WEBVTT - S2 – 6: Restless 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:20.160 Summer arrived without a thaw. Elisha and his crew suffered 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:23.599 the teeth of ice through June, then through July, and 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:28.000 on into the darkening fall. Winter was coming again, though 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:32.879 for these lost explorers it had never really left. The 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:36.440 men were trapped, stranded and alone in a frozen cove 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:40.120 off the northwest coast of Greenland. In his published writings, 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:43.199 Elisha seemed like a stalwart voice of reason in the 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:46.040 midst of a crew who were spooked by shadows. But 0:00:46.240 --> 0:00:50.040 his private diary tells a different tale. In the days 0:00:50.120 --> 0:00:53.280 after Elishah rebuked his men for ghost hunting on the ice, 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:55.800 he had his own series of visions that left him 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:59.880 shot waking dreams, he called them, and they were intense. 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:03.200 One minute, he wrote, he was on the frozen ship. 0:01:03.760 --> 0:01:06.520 Next though, he was transported back to his family home, 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:09.679 right into the dining room, and the whole family was 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:13.880 gathered around the table, feasting and laughing. He would have 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:16.200 held onto that vision as long as he could, but 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:18.319 it seemed like a trance that was out of his hands. 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:21.399 Until that is a few days later, when he was 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:24.160 trying to build a fire, and a strange glow, like 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:27.920 a spirit light, surrounded his hand in the darkness. He 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:30.960 wondered if this was the end, if he was preparing 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:35.520 to cross over into the spirit world. In the end, 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:39.559 Elisha and his men only survived the unrelenting cold because 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:42.960 they began to meet Inuits who lived in Greenland's icy heart. 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:45.920 The local people found the men trapped on their ship 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:48.720 and started to trade them the supplies of food they 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:52.760 needed to endure. Some of Elisha's crew quit the expedition 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:56.160 altogether and their old lives to go live with the 0:01:56.200 --> 0:02:01.760 Inuits permanently instead. Eventually, Alisha gave into the realization that 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:04.200 clinging to his mission would only leave him on a 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:08.160 dark threshold to death. Store setting aside his pride, he 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:11.600 and his remaining men finally abandoned the ship, but they 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:15.400 were far from clear. Their journey would take them overland 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:18.320 for more than one thousand miles. Along the way, they 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:22.119 were helped by more indigenous people. They fed Elisha's men 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:24.880 and even stepped in to drag the whaling boats that 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:28.920 Elisha's crew were using as sledges, each filled with heavy supplies. 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:33.720 It wasn't until August of eighteen fifty five, after twenty 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:36.919 seven months of travel, that Elisha and his remaining crew 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:39.840 were picked up by another ship on Greenland's south coast. 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:42.960 When he sailed back toward the United States, he knew 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:45.679 he was leaving members of his crew behind him in Greenland, 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:50.880 both alive and dead. Back in New York, he was 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:54.400 welcomed as a hero, and the public clamored around him. 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:57.000 Of course, there was someone else he wanted to see, though, 0:02:57.320 --> 0:02:59.839 and she wanted to see him. But it took two 0:02:59.880 --> 0:03:02.200 days for him to fight through the press to finally 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:06.760 reach Maggie's side. All the while, rumors about their not 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:12.120 so secret engagement began to enrage Elisha's wealthy family. Speculation 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:15.040 about their relationship had been published in the New York papers, 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:19.200 The Post, The Express, and The Times, among others, and 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:23.079 none of it made the Cane family happy, so they 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:26.799 resolved to throw their weight into separating the newly reunited pair. 