JACOB HAMBLIN.
A Mormon missionary among the Indians--The story of Jacob Hamblin's
life--His spiritualism, the result of an intense faith--His good
work among the Lamanites--His belief in his own miracles.
LEAVING Munroe, we find cultivation gradually disappearing, and, after
two or three miles, unmitigated brush supervenes. A steep divide now
thrusts itself across the road, and, traversing near the summit a
patch of pebbly ground which seemed a very paradise for botanists, we
descend again into a wilderness of grease-wood, "the unspeakable Turk"
among vegetables. The mountains between which we pass provide, however,
a succession of fine views. They are of that bulky, broad-based and
slowly sloping type that is so much more solemn and impressive than
jagged, sharp-pointed and precipitous formations.
A few miles more bring us to one of them, and for the first time during
the journey our road runs through the thickly growing "cedars" which we
have hitherto seen only at a distance lying like dark clouds upon the
hill-sides and black drifts in the gulches. The wild flowers growing
under these "cedars" (and the pines which are sprinkled among them) are
of new varieties to me, and I enjoyed a five-mile walk in this novel
vegetation immensely. A few years ago, though, "Mr. Indian" would have
made himself too interesting to travellers for men to go wandering
about among the cedars picking posies. They would have found those
"arrows tipped with jasper," which are so picturesque in Hiawatha,
flying about instead of humming-birds tipped with emerald, and a
tomahawk hurtling through the bushes would have been more likely to
excite remark than the blue magpies which I saw looking after snails.
This district was, until very recently, a favourite hunting-ground of
those Indians of whom old Jacob Hamblin was the Nestor--the guide,
philosopher, friend, and victim. One day they would try "to fill his
skin full of arrows;" on the next day they would be round him, asking
him to make rain-medicine. They would talk Mormonism with him all day,
and grunt approvingly; as soon as night fell they would steal his
horse. He was always patching up peace between this tribe and that, yet
every now and then they would catch him, have a great pow-wow over him,
and being unable to decide whether he should be simply flayed or be
roasted first over a charcoal fire, would let him go, with provisions
and an escort for his home journey.
His life, indeed, was so wonderful--much more fascinating than any
fiction--that I am not surprised at his believing, as he does, that
he is under the special protection of Heaven, and, as he says, in a
private covenant with the Almighty that "if he does not thirst for
the blood of the Lamanites, his blood shall never be shed by them."
He began life as a farmer near Chicago, but being baptized received
at once "the immediate gift of the Holy Ghost," and at once entered
upon a career of "miracles" and "prophecies" that when told in serious
earnest are sufficient to stagger even Madame Blavatsky herself. He
cured his neighbours of deadly ailments by the laying on of hands, and
foretold conversions, deaths, and other events with unvarying accuracy.
By prolonged private meditation he enjoyed what, from his description,
must be a pregustation of the Buddhistic Nirvana, and after this,
miracles became quite commonplace with him. He witnessed the "miracle"
of the great quail flights into the camp of the fugitive and starving
Saints in 1846, and helped to collect the birds and to eat them; he saw
also the "miraculous" flights of seagulls that rescued the Mormons from
starvation by destroying the locusts in 1848.
But his personal experiences, narrated with a simplicity of speech and
unquestioning confidence that are bewildering, were really marvellous.
If cattle were lost, he could always dream where they were. If sickness
prevailed, he knew beforehand who would suffer, and which of them would
die, and which of them recover. If Indians were about, angels gave
him in his sleep the first warnings of his danger. His sympathy with
the Indians was, however, very early awakened, and being strengthened
in it by the conciliatory Indian policy of Brigham Young, he became
before long the only recognized medium of friendly communication with
them. Everybody, whether Federal officials, California emigrants,
Mormon missionaries, or Indians themselves, enlisted his influence
whenever trouble with the tribes was anticipated. His own explanation
of this influence is remarkable enough. As a young man, he says, he was
sometimes told off to join retributive expeditions, but he could never
bring himself to fire at an Indian, and on one occasion, when he did
try to do so, his rifle kept missing fire, while "the Lamanites," with
equally ineffectual efforts to shed his blood, kept on pincushioning
the ground all around him with their futile arrows. After this he and
the Indians whenever they met, spared each other's lives with punctual
reciprocity.
