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.