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:30.440 Maggie would later write that seeing Elisha again after two 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:34.160 years was joyous and passionate, and when the Canes leaned 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:38.040 on Maggie's family, the other Foxes started once again to 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:43.000 beg Elisha to leave her alone. In response, he retreated 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:45.960 to Philadelphia, but he did visit New York as often 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:48.600 as he could. Maggie held on as best as she 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:52.440 was able. She still didn't rejoin Leah and Kate seances 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:55.760 and continued to study with Elisha's friends, hoping she might 0:03:55.840 --> 0:03:59.920 yet earn his family's approval. For his part, Elisha feed 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:02.840 wishly worked on his next book about the recent journey, 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:07.640 already under contract with the Philadelphia publisher, the time was 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:11.240 stretching on. Eventually, Elisha was tired of waiting for his 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:15.440 family's approval. On an afternoon in September of eighteen fifty six, 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:18.560 when Elisha was visiting Maggie in New York, he sent 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:21.440 a call throughout the house. He summoned Kate to the 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:24.040 parlor where he and Maggie had been talking, and then 0:04:24.080 --> 0:04:27.000 he called for Mrs Fox as well. Even the household 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:31.279 staff were requested. Once they had all crowded into the parlor, 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:34.720 Elisha lined them up. Then he took Maggie by the 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:38.679 hand and made a pronouncement. He and Maggie were husband 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:40.920 and wife, and they declared their love for each other 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:43.760 right there in front of all of them, And that 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:49.080 was that Their common law. Marriage was sealed after that night. 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:52.640 Elisha's letters were filled with endearments to his wife, Calling 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:56.840 Maggie Mrs Kane, he showered her with diamonds. The two 0:04:56.920 --> 0:04:59.280 still lived apart for the time being, but he had 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:03.000 survived Arctic ordeal and they wouldn't be stopped from enjoying 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:07.560 his return. Despite his best efforts, though anxiety started to 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:11.080 creep in. You see, Elisha wasn't feeling very well. He 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:13.640 told Maggie not to worry, that he had written her 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:16.960 into his will just in case. Besides, his aches and 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:24.000 pains were nothing compared to living apart from her. The 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:26.559 pain at the center of their marriage may have felt 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:30.200 cruel and unusual to Elisha and Maggie, There's no doubt 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:33.919 about that. I think any of us could sympathize. But 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:37.200 it paled in comparison to the marriages of other mediums 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:41.919 in the spiritualist community. For them, life was an endless 0:05:41.960 --> 0:06:28.720 parade of suffering. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. Still 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:32.400 just sixteen, Victoria found herself in a constant battle to 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:35.839 keep both her husband and her young son alive. She 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:39.240 lived in Chicago, but the city never felt like home. 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:43.800 And her time there had left her with scars. For 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:48.160 one thing, leaving Pennsylvania hadn't stopped her husband, Canning's carousing. 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:51.919 In fact, he'd been drunk when Victoria delivered their baby, Byron, 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:54.800 in a house so cold that one of her biographers 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:57.919 described the icicles clinging to her bed post while she 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:02.080 was in labor. In the following days, she nearly died. 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:05.040 It was only thanks to the quick and caring intervention 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:07.800 of a neighbor and then a fortunate visit from her 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:13.600 mother that Victoria made it through alive. Canning barely worked, 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:16.520 although if we're honest, that was probably for the best. 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:20.280 What his potential patients really needed was a real doctor. 