Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances
■ Article]
ENTREMONS. UPF JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY Universitat Pompeu Fabra | Barcelona Número 11 (Octubre 2020) www.entremons.org
”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances
Clarice Bland
Abstract
Spiritualist séances in Victorian England often brought forth spirit guides of a variety of races, ages and personalities. One such spirit was that of the Native American, which was commonplace in American séances, but rather unusual in England. This article, using the theory of colonial discourse and hybridization by Homi Bhabha, elaborates on how the mediums used Native American spirits to further stereotypes about them, producing a hybridity which used both characteristics of the colonizer and the colonized. Official Spiritualist doctrine held that all races were equal, yet the Spiritualists still produced Eurocentric discourse around people who were seen to be more spiritual than others. Native American spirits in English séances did not produce the same anxieties as their American counterparts, resulting in Native American spirits adopting traits that the English Spiritualists both admired and feared. The most common way to fuse a spirit and their medium’s identity was through vocal hybridization, which included a broken mix of languages and accents.
Keywords: Native Americans, Spiritualism, England, hybridity, colonialism, voice.
123 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances
Crossing the Divide Between 1850 and 1870, Spiritualist activity across England was at its peak, and coincided with the emergence of a discourse relating to racial difference and colonial oppression. The figure of the indigenous inhabitants of North America caused much debate in British society, with regards to the role and destiny of the “savage Indian” in a formerly British colony. Publications such as painter George Catlin’s Illustrations of the manners, customs & condition of the North American Indians, published in 1841 after his travels to America, influenced the public perception of Native Americans as a race that was both a figure of tragedy and a senseless warmonger. Spiritualist mediums would hold séances, and call upon their personal spirit guides to appear, educate, and entertain their audience. These spirit guides, who appeared in a variety of races, sexes, and ages, were indicative of far more than the conditions of the spirit world. Whilst Native American spirits were part and parcel of the Spiritualist experience in America, they appeared much less frequently in English séances. This article will explore how the identities of Native American spirits were represented by English mediums, who did not experience the same guilt regarding Native American populations as their American counterparts.
The English mediums fused their identities with their Native American spirits, mixing accents, vocal characteristics, and mannerisms; until the product was a curious mix of the colonizer and the colonized. This representation of Native American spirits demonstrated the prevalent stereotypes about the surviving Native Americans in general, and were part of a larger discourse in Victorian England relating to racial tensions and the responsibility the empire felt towards their former colony. For this article, a large part of inspiration came from a quote in historian Kate Flint’s The Transatlantic Indian, in which she wrote that the “Indian” was “...a figure charged with significance when it comes to Britain's interpretation of her whole imperial role and her responsibility toward indigenous peoples”.1 Rather, my research has demonstrated that the portrayals of Native American spirits were successfully constructed by the mediums due to existing presumptions around the Native Americans and their lives.
Spiritualist doctrine was of the idea that all races were equal in terms of their spiritual capacity, but my research will show that for British Spiritualists, the Native Americans were the exception because they were admired for their innate connection with the spirit realm. British Spiritualists viewed the Native Americans as “...people untainted by urban life, as people with untamed imaginations unable to perceive what most of the British, cosseted and complicit as they seemed,
1 Kate Flint, The Transatlantic Indian, 1776-1930 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 2.
124 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances could not.”2 I will examine how the trope of the “noble savage” was disrupted through the hybridization of voice and language patterns created by the mediums. Unlike for the American Spiritualist, the Native American did not represent a dying race to British Spiritualists. However, they did consider the Native American to be an emblem of purity and spiritual progress, resulting in a large amount of spirit guides. Moreover, by endowing their spirit guides with stereotypical traits, they showed themselves to still adhere to many traditional aspects of their society; this included considering non-Europeans as less close to civilization and therefore exempt from the traditional regulations of society.
I begin with a discussion of how British Spiritualists viewed Native Americans, as part of a larger discourse surrounding colonization. I then move on to demonstrate how the stereotypes of the Native American spirits were reproduced as well as blurred with the mediums themselves, using the version of colonial discourse and hybridity developed by Homi K. Bhabha, a theory of great importance when examining how mediums adopted the characteristics of their spirit guide. I was motivated to use Bhabha’s theory after seeing it applied to racist and colonist thought after reading the article by Derek Hook, “The racial stereotype, colonial discourse, fetishism, and racism”; in this instance, however, I am applying it to mediums and the spirits they embodied. I use the theory to display how mediums unknowingly challenged their authoritative position of colonizer through the hybridization of theirs and their spirit guides bodies, voices, and personalities. Spiritualist mediums propelled to positions of power by surrendering their bodily autonomy and adopting characteristics of Native Americans, which contributed to a failure to see the Native Americans as complex, dynamic peoples. The voices that came out of the mediums were an amalgamation of their own and of the Native Americans, and thus there was a constant reinforcement of stereotypes that contributed to the Spiritualist understanding of the Native Americans as a race to be simultaneously admired and pitied.