On one occasion he dreamed that he was walking in a friendly manner
with some of the members of a certain tribe, when he picked up a piece
of a shining substance, which stuck to his fingers. The more he tried
to rub it off the brighter it became. One would naturally, under such
circumstances, anticipate the revelation of a gold-mine, but Jacob
Hamblin, without any questioning, went off at once to the tribe in
question. They received him as friends, and he stayed with them. One
day, passing a lodge, "the Spirit" whispered to him, "Here is the
shining substance you saw in your dream." But all he saw was a squaw
and a boy papoose. However, he went up to the squaw, and asked for the
boy. She naturally demurred to the request, but to her astonishment the
boy, gathering up his bow and arrows, urged compliance with it, and
Hamblin eventually led off his dream-revealed "lump." After a while he
asked the boy how it was he was so eager to come, though he had never
seen a white man before, and the boy answered, "My Spirit told me that
you were coming to my father's lodge for me on a certain day, and that
I was to go with you, and when the day came I went out to the edge
of the wood, and lit a fire to show you the way to me." And Hamblin
then remembered that it was the smoke of a fire that had led him to
that particular camp, instead of another towards which he had intended
riding!
By way of a parenthesis, let me remark here that if there are any
"Spiritualists" among my readers, they should study Mormonism. The
Saints have long ago formulated into accepted doctrines those mysteries
of the occult world which Spiritualists outside the faith are still
investigating. Your "problems" are their axioms.
This Indian boy became a staunch Mormon, and to the last was in
communion with the other world. Remember I am quoting Hamblin's words,
not in any way endorsing them. In 1863 he was at St. George, and one
day when his friends were starting on a mission to a neighbouring
tribe, he took farewell of them "for ever." "I am going on a mission,
too," he said. "What do you mean?" asked Hamblin. "Only that I shall be
dead before you come back," was the Indian's reply. "I have seen myself
in a dream preaching the gospel to a multitude of my people, and my
ancestors were among them. So I know that I must be a spirit too before
I can carry the Word to spirits." In six weeks Hamblin returned to St.
George; and the Indian was dead.
Brigham Young, as I have said, insisted upon a conciliatory policy
towards the Indians. He made in person repeated visits to the missions
at work among them, and was never weary of advising and encouraging.
Here is a portion of one of his letters: does it read like the
words of a thoroughly bad man?--"Seek by words of righteousness to
obtain the love and confidence of the tribes. Omit promises where
you are not sure you can fulfil them. Seek to unite your hearts in
the bonds of love. . . . May the Spirit of the Lord direct you, and
that He may qualify you for every duty is the constant prayer of your
fellow-labourer in the gospel of salvation, Brigham Young." Here
is a part of another letter: "I trust that the genial and salutary
influences now so rapidly extending to the various tribes, may continue
till it reaches every son and daughter of Abraham in their fallen
condition. The hour of their redemption draws nigh, and the time is not
far off when they shall become a people whom the Lord will bless. . . .
The Indians should be encouraged to keep and take care of stock. I
highly apprcNe your design in doing your farming through the natives;
it teaches them to obtain a subsistence by their own industry, and
leaves you more liberty to extend your labours among others. . . .
You should always be careful to impress upon them that they should
not infringe on the rights of others, and our brethren should be very
careful not to infringe upon their rights in any particular, thus
cultivating honour and good principles in their midst by example as
well as by precept. As ever, your brother in the gospel of salvation,
Brigham Young."
These and other letters are exactly in the spirit of the correspondence
which, in the early days of England in Hindostan, won for the old
Court of Directors the eternal admiration of mankind and for England
the respect of Asia. Yet in Brigham Young's case is it ever carried
to his credit that he spent so much thought and time and labour over
the reclamation of the Indians, by a policy of kindness, and their
exaltation by an example of honourable dealing?
It was in this spirit that the Mormon missionaries went out to
the Indians then living in the part of the Territory over which I
travelled, and Jacob Hamblin was one eminently characteristic of the
type. Beyond all others, however, he sympathized with the red man's
nature. "I argue with him just as he argues," he said. He was on
good terms with the medicine-men, and took a delightful interest in
their ceremonies. But when they failed to bring rain with bonfires
and howling, he used to pray down abundant showers; when they gave up
tormenting the sick as past all hope, Hamblin restored the invalid to
life by the laying on of hands!
Once more let me say that I am only quoting, not indorsing. But I
do him a great injustice in not being able to convey in writing the
impressive simplicity of his language, his low, measured tones,
his contemplative, earnest attitude, his Indian-like gravity of
countenance. That he speaks the implicit truth, according to his own
belief, I am as certain as that the water of the Great Salt Lake is
salt.