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:23.840 But Canning's hard living meant Victoria and the baby were 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:28.240 often left hungry. Victoria turned back to holding seances, but 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:31.560 it just wasn't enough not to mention that Chicago was 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:34.720 still a bit too close to her father Buck. Here's 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:39.760 author Mary Gabriel. She couldn't continue as a spiritualist and 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:42.679 make the kind of money she needed to support Canning, 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:46.040 Byron and her entire family, and in fact, by this 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:48.320 point she wanted to get rid of her family because 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:51.760 Buck had had some more run ins with the law, 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:54.680 and Victoria was old enough now to realize that he 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:59.160 was a scoundrel and always would be. Victoria knew she 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:01.800 couldn't go on having like this, so she aimed her 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:05.320 sites where so many others had before, to the West. 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:09.520 Anyone as frost bitten and weighed down as Victoria must 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:11.920 have at least considered the desperate move that she was 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:15.040 about to make. In a bid to inspire her husband 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:17.560 to start a new life, she loaded him and their 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:24.720 son onto a steamship, their destination san Francisco. Now, if 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:28.000 Chicago had been boisterous and full of vices to trip 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:32.280 up Canning, well, san Francisco was downright bedlam. After gold 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:35.400 had been discovered in California, the state's population of white 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:39.480 settlers had balloon from fifteen thousand to over three hundred thousand, 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:42.440 all in the span of just seven years, and San 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:47.959 Francisco was at the heart of that change. In ety eight, 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:50.560 there were roughly four hundred residents camping in the muddy 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:53.040 marshes around the Bay. But that was the year that 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:56.520 President James K. Polk stood before Congress and confirmed the 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:59.600 rumors he held up fourteen pounds of gold in his 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:03.040 hand and asked his fellow Americans to become colonists again, 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:06.400 to go west, to settle down there, and to raid 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:11.559 the soil for riches. The message was loud, clear, and compelling. 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.239 By the middle of the eighteen fifties, San Francisco's population 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:19.480 had grown from four hundred to forty thousand. One young 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:22.600 observer published a book that was critical of the boosterism 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:25.440 that San Francisco got in the press. In one of 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:29.960 his most famous passages, he wrote, I have seen pure liquors, 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:35.480 better cigars, truer pistols, larger bowie knives, and prettier courtesan's 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:38.600 here than in any other places I have visited. It 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:42.920 is my unbiased opinion that California can and does furnish 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:48.480 the best bad things that are obtainable in America. Of course, 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:51.480 if this account was meant to drive treasure and pleasure 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:55.360 hunters away from California and had the opposite effect. So 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:57.880 by the time Victoria arrived with her family in tow, 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:01.920 the city had already begun to rise. Here's Mary Gabriel again, 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:05.480 with a deeper look. She broke away and went to 0:10:05.520 --> 0:10:09.480 the one place that promised, possibly the hope that caning 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:13.080 could in fact resurrect some kind of medical career in 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:16.520 a in a town like San Francisco, which was barely 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:19.200 discernible as a town. It was just beginning to have 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.480 cobble stone streets. It was a place where I think 0:10:22.520 --> 0:10:25.040 that the ratio of men was ten to one, ten 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:29.600 men to one woman. It was lawless. It was the 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:33.320 main motivation for people. There was self enrichment. That was 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:38.320 the only thing that drove them. But if Victoria heard 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:42.119 there was opportunity in San Francisco for women, she wasn't misled. 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:48.040 Women were opening clothing stores, restaurants, hotels, theaters, brothels, and laundries, 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:51.800 all catering to the flood of California's new fortune seekers. 