In this text, I will continue on the explanation offered by Marlene Tromp in her work Altered States: Sex, Nation, Drugs, and Self-transformation in Victorian Spiritualism, which gives the explanation that just by being involved in a colonial enterprise, women were already disruptive even if they recreated racist colonial ideology.3 Although men and women both acted as mediums, when women performed as such it was charged with meaning due to the power imbalances that existed in daily
2 Tim Fulford, Romantic Indians: Native Americans, British Literature, & Transatlantic Culture 1756-1830 (Oxford University Press, 2006), 124. 3 Marlene Tromp, Altered States: Sex, Nation, Drugs, and Self-transformation in Victorian Spiritualism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), 106.
125 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances life. Whereas women already occupied a subordinate position in the colonial hierarchy, Spiritualists occupied a separate ideology altogether; if they did reproduce Eurocentric discourses about the position of Native Americans and recreate the ‘noble savage’ imagery, it was due to their belief that they had found a kindred spirit (so to speak) in their Indian counterparts. In Altered States, Tromp elaborates on how séances revealed the ambivalence of the participants attitudes towards imperialism, and that the flouting of gendered roles “created an equally disruptive shift in the ideological containment of the colonial figure”.4 Just as Tromp suggests that mediumship offered a version of the mimicry termed by Bhabha, “one that both repeated and destabilized the institutionalized English message…”5 about colonial India, so I will suggest that it was able to do this also for newly independent countries such as America and their Native inhabitants.
The chosen sources were primarily from Medium and Daybreak for this article for two reasons: the first being that it was the leading spiritualist periodical of the time in England, and thus more likely to record incidences of Native American spirits; and the second was that it often republished and made commentary on articles from Banner of Light, an American spiritualist periodical which also had many mentions of Native American spirit guides. I also consulted works written by British Spiritualists of the time. Where possible, I have used the phrase Native Americans; however, when quoting I have kept the term “Indian’. Another clarification I wish to make is that whilst there is some ambiguity in Spiritualist records of séances between the term “Indian” to denote both spirits from North America and East Asia, I have chosen only to discuss spirit guides that were absolutely confirmed to be North American or “red Indian”.
Native Americans spirits in American séances were commonplace, for reasons which included close proximity to Native populations as well as an internal conflict amongst the American settlers as to what their relationship with the Native inhabitants should be. England, on the other hand, considered America by this time to be an independent country with little ties to them, and their association with Native Americans was part of a larger tableau relating to England’s relationship with all whom it had colonised. Reports of Native Americans were received either from ethnographers and artists who had travelled to the Americas, or from those members of tribes who came to England as part of delegations or “anthropological” exhibits. Performers in these exhibits and shows were made to adhere to the traditional idea of what European society thought a Native American to be. Apart from shows and exhibits, it was a rare occasion that a
4 Tromp, 76. 5 Tromp, 79.
126 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances member of the public would actually encounter a Native American in a setting outside of theatrical spectacle. George Catlin, the painter and author mentioned at the beginning of this article, spent two years exhibiting Native American artefacts and art in Piccadilly, and then touring his exhibit around the British Isles.6 When nine Ojibbeway men were brought across from America, Catlin, wanting to refrain from being seen as exploitative, did not directly purchase them but became a manager of sorts as they toured around the UK and Europe between 1845 and 1848.7 English Spiritualists would most likely have seen these shows.
The Identity, the Hybridity It is important to acknowledge that an English Spiritualist was likely to have a drastically different attitude towards race and colonialism than their non-Spiritualist counterpart. The Native American had long stood for “The Other” in Eurocentric circles, before European encounters with Africans or East Indians.8 It was not uncommon for Spiritualists to identify with marginalised groups, as “…many Spiritualists identified more broadly with the “other”: male Spiritualists with femininity, white Spiritualists with Native Americans.”9 A direct comparison between the similarities of mediums and Natives is made in a lecture by famed Spiritualist Emma Hardinge Britten, where she stated the thoughts of a Professor Tyler, that: “The modern medium is merely a Red Indian or a Tartar Schaman, in a dress coat or petticoats, as the case may be”.10
Spiritualists also made attempts to correct non-Spiritualist discourse surrounding Native Americans when it extended to their beliefs. Medium and Daybreak published a response from Spiritualists to the President of the Anthropological Institute, who had expressed dismay that the Indians and Spiritualists held similar spiritual views. The response of the Spiritualists was that Spiritualism is not in any sense of the term a system of belief of any kind, but a scientific induction from well-ascertained facts”. The “Indians” were just as likely to see natural phenomena as anyone, the letter stated. “It is discreditable to our civilisation that the president of the Anthropological Institute should lag behind the Red Indian in a knowledge of anthropological phenomena”11. Spiritualists still reproduced some of the prevalent discourses around racial inferiority, especially when it came to intelligence and mental proclivity. In her work Modern American Spiritualism, Emma
6 Kate Flint, “Dickens and the Native American” in Dickens and the Children of Empire (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 94. 7 Flint, 95. 8 Fulford, 6. 9 Molly McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley, Calif.; London: University of California Press, 2008), 39. 10 Emma Hardinge Britten, Spiritualism: Is it a Savage Superstition? (Melbourne: George Robertson, 1878), 12. 11 “The Anthropologists and Spiritualism”. Medium and Daybreak, May 1873, 199.
