efforts to subvert the norms of an
oppressive society by authenticating their life stories as genuinely Native Americans illustrate their desire for freedom and self-determination. They recognized that the disappearing Indian never really disappeared, since they themselves continued acting as Indians.
*
This paper was originally delivered as a panel presentation entitled '1\merican Indian Literatures and Cultures II: Identity Politics & American Indians" at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference in Washington D.C. on March 27, 2013. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Mark Richardson of Doshisha University for his editorial help. This essay was supported by JSPS Grant- in-Aid for Scientific Research (C), Grant Number 24520327.Works Consulted
"An abridged sketch ofthe life of Semira L. Wood written March 24th 1881 Springville, Utah." Bassett.net. Web.
<http://www.bassett.netlgenealogyiBassett/SketchSemiraLaCelestin eRosalinBassett.shtml> Nov. 6, 2013.
Brennan, Jonathan. "Speaking Cross Boundaries: The nineteenth-Century Mrican-Native American Autobiography." When Brer Rabbit Meets Coyote: African-Native American Literature. Ed. Jonathan Brennan.
Urbana: U ofI11inois P, 2003,167-193. Print.
Bringhurst, Newell G. Saints, Slaves, and Blacks: The Changing Place of Black People within Mormonism. Westport: Greenwood, 1981. Print.
Gilmore, Paul. "The Indian in the Museum: Henry David Thoreau, Okah Tubbee, and Authentic Manhood." The Genuine Article: Race, Mass Culture, and American Literary Manhood. Durham: Duke UP, 200l.
67-97. Print
Littlefield Jr., Daniel. F. "Introduction." The Life of Okah Tubbee. 1852.
Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1988. Print.
''Lucy Celesta Stanton aka Laah Ceil Manatoi." Rhinehart & Bassett Family Tree: Bassett.net Genealogy Pages. Web. <http://www.bassett.
netlgendata-o/p12369.htm> Nov. 5, 2013.
Hammond, John. Divided Mormon Zion. Xilibris Corporation, 2012. Google Play Books Edition. Web.
O'Donovan, Connell. "The Mormon Priesthood Ban & Elder Q. Walker Lewis: 'An example for his more whiter brethren to follow.''' Web.
<http://people.ucsc.edu/ -odonovanlelder_ walker_lewis.html> Feb. 3, 2012.
---. '''I would confine to their own species': LDS Historical Rhetoric & Praxis Regarding Marriage Between Whites and Blacks." Mormon and Black-White Intermarriage. Web. <http://connellodonovan.comfblack_
white_marriage.html> Feb. 3, 2012.
---. "Lucile Ann Celesta Stanton (Bassett McCary Bassett)." Early Boston Mormons and Missionaries, J to Z 1831-1860. Web. <http://
connellodonovan.comfboston_mormonsJ-Z.pdf> Dec. 11,2012.
---. "Warner 'William' McCary (alias Okah Tubbee)" Early Boston Mormons and Missionaries, J to Z 1831-1860. Web. <http://connellodonovan.
comfboston_mormonsJ-Z.pdf> Dec. 11,2012.
"Oliver Harmon Bassett." Rhinehart & Bassett Family Tree: Bassett.net Genealogy Pages. Web. <http://www.bassett.net/gendata-o/p1l400.
htm> Nov. 5, 2013.
Simms, William Gilmore. "Oakatibbee, or the Choctaw Sampson." The Wigwam and the Cabin. 1845. Ed. John Caldwell Guilds. Fayetteville, U of Arkansas P, 2000. Print.
Stone, John Augustus. Metamora; or The Last of the Wampanoags. 1829.
Literature Online. Web. Nov. 5, 2013.
Tubbee, Okah. A Sketch of the Life of Okah Tubbee, (Called) William Chubbee, Son of the Head Chief, Mosholeh Tubbee, of the Choctaw Nation of Indians. By Laah Ceil, Manatoi Ellah Tubbee, His Wife.
Toronto: 1852, by Henry Stephens. The Life of Okah Tubbee. Ed.
Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1988. Print.
---. A Thrilling Sketch of the Life of the Distinguished Chief Okah Tubbee, Alias, William Chubbee, Son of the Head Chief, Mosholeh Tubbee, of the Choctaw Nation of Indians. By L. L. Allen, Author of"Pencillings Upon the Rio Grande, " &c. 1848. NP: Dodo P. Print.
Tuner, Jerald and Sandra Turner. "Curse of Cain?: Racism in the Mormon Church." 2004. Web. <http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/curseofcain_
part4.htm> Feb. 3, 2012.
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1 Before this "authorized" edition, McCary had published several versions of his narrative. The first edition, A Thrilling Sketch of the Life of the Distinguished ChiefOkah TubbeeAlias, Wm. Chubbee, Son of the Head Chief, Mosholeh Tubbee, of the Choctaw Nation of Indians. By Rev. L. L. Allen, was published in New York in 1848. However, in the same year, his wife replaced the editor and retitled the narrative as A Sketch of the Life of Okah Tubbee, Alias, William Chubbee, Son of the Head Chief, Mosholeh Tubbee, of the Choctaw Nation of Indians. By Laah Ceil Monatoi Elaah Tubbee, His Wife. She gradually expanded the story and simultaneously deleted sections unfavorable to her husband. In this paper, I use the The Life of Okah Tubbee based on the 1852 version and published with an introduction by Daniel F. Littlefield Jr. in 1988.