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:54.679 One woman, who didn't have the money to pay her 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:57.800 fair west, took the journey on credit, opened a hotel 0:10:57.840 --> 0:11:00.480 in San Francisco when she got there, and paid back 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:03.599 seven hundred dollars to her drivers six weeks later, and 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:07.080 she was soon making five thousand dollars a week, equal 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:10.880 to about one fifty dollars today. It was more than 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:13.520 five hundred times the weekly pay of a woman working 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:17.040 in a Massachusetts silk mill. San Francisco was a gold 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:21.960 mine for white settlers in more ways than one. But 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:25.199 for as canny as Victoria was, she didn't have that 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:29.800 kind of business acumen. What she did have, though, was beauty, ambition, 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:34.200 and tenacity, so she did find work. She answered an 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:37.679 advertisement for a cigar girl in a CD saloon and 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:40.600 was put to work behind the counter immediately, but she 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:44.280 didn't keep the position long. Here's Mary Gabriel once again. 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:48.280 There was one area called the Barbary Coast, which is 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:51.800 where it's most notorious. Early early claim to fame was 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:54.400 where the tapless waitress was born, and the story is 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:57.400 that the proprietor told her she was too fine to 0:11:57.440 --> 0:11:59.800 do that kind of work, which is essentially, no doubt 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:05.280 probaly some kind of form of prostitution. When Victoria refused 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:08.040 to play along, the saloon keeper center on her way, 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:10.800 remarking that she would need to rough it if she 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:12.960 was going to make a living in his part of town. 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:15.920 He must have taken some pity on her, though, because 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:18.040 he sent her off with a twenty dollar gold piece. 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:21.439 It was enough to give Victoria a moment to breathe 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:24.360 and rethink her options, finally deciding to see if she 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:27.000 could snare more income. Using her skill with a needle 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:30.400 and thread, she started going door to door offering to 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:34.000 work as a seamstress, and her services were thankfully met 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:38.600 with some demand. One afternoon, though, one of her clients 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:42.559 interrupted Victoria's work. She and the woman, an actress named Anna, 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:46.160 had become friends. During their long afternoons spent fitting and 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:50.240 fixing stagewear for the evening performance, and Victoria told her 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:53.120 new friend that she was making only about three dollars 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:57.600 a week, barely enough to keep the family afloat. Between 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:00.400 caring for Byron, room and board at the hotel and 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:03.840 Canning's constant donations to the wishing well at the bottom 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:08.480 of every pint glass, Victoria was always running short. Anna 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:12.600 had a better idea. She urged Victoria to become an actress, 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:16.319 and then practically hauled her onto the stage. Now, maybe 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:19.640 Victoria was able to draw on her experiences as a medium, 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:22.720 or perhaps she was just a quick study. Either way, 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:25.880 she was instantly able to command her parts. Like Emma 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:28.920 before her. She had moved from the seance table to 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:33.720 the stage. Back in the spotlight, Victoria thrived, and more 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:36.559 than that, her first week on stage earned her fifty 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:40.440 two dollars about fifteen hundred today, and after all she'd 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:43.440 been through, I can't help but imagine that she sighed 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:58.280 with relief. Finally there was something new on the horizon. Hope, 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:03.240 Victoria and others weren't the only ones to travel. Soon enough, 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:06.600 even the spirits were criss crossing the nation. And it's 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:10.400 no surprise why. For Americans who wanted to imagine their 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:14.400 nation as expansive as the land it inhabited, the idea 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.080 of the West was a place to hang their hopes. 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:20.720 While spiritualism had been growing and spreading, so too was 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:24.160 the idea that the United States had a manifest destiny 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:26.720 to take over every inch of land on the continent, 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:30.840 which brings us back to the writers and historians we 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:34.120 talked about in the last episode. Men like George Bancroft 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:38.400 and William Cullen Bryant. Remember bold visionaries like sojourn or 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:42.080 Truth and Aidan Blue were calling the nation to be remade. 