127 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances
Hardinge Britten discussed the unique relationship that Native Americans have with the spirit realm. Spiritualists and non-Spiritualists alike both produced works relating to the American Indians, but the non-Spiritualist works usually portrayed Native Americans as both savage and childlike, an entity to be both feared and patronised. Whilst they were admired for their connection to spirits, they were also feared for this same reason. Britten seemed to simultaneously infantilise and admire the Native American spirits, commenting that in America, “…Nearly every medium is attended by one of these beneficent beings, guiding, counselling, protecting them.”12 Hardinge Britten also reminds the reader of the difference between the Indian once he crosses over into the spirit world, “…no sooner does he become a spirit, than he practically adopt the neglected duties of true Christianity, and by deeds of love and mercy shows the white man how to prove the truth of his creed…”13
Whilst British Spiritualists acknowledged that the manifestations and acts of calling upon spirits in Native American culture were vastly different from their own practices, a ‘very distinguished’ Sioux warrior had mediumship so similar to their own that they ‘may justly rank them in the same category’.14 Medium and Daybreak published a letter from a Dr. Willis who had spent time in America, asking Spiritualists why they should doubt that “the-simple hearted primitive inhabitant of this lovely region”15 would also believe in spirits? Dr. Willis also discusses his own influence under Indian spirits, one of which was “...the spirit of a young Indian girl of the Ottawa tribe...in broken dialect she gave a most touching and artless description of her life...this influence seemed to control my entire being, and to literally change me into a simple child of the forest”. This same spirit turned out to be “Na-na- ma-kee”16. Any historian of Native American history here would give pause, as this name is the same as the great-grandfather of famed Sauk Native American warrior Black Hawk. The fact that the names of Native Americans could be used interchangeably shows how the mediums, although idealising and reproducing these positive stereotypes, had knowledge of the historical significance that some Native Americans held as characters in their séance circles. At a séance in 1873, a Mrs. Woodforde was controlled by an “Indian chief”, who, when asked why his spiritual magnetism (the unseen attraction between spirits and the forces of nature around them) was so strengthening, replied that “he did not burden his thoughts with theories and
12 Emma Hardinge Britten, Modern American Spiritualism: A Twenty Years' Record of the Communion between Earth and the World of Spirits (New York: Published by the author, 1869), 481. 13 Hardinge Britten, 481. 14 Hardinge Britten, 401. 15 “A Letter from Dr. Willis”, Medium and Daybreak, September 1870, 173. 16 “A Letter from Dr. Willis”, 173.
128 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances dogmas; he loved nature too well for that...”17 By reinforcing rhetoric such as this in their spirit circles, the Spiritualists reproduced the narrative of the benevolent, wise coloniser and naïve, childlike colonised.
The Spiritualists reinforced the idea of the coloured spirit as subservient and all-forgiving; in 1870, Medium and Daybreak published a letter from a Dr. Willis who had travelled to America, and wrote on the connection between the present-day Native American and their spirit ancestors - “Notwithstanding their cruel treatment by the whites – notwithstanding the terrible wrongs that have been inflicted upon them – it seems to be their delight to return to the palefaces, and always on errands of beneficence and love”18. Therefore, the familiar colonial narrative of a master/servant relationship was reiterated and had even transcended the mortal plane. In America and her Destiny, Spiritualist and author Emma Hardinge Britten also extrapolates on the relationship between the Native American and the European – chastising the European for his treatment of the Native American, but then immediately replicating the same hierarchical image of “The loving, child-like heart of the poor red savage, awed by the white man's intellectual power, beheld him as a god when first he came, and wept upon the shoulder of Columbus when he departed”19. The Yorkshire Spiritual Telegraph published a letter from a Spiritualist in America who again romanticised the spirits, declaring that they were “...characterised by the utmost purity...nor do they wish to resent the injuries heaped upon them by the pale faced hypocrite”.20
Native American female spirits were often presented as more in line with the Victorian ideal of feminine virtuousness; they often gave accounts of their lives as “...tranquil, domestic, and natural...”, whilst they simultaneously “...condemned white violence and simultaneously defined the imagined simplicity and naturalness of traditional Indian lifestyles as a heavenly ideal...”21. This display of feminine virtue was evidenced in the manifestation of an Indian spirit named “Altheerie”, whom “one has only to know to love; she’s so gentle and kind, and possesses wonderful curative powers, especially amongst children”.22¨ At another séance, a spirit named 'Ouina' appeared, “the most lovable of all spirits whom we know, and who has two sides to her character, one that of an Indian maid, which she fully sustains alternately with that of a poetess endowed with lofty thought
17 "Mrs Woodforde’s Séance”, Medium and Daybreak, May 1873, 202. 18 “A Letter from Dr. Willis”, 173. 19 Emma Hardinge Britten, “America and her Destiny:’ Inspirational Discourse given extemporaneously at Dodworth’s Hall, New York, on Sunday evening (1861), 11. 20 “Personal Experience of Mr T.L. Constantine,” Yorkshire Spiritual Telegraph, 1857, 208. 21 Kathryn Troy. The Specter of the Indian: Race, Gender, and Ghosts in American Séances, 1848-1900. (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2017), 92. 22 “Spiritualism in Newcastle”, Medium and Daybreak, October 1873, 481.
