Carmer, Jesse Cornplanter and the Anthropologist Fenton

Carmer Conducting Fieldwork Among Shad Fisherman, Croswell Bowen, 1938

In his author’s note to Listen for a Lonesome Drum Carl Carmer writes “I have described the events narrated here substantially as they occurred.”  I pointed out earlier in this blog that Carmer’s narrative stance is akin to an anthropologist’s or an ethnographer’s. But not quite. William N. Fenton, who introduced Carmer to Jesse Cornplanter, was an anthropologist, trained at Yale University. Consider here how Carmer constructs his accounts of Jesse Cornplanter and what Fenton has to say about it.

Not Jesse Cornplanter Carving! Iroquois and the New Deal author Laurence Hauptman says this is Kidd Smith. Photo from National Archives.

        As in his earlier Stars Fell on Alabama, Carmer draws us into the scene with his description of traveling, this time through winter’s snow to the Tonawanda Reservation. Cornplanter’s house, the Long House and later the Cattaraugus reservation, are the setting for Carmer’s telling of the stories and description of the ritual performances of the Seneca. Four chapters cover The Faces, The Dark Dance, Seneca beliefs about witchcraft, and the Maple Thanksgiving. Much of what happens is quoted in direct speech, and some of the conversations deal with Seneca political concerns, not ritual. Once again, Carmer is a gracious guest, and wins the reader’s sympathy to his sentiments: “And I felt ashamed that the people of my native state had not long ago realized the wealth that lies in the literature of the tribes of the Iroquois Union.”

Fenton is quick to acknowledge that Carmer’s work cleared a path for him. When Fenton began his teaching career, the popularity of Listen for A Lonesome Drum, in which Fenton is mentioned, guaranteed his celebrity with both academics and students. I’m intrigued by Fenton’s account of Carmer’s methods. Fenton wrote “I would soon learn that creative writing marches to a different drummer than historical ethnology.” Fenton saw that Carmer altered chronology, shifted scenes and characters. He had seen the chance to work with Carmer as an exchange of field work methods. He discovered that Carmer never made any notes, but had the ability to recall whole conversations. Fenton describes himself as an “inveterate scribbler.” His notebook system used right hand pages for observation, and left hand pages for questions, comments and additions, to be followed by transcription. In spite of borrowing Fenton’s notes, Carmer doesn’t get all his details right; to Fenton’s disappointment, but not to the Tonawanda Senecas, who liked Carmer’s writing.

William N. Fenton

When Fenton reviewed Carmer’s Dark Trees to the Wind, which contains additional material on the Iroquois, Fenton observed “Neither a proper folklorist not a true historian, Carmer belongs rather to the belles letters.” Seems a bit harsh to me. Fenton grants anthropologists and historians the privilege of investigating and representing the Iroquois, and writers like Walter D. Edmonds, Edmond Wilson and Carmer the same, but based on their knowledge of world literature. But he criticizes Carmer for adhering to aesthetics rather than educational or informational standards. What I’ve learned about Carmer’s writing, particularly from examining his use of my father, Croswell Bowen, as a collector, is that the story is primary. Listener or reader expect a shape, and know that the writer or teller may play within that shape. My sense is that Carmer saw himself as a teller of tales like those he’d listened to with his father in upstate New York. Fenton was an expert in discovering underlying ritual patterns yet didn’t privilege Carmer to do on the page what oral storytellers always do on the porch, which is swap lies.


(Fenton’s comments can be found in “The Iroquois in the Grand Tradition of American Letters: The Works of Walter D. Edmonds, Carl Carmer, and Edmond Wilson,” in American Indian Culture and Research Journal 5:4 (1981) 21-39.)

Listening for Carmer, Part II, Seven Stops on the Psychic Highway

Carl Carmer's Psychic Highway, Google Maps Style

     "Across the entire breadth of York State, undeviating, a hilly strip scarcely twenty-five miles wide invites the world's wonder. It is a broad psychic highway, a thoroughfare of the occult whose great stations number the mystic seven." So wrote Carl Carmer in Listen for A Lonesome Drum, before presenting the material which demonstrates for his readers that indeed, upstate New York, like Alabama is under some supernatural spell.