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:45.720 They knew that America had inner demons to battle before 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:48.560 it would live up to their ideals. But Bancroft and 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:51.520 Bryant saw things a different way, and we could add 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:54.200 other people to that list as well, including a man 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:59.360 named Walt Whitman. Like William Cullen Bryant, Walt Whitman was 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:02.520 a poet who had turned his literary power to journalism 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:05.640 as well. He edited his own newspaper in New York 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:08.600 called the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. He liked to think that 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:12.080 he was every bit of visionary as writers like Frederick Douglas. 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:14.560 But let's take a look at the actual shape of 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:18.560 his vision. Buckle up, though, because sadly it gets ugly. 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:21.720 But don't take my word for it. His own words 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:26.040 were damning enough when it came to taking land women, 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.520 claimed that the energy of European settlers made them a 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:33.960 superior grade to everyone else on the continent. Again, his words, 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:37.360 not mine. In his view, the violence that had been 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:39.880 visited upon the native people's in the land between the 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:44.000 Rockies and the Pacific was only natural. The strong prey 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:47.160 on the week, he said, and they also take the gold. 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:51.760 That was his view. The historian Bancroft felt the same way. 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:55.520 He wrote that human progress always went westward, Crossing the 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:58.880 Atlantic was a final great stride. He thought that America 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:01.920 was the peak of some realization, and that progress had 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:06.880 reached its highest point in the institutions of the United States. Thus, 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:11.520 somehow he argued that the extermination of Native people was necessary. 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:13.880 In fact, he wrote that anyone who did not accept 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:19.360 white mastery was marked by destiny for destruction. The evil 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:22.400 in that view was pretty thorough. I know. It was 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:25.720 also a fairly common among literary and political circles in 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:28.560 New York at the time, But it also provided an 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:31.640 excuse for the long history of genocide that had recently 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:36.200 included Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policies. We can see how 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:39.240 sojourn or truth would point it out as a troubling 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:44.640 national sin, with writers like Bancroft and Whitman driving the 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.280 conversation in the eighteen fifties. It should come as no 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:51.280 surprise that when gold was discovered in California, white settlers 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:55.800 marched west in unprecedented numbers, weapons in toe. Even the 0:16:55.840 --> 0:16:58.720 water route to California was carved open. Under that kind 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:01.720 of thinking, there was so much money to be made. 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:06.560 Attitudes like these and the thinking that motivated them, convinced 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:10.760 reformers like Aidan Blue that the nation needed reinventing. He 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:14.920 was preaching against greed, against slavery, and against war when 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:18.399 the United States invaded Mexico in the eighteen forties, and 0:17:18.440 --> 0:17:20.960 there was no mistaking that these ideas came from the 0:17:21.000 --> 0:17:24.160 spirit world to push back against the powers of this one. 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:30.200 Here's historian John Busher Blou was by that time giving 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:35.119 sermons to his followers in a sort of elevated trance state, 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:38.800 supposedly under the direction of spirits, because there were rappings 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:42.399 going on all around the room. But after ten years 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:46.600 of spirit communications, things in Hopedale were still on rocky ground. 