129 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances and purpose. She now came in the former character, and said she had just arrived in her white canoe of pearl garnished with myrtle, and drawn by snowy white swans”.23 Ouina was also characterised as being “Joyoius [sic], happy, elevated, buoyant, it seems to be her mission to ward off the physical ills, and minister to the brain when overtaxed, by applying a healing balm of hope. With greatest simplicity, she combines philosophy and poesy, and always brings from the spirit- world some message of song and beauty”.24
What can we deduce about English mediums, that they would choose to include colonised women as their spirit guides, yet endow them with those typical characteristics of an ideal European woman? Perhaps, because mediums were already relinquishing control of their bodies to let the spirits speak through them, they felt as though it was a natural step to embody those spirits who were already subject to colonial discourse. Marlene Tromp, in her work about Victorian mediums Altered States, states that the power of a medium lay in her ability to blur her identity with that of her spirit guides25
– that is, it was difficult to tell where the medium ended and the spirit began.
This intentional hybridization of the mediums and their spirit guides was enacted with the goal of ensuring the credibility of the medium, but it also had the consequence of presenting the Indian spirits as participants of what Homi Bhabha coined the “hybrid displacing space”.26 The concept of hybridity, part of a wider array of colonial discourse analysis, should be taken at face value – the term hybrid is a legacy from racial discourse surrounding the progeny of white and non-white races. The adoption by the mediums of the Native Americans was only possible once they were seen to have surrendered their own autonomy and become empty vessels for the translation of messages, yet the mediums themselves were also conscious agents in how and what they chose to display of their spirit guides. Emma Hardinge Britten also attributed the fact that Native American spirits are the most successful of healing spirits to the fact that they enjoyed a natural life, “…these poor children of the forest lived on earth, has instructed them in the peculiar virtues and manifold forms of healing balm that the earth generates in her bosom…”27. Hardinge Britten also gave an account of the beliefs of the Natives in a way that shows that many Spiritualists disapproved of
23 Mr and Mrs. G.R. Hinde, “Reminiscences of Saltburn in Company with Mrs. Tappan”, Medium and Daybreak, September 1875, 565. 24 “Ouina,” Medium and Daybreak, January 1874, 6. 25 Tromp, 113. 26 Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, (London: Routledge, 1995), 23. 27 Young, 23.
130 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances the way that they were treated by Americans colonizers, yet she still infantilized them in her writings – “Hapless ignorant beings, nay, whole tribes, that have been despoiled and cheated by Christian cupidity...”28
Native Americans fell victim to the stereotyping of their race, although with traits generally considered desirable, such as loyalty and fierce friendship. An excerpt from Medium and Daybreak, originally published in Banner of Light, described a disagreement between a Mr. B., a sitter, and legendary Indian warrior Tecumseh. Mr. B, disappointed that Tecumseh was the spirit that appeared instead of the family he wished to contact, allegedly told Tecumseh to ‘go to sell’. When Mr. B tried to apologise, the spirit of Tecumseh demanded that he crawl half naked a mile in the snow, which Mr. B. declined. The person who reported this stated that this was not unusual behaviour, seeing as “…the North American Indian is alike remarkably strong in his friendship and his enmity, and that his faculty of perception is keener than that of the white man. This quality enables the Indian to read character, both in spirit and earth-life, with remarkable facility…” The narrator also manages to turn the “Indian” into a malleable figure whose allegiance was not necessarily led by his morals, declaring that “…none are more efficient alike for good or evil than the red men, nor do I remember...a good medium that had not at least one Indian spirit-guide".29 Spiritualists and non-Spiritualists alike seemed to share a view that whilst Native Americans were still not civilised by any means, there were certain elements of their society that the Europeans could learn from. George Catlin, in his Illustrations of the manners, customs and condition of the North American Indians, wrote of the character of the Native Americans that “...it is a simple one, and easy to be learned and understood...there is much in it to be applauded, and much to recommend it to the admiration of the enlightened world”30. Medium and Daybreak magazine also conjured up romantic imagery of their traditional land, declaring that it will make “...the reader sigh for the cool shade of the forest and the murmur of mountain streamlets...It seems that civilisation may learn something even from the Indian".31
Looking at Bhabha’s colonialism hybridity theory, he introduces the concept of a “Third Space”, a hybrid which showcases that the transformational value of a change “…lies in the re-articulation, or translation, of elements that are neither the One...nor the Other...but something else besides which
28 Hardinge Britten, 481. 29 T.R.Hazard, “Mediums and Mediumship,” Medium and Daybreak. April 1872, 118. 30 George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians. (London: George Catlin, 1841), 8. 31 “Human Nature,” Medium and Daybreak, July 1872, 269.
