When I am giving a client a private reading at my home in Cheshire, I am often asked after giving a tarot reading or a psychic reading about my guides.
Spiritualist churches up and down the country and their mediums will refer to their guides by name or by character. A guide is a discarnate spirit which has chosen to act as a guide to a person who has been granted the gift of mediumship.  To be fair, I do not question my guides too much as they are here to help me help others, and I trust them implicitly.

Native American guides are traditionally known to be closer to Mother Nature than most , and are considered the most common of guides who help mediums use their spiritual gifts.

The various tribes living in different locations in America would have an elder or a tribe leader. Highly respected, his role was to lead and to make decisions on behalf of the other members of his tribe.
Another highly respected member of any tribe was the medicine man. He would collect herbs and stones and keep them in a pouch. He was allowed to administer his medicine to other members of his tribe; in short he was a mediumistic spiritual healer, and the items he would collect would assist him in receiving the visions that would guide him. He would also receive wisdom from the tribe’s ancestors, who would appear to him in dreams.