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:49.359 In fact, despite being one of the brightest beacons of 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:52.960 the reform movement, hope Dale had actually begun to flounder. 0:17:54.800 --> 0:17:57.239 Aidan Blue had hoped that his son Augustus might one 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:00.080 day take over as the leader of their community. The 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:03.320 young man's death might not have ended his speeches, after all, 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:05.879 Cora and others had begun to channel his voice for 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:08.359 the rest of the community, but it wasn't the same 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:12.359 as having the young man's energetic presence. Then there was 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:15.640 the financial side of things. When Cora and her father 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.880 came back from Wisconsin without having established a new outpost 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:22.880 for their community, its residents fell to fighting over limited resources. 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:26.120 You see, hope Dale had been established as a joint 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:30.160 stock company, but by eighteen fifty five, one relatively new 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:32.880 member of the group had managed to collect three fourths 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:36.800 of the company. This man's brother had also been a 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:39.679 long standing follower of Aiden's, and the pair worked to 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:43.120 pile up the ownership of the community. Then they threatened 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:45.919 to withdraw and bankrupt the rest of them. That is, 0:18:46.000 --> 0:18:48.960 of course, unless the other leaders gave them total control 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:53.320 over hope Dale's silk business. With no other choice, Aiden 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:56.520 and the others folded. Of course, the new kingpin promised 0:18:56.520 --> 0:18:58.960 that all the residents could stay. They could still bring 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:02.040 in new relatives, go to the community church and teach 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:04.879 in the local school, and they could keep working in 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:08.760 his silk mill. Naturally, but the character of the place 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:13.000 had changed. Once it had been a Christian socialist commune, 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:15.960 Now though it was nothing more than a company town. 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:21.119 Aiden had lost his model community. He'd set out to 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:25.520 remake the face of the nation. Instead, that nation had 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:32.480 crept in and taken control. Aidan Blues experiment in optimism 0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:49.119 was over. It felt new, but that wasn't entirely true. 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:52.919 What the spiritualists created in the eighteen fifties was actually 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:56.600 made from pieces snipped out of older fabric. In her book, 0:19:56.720 --> 0:20:01.160 Kathy Goodierres called spiritualism the frontiers spirit brought to bear 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:04.800 on the afterlife. That's more true than we have yet explored. 0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:08.720 We talked about Swedenborg and the Shakers in the first 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:11.760 episode of this season. Then with Sojourn or Truth, we 0:20:11.840 --> 0:20:15.520 saw the influence of African spirituality, even when they didn't 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:18.360 always put it in these terms. It's clear the spiritualists 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:21.920 knew how much they were taking from non European spirit beliefs. 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:25.720 But from the beginning, one thing that was definitely knew 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:30.040 about American spiritualism was the appearance of Native American ghosts. 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:36.920 Here's Historian and Browdie spirit guides. Indian spirit guides are 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:41.840 part of a longer American tradition that dates back long 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:46.840 before the spiritualist religion emerges in the eighteen forties. There 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:52.800 is this ability in American culture to espouse positive views 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:58.880 about Native Americans at the same time that one assumes 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:02.000 that they are people of the past who are dying 0:21:02.040 --> 0:21:06.920 away and who are appropriately part of the past that 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:11.880 is part of the land of the spirits. In New York. 