131 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances contests the terms and territories of both”.32 Bhabha also describes this Third Space as being representative of “...the specific implication of the utterance in a performative and institutional strategy…”.33 Here, I posit that this “Third Space” had been both created by and participated in by the mediums, in their utterance of racial slurs against themselves and their incomprehensible words, which they would then translate for the sitters. For example, a report of a séance led by a Mrs. Cora Tappan, told of her spirit guide, an Indian child named “Ouina”. Ouina spoke to the séance participants, and told them that her medium (Cora), was called “Whiteflower”. She then stated, “Oh, you don’t know how nice it is to be led, and come back and talk in someone’s mouth, and make folks feel so happy!”34 The fact that Cora was called an “Indian” name by her spirit guide, as well as stating that she was talking “in” her mouth, further creates this Third Space in which both mediums and spirits guides became one entity, and Cora’s body had become a vehicle for the inhabitation of her spirit guide. Cora’s being bestowed an “Indian” name by her spirit guide also plays upon the power dynamics of the interaction; by telling the members of the séance circle that Cora went by another name, the dichotomies between the medium and her spirit guides were once again blurred. This is also displayed at a séance where a “Mrs. Lucas”, who was under the influence of a spirit, communicated with another spirit who claimed to be an Indian chief – “The two spirits held a conversation – one in a foreign tongue, Mrs. Lucas in English. The two spirits seemed to understand each other, though they used different languages”.35 Medium and Daybreak also published an article detailing how a medium, Mrs. Burns, began to “slate-write”, a method used by mediums in which they would write the message of spirits. She met a spirit “...at the foot of the stairs, and her Indian guide whispered to her ‘Get write,’ and she came back into the kitchen”.36
In her book The Specter of the Indian: Race, Gender, and Ghosts in American Seances, 1848-1900, Kathryn Troy sheds light on many issues surrounding how Indian spirits were telling of the conditions Americans lived in, aptly stating that American Spiritualism was characterised as “…depicting spiritual appearances as yet another mode of “civilizing” Indians, and at other times deemed imagined Indian lifestyles and religions as socially and morally superior”37. An example of this can be seen in a report from Medium and Daybreak which described the execution of Modoc Indians for killing American soldiers in New York. The “manifestation of affection between the braves
32 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, (London: Routledge, 1994), 13. 33 Bhabha, 20 34 “Mrs. Cora L.V. Tappan,” Medium and Daybreak, September 1873, 418. 35 “A Spiritual Picnic,” Medium and Daybreak, August 1873, 380. 36 “Extraordinary Slate-Writing Through Mr. Monck's Mediumship,” Medium and Daybreak, December 1876, 786. 37 Troy, Xxvi.
132 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances and their families was beautifully human, and even affected their murderers. These Indians killed the Americans because, from past experience, they believed they intended to betray them”38. The interesting fact about this quote is the dual portrayal of the Indians as both human and inhuman – their ‘beautifully human’ goodbye between the Indians and then the reference to them as tawny braves also placed them outside of the realm of Victorian white society. Bhabha’s theory of colonial hybridity was brought forth by historian Derek Hook, who wrote that it “...thus maintains that the colonial environment is one which yields split subjects”39, which can be seen when analysing the format in which the Native Americans are dichotomised as both human and inhuman.
We are able today, through the lens of postcolonialism, to see that that Native Americans were stereotyped by the mediums in ways that both challenged and restructured the imperialist ideology. As Bhabha noted in The Other Question, “…an important feature of colonial discourse is its dependence on the concept of 'fixity' in the ideological construction of otherness”.40 Derek Hook, in his article The racial stereotype, colonial discourse, fetishism, and racism, elaborates on Bhabha’s theory of otherness as paradox, stating that “As a mode of discourse the stereotype functions to exaggerate difference of the other, whilst nevertheless attempting to produce them as a stable, fully knowing object”.41 This can be evidenced when surveying how mediums reproduced qualities of Indians which they surely must have believed were aiding in disseminating their knowledge to ignorant UK audiences, whilst at the same time reifying pre-existing suppositions about Native Americans. The English Spiritualists were somewhat aligned with the traditional colonial discourse, which according to Bhabha had the objective “...to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction.”42 The attitude of British Spiritualists is representative of a wider movement in Britain surrounding Native Americans. Native Americans were a common feature in writers of the Romantic period, such as Wordsworth, and many British writers criticised the colonial policies against Native Americans43. Britain did not experience the Manifest Destiny that was common in America at the time; therefore, they did not believe that Native Americans were “predetermined” for extinction.44 The vast amount of Native Americans in British fictional
38 Medium and Daybreak, October 1873, 484. 39 Derek Hook, "The racial stereotype, colonial discourse, fetishism, and racism," The Psychoanalytic Review 92 (2005), 4. 40 Homi Bhabha, “The Other question: colonial discourse and the stereotype,” In Twentieth Century Literary Theory (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 2002), 14. 41 Hook, 1. 42 Bhabha, “The Other Question: Discourse and the Colonial Stereotype,” 295. 43 Romantic Indians: Native Americans, British Literature, & Transatlantic Culture 1756-1830. 21. 44 Romantic Indians: Native Americans, British Literature, & Transatlantic Culture 1756-1830. 29