2 As Littlefield's edition does not provide this handbill, I refer to the 1852 text included in the University of North Carolina digital archive "Documenting the American South." (The UNC electronic edition has been transcribed from a
microfilm copy provided by Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.) What I introduce here (without page numbers) is from the show program of the McCarys' Indian performance at St. Lawrence Hall in Toronto in 1852.
3 Littlefield suggests that the date oftheir marriage was probably around 1836, for "their daughter Seraphine was born in 1837" (145). However, as mentioned later in this paper, certain Mormon scholars indicate that McCary appeared in Mormon camps around 1846 and then married Laah Ceil (whose autonym is Lucile (or Lucy)Ann Celesta Stanton), daughter of LDS stake president. Before they met in Nauvoo, Lucile was a divorcee with three children-Solon (b. 1834), Ann C. Seraphine (b. 1837), and Semila LaCelestine Rosalin (b. 1838)- by her ex-husband, Oliver Harmon Bassett ("Rhinhart & Bassett Family Tree-Lucy Celesta Stanton aka Laah Ciel Monatoi"). However, Bruce ''Moshola'', who appeared in the Indian performance in Toronto with his parents, was undoubtedly McCary's child, who was born in 1849.
4 In addition to the scarcity of literary criticism on Tubbee's autobiography, literary scholars have not yet indicated McCary's commitment to Mormonism and Laah Ceil's true identity. As there remain many gaps in the story of his life, partially because of his dominantly itinerant lifestyle and primarily because of the McCarys' manipulative representation of their lives, the chronology of some events seems still ambiguous. However, thanks to several Mormon scholars' research, as well as the document of the Bassett Family tree, it is, on the whole, certain that McCary married Lucile (or Lucy) before Feb. 1846 at Nauvoo, Hancock Co. Illinois. Then, probably after ex-communication, he traveled with his wife to towns in Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio to visit Indian tribes, play music, lecture, and practice medicine. Besides, from September 1847, McCary embarked on a performance tour of the East- Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. This tremendously busy life would have been very difficult, if not impossible.
5 For more on McCary's Mormon experience, see Bringhurst, Hammond,
O'Donovan, and Turner. An abridged narrative of the life of Semira L. Wood, second daughter of Oliver Harmon Bassett and Lucy Celeste Stanton, as well as the "Rhinehart & Bassett Family Tree," both of which are included in
"Bassett. Net Genealogy" web site, are also helpful to understand the life of the disguised couple.
6 On the website that offers the biographical and genealogical data of "Early Boston Mormons and Missionaries, 1830-1860, " O'Donovan includes the McCarys, explaining as follows:
Warner 'William' McCary (alias Okah Tublbee)
McCary was an escaped Natchez, Mississippi slave who married Lucile Ann Celesta Stanton (daughter of LDS stake president Daniel Stanton) in 1846 in Nauvoo. McCarywas ordained an Elder about February 1846 by Orson Hyde in Nauvoo. He and his white LDS wife pretended to be American Indians: he was a "Choctaw" warrior named Okah Tubbee and Lucile was "Mohican" named Laah Ceil Monatoi. Dressed in Indian attire, he would sing and play various musical instruments (most notably a "tomahawk" turned into a flute) and she would give temperance lectures. Mter performing all over the west in 1846, they came east to perform all over the eastern seaboard, including Boston.
Another Mormon website entitled "Bassett.net," which also provides Lucy Celesta Stanton's biographical information, writes rather mockingly as follows:
"Lucy Celesta Stanton aka Laah Ceil Monatoi had a biography: that was made up for his alias .... The Life of Okah Tubbee was written [sic-by right it should have been "edited"] by Indian scholar Daniel Littlefield in 1988. Littlefield believed throughout his book that Lucy was in fact a Delaware Indian, as she claimed!"
7 Interestingly and surprisingly, in her later years Lucy returned to her Mormon people and once again married Herman Bassett, a brother of Oliver Harmon Bassett, her first husband. In an abridged sketch of life of Semira L. Wood, Lucy's second daughter by her first husband, Semira reports about her mother briefly: "[On] August 10, 1862 my mother came to Utah, whom I had not seen
for 19 years .... [On] December 27 [, 1872] my mother married my father's brother, Herman Bassett .... On March 4, 1878 my dear mother died of paralysis after a month's illness." Why Lucy came back to Utah is not explained here.
(Did her second marriage end in divorce or separation? Did McCary pass away for some reason? What had become of Bruce "Moshola"?-All are uncertain.) However, what seems to be unquestionable is that Lucy still had been, in a sense, attracted by the black religious charisma, since her third (and last) husband was, in his early days, purported to be one of the disciples of Black Pete. Hammond indicates as follows: "three young Mormon men were followers of Black Pete--Edson Fuller, Herman (also Heman) Bassett, and Burr Riggs- and the four men 'began a decided trend toward new expressions of ecstasy and innovative manifestations ofthe Spirit'" (107).