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:15.240 Emma noticed this right away as she left her Broadway 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:17.960 career to become a medium full time. She observed that 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:21.040 Native spirits played a prominent role in the seances of 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:25.360 American spiritualists. She would later write that nearly every medium 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:30.119 is attended by a Native spirit. She expressed the opinions 0:21:30.160 --> 0:21:33.120 of many American spiritualists when she wrote that those spirits 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:38.520 were kind and generous. They were guides for the white spiritualists, counseling, protecting, 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:42.000 and using their knowledge of herbs to suggest rare cures 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:46.560 for diseases. Her way of talking about Native nations in 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:49.440 some way echoes what Alisha wrote about the Inuit people 0:21:49.480 --> 0:21:52.439 he met in Greenland. But like most spiritualists, both of 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:56.159 these writers saw Indigenous Americans as the supporting cast for 0:21:56.240 --> 0:22:01.560 stories of white exploration and white healing. Sadly, Emma's writing 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:05.800 describes the beliefs and practices of Native nations as bygone relics, 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:09.000 resources to be mined by white mediums that would otherwise 0:22:09.040 --> 0:22:11.679 be buried in the past, and in doing so, she 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:14.960 ignored the suffering and the strength of Native nations across 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:17.840 the United States. In a sense, it showed the ways 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:22.879 that spiritualism had absorbed, rather than reformed, the American imagination. 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:28.159 Cora's spirit lectures played apart in spreading this style of revelation. 0:22:28.600 --> 0:22:31.560 In eighteen fifty one, when she was still living in Wisconsin, 0:22:31.800 --> 0:22:35.560 receiving spirit messages from Augustus Belu and healing the sick, 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:38.639 there was a third spirit that became one of her controls. 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:44.160 Here's John Busher once again. I think the first spirit 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:49.080 control that she had was the son of Aiden Blue, 0:22:49.600 --> 0:22:53.840 Aidan Augustus Blue, who died early in his life. She 0:22:54.000 --> 0:22:59.200 also had it developed a series of Indian spirit controls. 0:22:59.320 --> 0:23:01.879 One of them was named Weena. One of them was 0:23:02.160 --> 0:23:05.320 named Shannandoah. There were a bunch of those as well. 0:23:07.480 --> 0:23:11.560 As Cora grew in prominence, Weena continued speaking. Her story 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:15.400 is part and parcel of American spiritualism's influence, and when 0:23:15.480 --> 0:23:18.560 Cora had her fateful confrontation with J. J. Mapes in 0:23:18.640 --> 0:23:21.800 eighteen fifty four, the first spirit control to speak to 0:23:21.840 --> 0:23:27.320 the scientist was Shenandoah. Cora and other spiritualists didn't always 0:23:27.359 --> 0:23:30.640 have relationships with Indigenous people, though, in fact, in many 0:23:30.720 --> 0:23:33.720 of these trances, the native spirit guides sound very much 0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:36.639 like the white fantasies coming from the fiction of the time. 0:23:37.240 --> 0:23:43.840 Here's more on that from Ann Browdie. Spiritualists participate in 0:23:44.800 --> 0:23:51.159 ideas about romantic ideas about Indians that have already begun 0:23:51.320 --> 0:23:57.560 to develop and are developing in American literature. Indian guides 0:23:58.240 --> 0:24:01.760 of mediums often just scribe a place they describe as 0:24:01.800 --> 0:24:06.760 the summer Land, a land of natural beauty and an 0:24:06.840 --> 0:24:12.520 undisturbed natural land where Indians live in peace and harmony 0:24:12.560 --> 0:24:15.520 as to white people, and where there is no conflict 0:24:15.920 --> 0:24:21.160 between the indigenous inhabitants and those who have displaced them. 0:24:21.320 --> 0:24:27.680 So spiritualists participate in the fantasy that Indigenous America and 0:24:28.080 --> 0:24:32.359 a European dominated America can live in harmony and can 0:24:32.400 --> 0:24:36.359 be part of the same spiritual vision. But that's a 0:24:36.359 --> 0:24:42.639 fantasy in some cases, though, where Cora spoke for the 0:24:42.640 --> 0:24:46.000 spirit of someone familiar to an audience member, it didn't 0:24:46.040 --> 0:24:49.320 always go so well. Once in Boston, she gave a 0:24:49.359 --> 0:24:52.760 trans lecture from the spirit of a well known Boston abolitionist, 0:24:53.200 --> 0:24:57.240 and one of the dead Man's friends protested. Afterward. He 0:24:57.280 --> 0:24:59.840 wrote a scathing letter to the newspaper saying that Cora 0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:03.240 wasn't channeling a genuine spirit, but rather than I quote, 0:25:03.520 --> 0:25:07.639 confiscating and misusing the man's name and ideas. He wrote 0:25:07.640 --> 0:25:11.359 that Cora's lecture was nothing but a mash of false quotations, 0:25:11.640 --> 0:25:15.280 words which he never used, and ideas which he never thought. 0:25:16.520 --> 0:25:19.240 If that was how some people responded to Cora's speaking 0:25:19.240 --> 0:25:21.480 in the voice of people they knew, we can only 0:25:21.520 --> 0:25:24.720 imagine what an actual Native American audience might have thought 0:25:24.800 --> 0:25:27.960 of her use of Weenaw and Shenandoah. But we do 0:25:28.119 --> 0:25:32.520 know one thing. To her audience in Boston, she was 0:25:32.560 --> 0:25:43.400 no better than an actress on a stage. Victoria made 0:25:43.440 --> 0:25:47.040 a splash. The members of her San Francisco acting troops 0:25:47.040 --> 0:25:49.600 said that there was a simplicity about her that was 0:25:49.720 --> 0:25:54.359 very convincing, charming, even she somehow managed to convey a 0:25:54.400 --> 0:25:59.320 powerful spirituality from the stage. Indeed, just as Victoria had 0:25:59.320 --> 0:26:02.920 not managed to outrun Canning's thirst, neither had she outrun 0:26:03.000 --> 0:26:07.280 the spirits. One night, when Victoria was playing a part 0:26:07.359 --> 0:26:11.120 in an adaptation of an Alexander Dumas story in which twins, 0:26:11.280 --> 0:26:14.520 although separated at birth, continued to fill each other's pain, 0:26:14.960 --> 0:26:18.720 something about the play broke through Victoria's mind, her soul, 0:26:18.880 --> 0:26:22.000