     He presented much of this material in both book form, and in the "Reporter At Large" section of The New Yorker magazine. In 1936, The New Yorker published six of Carmer’s essays on the curious psychic events of upstate New York. Carmer’s accounts of the Lily Dale spiritualists, Orson Fowler’s phrenology, and the Oneida Community provide the depth in the magazine’s coverage of Upstate New York: a place either out of mind or of another time. Although this period pre-dates Caroline Gordon’s masterful examination of the world-view of The New Yorker readers and writers, The World Through a Monocle, Gordon's analysis helps us understand this audience. Gordon found that New York City sophistication and tolerance mixed oddly with the interactions between races in cartoons of maidservant with mistress or master conversations. In the thirties, the magazine’s stance towards citizens in the rest of the state was similarly marked. The “Talk of the Town” section featured a short piece about an upstate visitor, lost in Manhattan traffic, directed by a helpful policeman to the Holland Tunnel so that she could spend her vacation in Atlantic City, instead of NYC, as planned. Another “Talk” piece described a similar encounter in which a policeman, seeing a visitor’s Westchester address on his license, excused him as a farmer and sent him on his way.
    Why are writer and reader were complicit in accepting, even anticipating, extra-ordinary stories of upstate goings-on? I've concluded that Carmer  and his readers accepted some part of the Romantic notion of an aesthetic experience of place. These upstate goings-on fill the need to experience the weird, the picturesque, and the uncanny in order to define a location.
     If we travel the Psychic Highway today, should we expect to find any trace of the weird or supernatural? Carmer's first stop was the Niskayuna Shaker Family Dwellings near what is now Albany Airport. The last of the Shakers here had recently departed for New Lebanon, across the River, and so he visited them there. Some seventy years later, I visited both. Niskayuna once encompassed several Shaker "families," the entities into which the community was divided. Some of the families' buildings no longer exist. Albany County used one, called the Ann Lee Home, after the founder of the Shaker religion. Other buildings are privately owned, and used as rental apartment buildings. The West Family Farm remains under cultivation by the children of the man who bought it when the Shakers departed. Nothing strange here, unless you think strange any folk attempting to make a living farming in New York in these difficult times.

     New Lebanon is another story. On one hand, the Darrow School is sited at one of the family farms. The school was founded by Shakers and their supporters. The gigantic stone barn is in ruins, but stabilized. Down the road, Shaker spiritualism has manifested itself. A Sufi community, The Abode of the Message has found a home there. In addition to practicing organic farming, the Sufi see the world in ways similar to the Shakers, believing that "The world, within and without, continuously presents us with signs of this universal force of love."

     I've not traveled west to the next stop on the psychic highway, the Oneida Community, which Carmer tells about as a tale of "conscientious Yankee craftsmanship and business acumen but also of such courageous social experiment as the world has witnessed but once." The community tried to perfect their lives on earth. The community's Mansion House has the motto, "Still Perfect." Believers in life-long learning, the Mansion House today offers plays, lectures and other educational programs. Visitors can still lodge and eat there, and take a guided tour of the communal dwelling. I'm not so confident about finding Fat's Diner, where Carmer had an egg sandwich and inquired of Fat what the working folk thought of their bosses at the flatware factory, but Cemeteries, like the Community Cemetery where Oneida founder John Humphrey Noyes is buried, seldom move.

     A required stop on this road trip down the Psychic Highway would be Cobbs Hill in Rochester.  Carmer describes how William Miller went there to await the Second Coming, the rapturing and the end of the world on October 22, 1842. He wasn't alone in his disappointment. Cobbs Hill is now a park.