133 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances accounts could be explained with a suggestion that “...at the heart of the British self was a kinship with the foreign...”.45 A review in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal on Catlin’s London show revealed that the Native Americans on display could reveal with their “untutored mind’ the shame of modern European life”.46
The blurring of identities was indeed what emboldened the mediums, as the inability to distinguish one from the another forced the collapse of the “…binaries that shored up imperialism”.47 Historian Marlene Tromp, in her work Altered States writes that the spirits of colonial women were often stronger than the medium, which can also be evidenced when examining the account of Jennie Ferris Holmes wrote to Medium and Daybreak and discussed her development as a medium, and how when she would encounter Indians on the streets of Toledo, her Indian spirit control “Rosa” would “would control me in spite of myself, and enter into conversation with them in the Chippewa language”.48 Mrs. Ferris Holmes would continue that Rose “...would assert her rights and stoutly maintain that she was master of the situation, understood perfectly what she was doing, and that her medium had nothing to do with the matter”49. So, mediums were constantly having their own bodies invaded and being used as mouthpieces by Native American spirits. I postulate that mediums, whether male or female, felt a connection with Native Americans that they based on their connection with the spirit world, which they equivocated to their own heaven, “Summerland”. The mediums were still reproducing imagery of Native Americans that fell into accord with mainstream representations, no matter how much they tried to deny it. Their portrayals were part of a wider discourse in England pertaining to the status of colonised peoples and their view of those racially different from themselves. By blurring their identities with their spirit guides, the mediums demonstrated “the ways in which the colonial other could not simply be deployed and consumed by the colonizer, but became embodied, taken up in the body of the colonizer, an act that disrupted the European representation of both.”50.
Speech in the Séance The broken English of spirits is something that appeared in both English and American spirit circles and was thoroughly consistent in its inconsistency. Charlotte Dixon wrote to the Medium and Daybreak to correct a previous informant who described a second spirit control as speaking
45 Romantic Indians: Native Americans, British Literature, & Transatlantic Culture 1756-1830. 32. 46 Wild American Savages and the Civilized English: Catlin’s Indian Gallery and the Shows of London. 12. 47 Tromp, 79. 48 “The Development of Mrs. Jennie Ferris Holmes as a Medium,” Medium and Daybreak. August 1872, 315. 49 “The Development of Mrs. Jennie Ferris Holmes as a Medium,” Medium and Daybreak. August 1872, 315 50 Tromp, 92.
134 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances through “a compound of theology and vulgar similitudes”. Dixon wrote that this spirit “…is a very powerful Red Indian, who only controls for healing purposes, and cannot speak English except on rare occasions…”51 A site of problematisation is that the mediums were the translators for these messages, thus controlling what sitters heard and processed. Bhabha declares that the translation process is “…the opening up of another contentious political and cultural site at the heart of colonial 'representation'”52. The colonial subject thus produced “...an unresolvable problem of cultural difference for the very address of colonial cultural authority…”53 Whilst the mediums were translators and channels for the messages for all spirits, white or otherwise, the contention lay in the fact that the colonised subject were not able to affirm nor deny the representations created of themselves. The mediums acted as a mouthpiece for non-white spirits that was fixed in their own assumptions and stereotypes of what a Native American was. Take the case of "Uts," a spirit who appeared at a séance in Darlington who interacted with sitters. The following excerpt displays the broken English of the spirit –
“’Ha, chief! I knows you; how are you?’ She said ‘You's big medium chief, does you know that? Would you like me to control you, and make you speak Indian?’ Turning to me, she said, in her broken dialect, ‘That was your squaw that was here first, chief, and she says that was her ring, and you bought it for her’. After a long conversation, personal and private, with my wife through ‘Uts,’ which space forbids me to enter upon...Uts then controlled again, and held a merry conversation with us all, alluding in some laughable manner to the meeting. As a test that she had been there she said to me, ‘I saw you, chief; you went on the platform. Chief I likes to see you on the platform at the institution. There was a lot of squaws about you on the platform...’”.54
Bhabha emphasised that “…the discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence”, and that “in order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference”55. For example, an article entitled “A Spiritual Picnic”, published in Medium and Daybreak described how a medium named Mrs. Bullock had begun to speak in a dialect, which the writer “…thought it was Yorkshire, but a Spiritualistic gentleman explained to me that it was partly ‘North American Indian’”56. The fact that a dialect could be “partly” anything, joined with the fact that the sitter believed it sounded as though it was from Yorkshire, further illustrates the blurring of
51 “Liverpool – A Correction. Charlotte Dixon,” Medium and Daybreak. October 1875, 635. 52 Bhabha. The Location of Culture, 33 53 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 33. 54 “A Test Seance With Mrs Wilson, Surtees Street, Darlington,” Medium and Daybreak, January 1874, 74. 55 Bhabha. The Location of Culture, 86. 56 “A Spiritual Picnic,” Medium and Daybreak. August 1873, 375.