Next we should head south to Penn Yan, where Jemima Wilkinson, the Public Universal Friend held sway over the Jemimakins. Carmer tells how this woman miraculously returned to life after seeming to die of the plague, and founded a colony on the shores of Seneca Lake.  A history of the  town of New Jerusalem states "The oldest denomination or sect to find a foothold within the town of Jerusalem was probably that of the Society of Friends, headed by Jemima WILKINSON, or the Public Universal Friend, as she styled herself.  This remarkable woman made the town her home in 1794, and her domicile was the place of meeting for her society." Although she "left time" in 1819, Carmer found not only families descended from her followers, but also artifacts from her existence, such as her crescent shaped coach. Today we  can see the exterior of her house, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

     The next stop on this journey is Hydesville, New York, where the three Fox Sisters are said to have founded Modern Spiritualism. Carmer tells how the three sisters first exploited and then exposed their methods for communicating with spirits. The foundation of the house where the Fox sisters first developed their techniques is now enclosed in a protective barn, and is a pilgrimage site for Spiritualists.

     Mormons from all over the world visit the Hill Cumorah, the next stop on our journey. Carmer recounts the story of Joseph Smith and the tablets he discovered here. Carmer climbed the hill on a summer day in 1936, and exchanged ideas with a Mormon elder. Carmer returned later to view the unveiling of the statue of Moroni. For Carmer the revelation was that an established, international religion viewed his native state as holy ground. Nowadays, one can visit not only the Hill Cumorah, but Joseph Smith's farm and the place where the book of Mormon was first printed.

     On to Lily Dale, or the Lily Dale Assembly. Much, much more than a foundation remains of this center of Spiritualism. These days in July and August, there are astrological readings, sweat lodges, spirit walks and mediums galore. At the Inspiration Stump you will feel the most profound energy of Lily Dale, and may receive a short message from the spirits. The mediums and trumpet speakers labored so hard to convince and convert the doubting Carmer that he drove to nearby Chautauqua as quickly as his car would take him.

If it were me, I'd head down to Dryden, near Ithaca, off the Psychic Highway. I'd visit the Pioneer
Cemetery and find the grave of Carl's ancestor, one Isaac Carmer who d. Jan. 26, 1853, ae 101 yrs, 10 months, 29 days.

"Revolutionary War Soldier - Isaac Carmer (1760-1853)  Enlisted at Sandyston, NJ, March 1, 1776 in the Third Regiment of Sussex Co., NJ,  Militia.  He served under Lieutenants Aaron Westbrook and Daniel Depue, and Captains Peter Westbrook, Jacob Rosencrantz and James Broderick.  His active service consisted of short tours of duty, usually for one month, in each of the six years 1776 to 1781, inclusive.  He was pensioned at Dryden, NY.  (Rev. War Pens. App. File No. S864, National Archives, Washington, DC) Dryden Census 1850, Isaac was living with John Carmer, Isaac's age was 98 years old at that time."

Listening for Carmer, Part I

  

From East to West, Krebs, Physical Culture Hotel, Covenanters, Genesee Valley Hunt, Tonawanda Reservation

     Homer's Odyssey is the mother of all travel narratives, the hero's journey. After the Trojan War, Ulysses' trip back to Ithaca brings him to the many curious corners of the Mediterranean, and finally home to Penelope. Often forgotten is that Ulysses had to wonder again, further inland, before he was allowed to return home for good.
     Carl Carmer's traveler's account of the deep south as a foreign country, Stars Fell on Alabama, was an enormously successful travel narrative. Carmer was encouraged, certainly by his sister Katherine, and probably by his publisher, to apply its trope to his native York State. This he does in Listen for a Lonesome Drum, which purports to be the account of his travels after returning from Alabama to his upstate home. Drum doesn't disappoint, informing the reader of the folkways of Upstate New Yorkers from one end of the Erie Canal to the other, and from the Adirondacks to the Helderbergs.
     I'm curious to know what remains. A Carl Carmer Road Trip is called for. Drums is our guide, the internet, our vehicle for this expedition. Carl might approve, as long as we did the driving.