135 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances the mediums’ identities when speaking for their spirit guides. I again quote Bhabha and his “hybrid displacing space" - develops between colonial and indigenous cultures - effect is deprivation of "the imposed imperialist culture, not only of the authority...but even of its own claims to authenticity”. The dialect again appeared in séances presided over by Mrs. Hollis, who was guided by an Indian spirit named “Skiwaukee” or “Ski”. “Ski” was known for “his unselfishness and kindness of disposition toward all visitors is well-nigh unprecedented - his friendship warm, and inflexibly true, whilst his indefatigability and loving efforts in the service of all who call upon him”. The person who reported on the séance also showed the speech of Ski, who asked him if he has been in touch with a “broder jones”. When the reporter replies that he has and has spoken of Ski in his letter, Ski’s response was: 'Me know dot', said he, 'but dare is a little gal standing by you say she loves to stand by you in circle. She say she want you to send message to her mudder and fader - will you do 'em, and ask broder Jones to print 'em”.57 A famous public medium, Annie Fairlamb also produced materialisations of an Indian child named Pocky, who at one séance remarked “Me hungry; me want something to eat”. Pocky then complained that “If me don’t have something to eat me die, and you put me in de grave again”58
Mimicry is, according to Bhabha, “…strategy of reform, regulation, and discipline, which 'appropriates' the Other', then the stereotype of mimicry was also the mark of a recalcitrant difference, 'a difference that is almost the same, but not quite”.59 When mediums used mimicry to present voices of the colonised spirits using the discourse that they had bestowed upon them, they unwittingly implicated themselves in the same cycle of Othering. I emphasize again that through the mediums usage of mimicry to replicate Native American spirits, they were appropriating the stereotypes they had created whilst elevating the Native Americans to positions of authority, by giving them control over their bodies and voices. One of the primary ways this was done was through language and the linguistic hybridity referred to previously. A report in the Medium and Daybreak newspaper from July 22, 1870, reported a séance with two mediums, a Mr. Hesse H.B. Shepard and a Mr. Frank Herne. Mr. Shepard became entranced and began to speak “…in some wild tongue with much volubility and with many curious guttural sounds”.60 The sitters asked for an interpretation, and then the same medium, spoke in a voice “with measured accents and quiet
57 “Mrs. Hollis in Baltimore,” Medium and Daybreak, March 1877, 132. 58 Tromp, 125. 59 Gyan Prakash, “Postcolonial Criticism and Indian Historiography.” In Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 498. 60 “An Evening with Mr. Hesse H.B. Shepard and Mr. Frank Herne,” Medium and Daybreak, July 1870, 125.
136 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances phraseology, that the speech was from an Indian developing spirit…”61 Following this, the other medium became involved and the two of them became involved in a performance of singing and dancing, until one of the mediums them sat on the floor and “…made guttural sounds of satisfaction, as the Indians are described to do”. When Native American spirit-guides appeared, they often spoke in broken English, their own dialect, or an amalgamation of the two. A report from a séance attendee in 1873 noted two Indian spirit-guides, named Rosie and White-Fawn, “these two Indian children duly in discussing the merits of their respective Squaws; ‘White Fawn.’ as usual, signifying her disapprobation of the sable attire of her Squaw. This very amusing colloquy was wound up by what seemed to be a palaver in their native tongue, which was of course quite unintelligible to us"62 This inability to understand the language is immediately in contrast with the fact that the reporter knew what the subject was that the spirit-guides were talking about; this, combined with the fact that the term “Squaw” is a derogatory slur against American Indian women, demonstrates the blurring of identities and roles so common with mediums and their spirit guides.
In Modern American Spiritualism, a narrative was replicated from Alexander Henry, who was held captive during the French and Indian wars of 1759. Henry describes hearing the Indians outside, “…some yelling, some barking, some howling like wolves…articulate speech was also uttered as if from human lips, but in a tongue unknown…”63 This narrative, refurbished over a hundred years later and disseminated to Spiritualist audiences, could have been included for several reasons, but I believe the most likely was to further the idea that for Spiritualists, as well as to the larger population, the life of the Native American was based on a connection with nature which cannot be separated from their identity. Consequently, we can better understand the tenuous links with which Spiritualists connected vocal characteristics to their Native spirit-guides. Soon, a startling majority of Native spirit-guides could be counted on to possess voices which, if they were intelligible to their audiences, were influenced by the hybridisation of theirs and the medium’s own voices. In 1873, another article was published in Medium and Daybreak about a Miss. Hudson, a medium who produced Indian spirit guides. When her spirit guide was quizzed about an event that happened at a railway station, he responded “me don’t know, me was not there, but will inquire”.64
A phenomenon that many Indian spirits were recorded as doing was a ‘war-whoop’, which
61 Ibid. 62 “A Seance with Mr and Mrs Holmes.” Medium and Daybreak, March 1873, 148. 63 Hardinge Britten, Modern American Spiritualism, 483. 64 “Tests by Miss Hudson,” Medium and Daybreak. January 1873, 41.
137 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances appeared in many séance narratives. Emma Hardinge Britten wrote of her time in America “I am in the very wilds of Indiana, in the land of Tecumsah the famous Indian king...Night after night the cottagers hear the tramp of spirits and their voices murmuring, and about once every year, when the harvest moon is at the full, hundreds of persons have heard their war-whoop and the whizzing of arrows for more than an hour."65 Considering that Hardinge Britten was one of the most influential and respected mediums of her time, it is not a far reach to imagine that those mediums reading this account would then be inspired to incorporate “war-whoops” into their own séances. Another article entitled “Mrs. Holmes at Darlington” stated how the famous chief Black-Hawk appeared and “…gave us tremendous war- whoops by audible voice”66. Whilst I am not doubting that this sound was indeed produced by some Native Americans, it is interesting to note how it became a stand-in for all Native American spirithood across the board. These stereotypes, to quote Bhabha, were “the primary point of subjectification in colonial discourse, for both colonizer and colonized, is the scene of a similar fantasy and defence...”67. In Phantasms of the Living, a Mr. Pierce was assaulted by spirit, but he "has had no other visual hallucination, except that once, when lying shot through the jaw by an Indian, he thought he saw an Indian standing over him, and infers that it was not a real one, or he would have been scalped. These depictions of Native American practices would no doubt have been influenced to an extent by the presence of Native Americans in England. George Catlin recalled how much dancing and war- whooping was done, and how they would respond to an unknown sound “...with yells and war- whoops”68. How much of this was sincere, and how much was for the performance they were getting paid to put on, cannot be determined, but one can imagine the extent to which this influenced their audience.
Just as Native Americans were at once depicted as barbaric and enlightened, so was their speech and oratory similarly binarized. Kathryn Troy discusses the embodiment of the spirit of Black Hawk in American séance rooms, and how his speaking in broken English was in contradiction to several other spirits who were eloquent and quoted poetry at length. “The utilization of both eloquent and crude speech in séance rooms reflected the nineteenth-century conflict between noble and savage imagery, and the role patterns of speech played in that struggle.”69. “Admiring Indian eloquence,” Conn argued, “acknowledging their oratorical skill, came provocatively close to investing individual Indians with power and giving Indian groups the ability to imagine themselves
65 “Extracts from Mrs. Hardinge’s Letters,” Medium and Daybreak, August 1870, 142. 66 “Mrs. Holmes at Darlington,” Medium and Daybreak, October 1872, 398 67 Bhabha, “The Other question: the stereotype and colonial discourse,” 298. 68 Flint, 60. 69 Ibid.,
138 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances as nations … it may well have been possible for some to figure Indians into the equation that linked eloquence, power, and nationhood.”70 Black Hawk also made an appearance at a séance held by Mr. Shepard, in which Black Hawk was aiding in the development of a spirit circle; “...and other Indian spirits were present, and aiding in the work of development...An Indian spirit stated that Dr. Newton had imported 20,000 Indian spirits with him. Mr Shepard was entranced, and spoke in Indian and broken English...".71
Conclusion The hybridization of Native American spirits with English Spiritualists was primarily enacted through the reproduction and recreation of traits that the Spiritualists applied to all Native spirits. The fusing together of the “Indian” and the English language resulted in the hybridity of both the coloniser and the colonised; a hybridisation which in turn brought about the creation of a “Third Space”. Séance mediums used vocal characteristic that they picked up from books or colonial shows to create their own interpretations of the voices and speech of the Native Americans, which they fused with their own rhetoric. The traditional dynamic of coloniser and colonised was disrupted through this mimicry, of which the ambivalent nature was the defining characteristic. The “Indian” was idolised by Spiritualists for their innate connection to nature and spiritually superior lifestyle, yet still viewed as savage and in need of guidance. The “loyalty” of the spirit guides also was indicative of how the Spiritualists defined their relationship with these spirits – they would assume positions of power but simultaneously turn the machine of colonialism on its head by emphasizing the Indian spirits controlling their bodies. Overall, British Spiritualists challenged and constructed the idea of the “Indian” as adhering to the ‘noble savage’ stereotype primarily through their amalgamation of vocal characteristics, playing with the dynamic of control, and framing the “Indian” both as a figure of admiration and an opportunity to show them as simple, despondent creatures. The research from this article will hopefully shed more light onto the relationship that Britain had with Native Americans, more specifically British Spiritualists. The relationship of Spiritualists with their non-white spirit guides has been researched over the years, but Native American spirits from a European perspective are still vastly underdeveloped outside of the context of North America. Further questions that can be addressed by future research will hopefully add to the crossroads of Spiritualism and its role in the colonial discourse surrounding Native Americans and their spirit guides.
70 Troy, 50. 71 “A Letter from an American Spiritualist,” Medium and Daybreak, 1870, 52.
139 Entremons. UPF Journal of World History. Número 11 (Octubre 2020) Clarice Bland ”This child of nature” – Representations of Native American spirits in English séances
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