    "I passed another lake, Skaneateles, and rolled to a stop at a curb where dozens of cars had already drawn up. Eagerly I sought the door of a pleasant white house set in a row of others a quarter-mile away from the water. In front of it hung a simple sign-but all habitual travelers of York State know that here is the spot where the poetry of the countryside is to be forsaken for that of cruisine." Carmer is speaking of Krebs, established in 1899. His description of the upstate food they cooked the upstate way makes your mouth water, even across the years. Between May and October, Krebs serves that same traditional meal, family style, from a buffet cart: prime rib, fried chicken, two kinds of potatoes, gravy, with homemade pies, brownies and sherbet for desert. Or at least it has for the seventy three years since Carmer visited. In December, 2009, the restaurant was put up for sale. It has had only three owners: the Krebs, their adopted son Fred Perkins, and Jan and Jerry Loveless. The Lovelesses want to retire, but hope the new owner will keep Krebs as its been for more than 100 years. In truth, some reviewers of the restaurant don't care for its timeless cuisine, but I would love to relive Carmer's meal. (The asking price is less than two million, and that includes the restaurant, two other houses and two and a half acres. Contact Linda Roche if you are interested.)

     Thus sated, Carmer heads west to his sister's home. Other peregrinations take him south to the hills above Hemlock Lake, where the weird Caleboguers were said to live. Northwest of Conesus Lake another group, the Covenanters, who hold to the religion of the Second Reformation in Scotland, and took refuge first in Ireland before settling around Caldonia, NY. The Presbyterian Stone Church there seems a fitting trace of their steadfastness.
     Carmer himself acknowledges that the most picturesque of dwellers around Geneseo are the scant circle of landowning families, the Wadsworths, the Chanlers, the Stowes, the Chandlers and so on. He describes them as avid hunters. "In hunting season," he writes, "the valley distances echo the sound of the horn, the pink coats glow through the morning mists." "The whole relationship between the landed gentry and the countryside is cordial and amusing," Carmer continues, "but a little as if it were the creation of Gilbert and Sullivan."
      Can such traditions continue into the 21st Century? Why yes, in 2010, the 134th season of the Genesee Valley Hunt will open as usual in September, at one of the manors, The Homestead, that Carmer describes. Presumably, it will again be led by a member of one of the landowning families. As in years past, the Valley will give the impression of "divorce from the rest of living."

     Even older than the Genesee Valley Hunt is the Tonawanda Indian Reservation. Carmer seems to have stayed there for several weeks, and describes the dances he witnessed. He went there at the invitation of Chief Jesse Cornplanter, a most remarkable man, a pivotal figure in 20th Century Indian affairs. Whatever you may think of Carmer's techniques as a folklorist, ethnologist or historian, he conveys in these chapters his appreciation of being invited into the Seneca world, as well as the immediacy of what he saw and felt. An artist and author, Jesse Cornplanter was the last direct descendent of Cornplanter, Seneca war-chief. After the American Revolution, and with his half-brother, Handsome Lake, Cornplanter tried to lead the Iroquois to return to traditional Indian ways of life and ceremony. In spite of the best efforts of some of those landowners in the Genesee Valley Hunt, the Seneca managed to hold onto some of their land and avoid removal to Kansas. In his own time Jesse Cornplanter served both the United States, in World War II, and the Iroquois nation, by documenting and preserving traditions. How to recapture Carmer's experiences with Cornplanter? You could visit the New York State Library, where Cornplanter's drawings are kept. Or you could visit the Four Corners Cemetery, on the Reservation, where he's buried.

     The last stop on this Carmer Road Trip will be the place Carmer passed on his way to Chautauqua. "I had stopped for lunch at the dignified old red brick building on the side of the great hill that rises above Dansville. It is one of the earliest recollections of my childhood, this long many-windowed institution which adults call the Jackson Sanitorium." He soon discovers that it has become the Physical Culture Hotel, under the direction of one Bernarr MacFadden, the Jack LaLanne of his day. Carmer found the guests a little too enthusiastic. The hotel-spa closed in 1971, and in spite of rumors of restoration , appears in this picture from Google maps, a ruin.

Carl Carmer, Chairman of 350th Hudson-Champlain Festival

The Celebrations for the 400th Hudson/Champlain Anniversary are just beginning! I was delighted, but not surprized to discover that Carl Carmer played an important role in the 350th Festival. 

Writer, folklorist, resident of Irvington, NY's five storied, eight-sided house, Carl should not be forgotten!

Guests arrive 

at the Carmer's for a party in the 1940s. 

LIFE Magazine Photo.