His "occult" sympathies seemed at times to be magnetic, for when in
doubt as to whom to choose for his companion on a perilous journey,
some brother or other, the fittest person for the occasion, would
always feel mysteriously influenced to go to him to see if his services
were needed. His displeasure killed men, that is to say they went from
his presence, sickened and died. So frequent was this inexplicable
demise that the Indians worked out a superstition that evil befalls
those who rob or kill a Mormon; and so marked were the special
manifestations of the missionaries' spirit power, that, as Hamblin
says, "the Indians were without excuse for refusing conversion," and
were converted. "They looked to us for counsel, and learned to regard
our words as law." Though the missionaries were sometimes alone, and
the tribes around them of the most desperate kind, as "plundersome" as
wolves and at perpetual blood-feud with each other, the Mormons' lives
were quite safe. When they had determined on an atrocity--burning a
squaw, for instance--they would do it in the most nervous hurry, lest
a Mormon should come along and stop it, and when they had done it and
were reproached, they used to cry like children, and say they were only
Indians.
Tragedy and comedy went hand in hand; laughter at the ludicrous is cut
short by a shudder of horror. "We cannot be good; we must be Piutes.
Perhaps some of our children will be good. We're going off to kill
so-and-so. Whoop!" And away they would go, putting an arrow into the
missionary's horse as they passed. By-and-by the man who shot the arrow
would be found dead, killed by a Mormon's curse, and the rest would
be back at work in the settlement hoeing pumpkins--"for all the world
like Christians!" Through all these alternations of temper and fortune,
Jacob Hamblin retained his tender sympathy with the red men.
Their superstitious piety which, quaintly enough, he does not seem
to think is exactly like his own, attracted him. He found among
them tribes asking the blessing of the Great Father on their food
before they ate it; invoking the Divine protection on behalf of their
visitors; praying for protection when about to cross a river; returning
thanks for a safe return from a journey; always sending one of their
religious men to accompany any party about to travel, and so on. All
this the pious Mormon naturally respected. But over and above these
more ordinary expressions of piety, he found tribes that believed in
and acted upon dreams; that accepted the guidance of "second sight;"
that relied upon prayer for obtaining temporal necessaries; that lived
"by faith," and were awaiting the fulfilment of prophecy. In all this
the Mormon missionary sees nothing but common sense. For instance,
Hamblin said, "I know that some people do not believe in dreams and
night-visions. I myself do not believe in them when they arise from a
disordered stomach, but in other kinds I have been forewarned of coming
events, and received much instruction!" And, in the spirit of these
words, he thinks it the most natural thing in the world that Indians
should start off after a dream and find their lost cattle; suddenly
alter their course in a waterless journey, and come upon hitherto
unknown springs; predict the most impossible meetings with friends,
and avoid dangers that were not even anticipated. In the most serious
manner possible, he acquiesces in the Indians' theory of rain-getting,
and acts upon their clairvoyant advice. "The Lord," he says, "is
mindful of the prayers of these poor barbarians, and answers them with
the blessings they need." Seeing them quite sincere in their faith, he
joins them in their ceremonies of scattering consecrated meal to ensure
protection on a journey, believing himself that simple reliance on
Providence is all that men of honest lives need.
One tribe has a tradition that three prophets are to come to lead them
back to the lands that their fathers once possessed, that these are to
be preceded by good white men, but that the Indians are not to go with
them until after the three prophets have reappeared and told them what
to do. The Indians accept the Mormons as "the good white men" of the
tradition, but "the three prophets" not having reappeared, they refuse
to leave their villages (as the Mormons have wanted them to do), and
Hamblin has not a word to say against such "reasonable" objections.
Is it not wonderful to find men thus reverting to an intellectual
type that the world had supposed to be extinct? to find men, shrewd
in business, honest in every phase of temporal life, going back to
cheiromancy and hydromancy, and transacting temporal affairs at the
guidance of visions? An Indian prays for rain on his pumpkins, in
apparently the most unreasonable way, but the Mormon postpones his
departure till the rain that results is over. On his way he nearly
dies of thirst, prays for deliverance, and in half an hour snow falls
over a mile and a half of ground, melts and forms pools of water! What
are we to say of men who say such things as these? Are they all crazy
together? And what shall we think of the thousands here who believe
that miracles are the most ordinary, reasonable, natural, every-day
phenomena of a life of faith, and quote point-blank the promises of the
New Testament as a sufficient explanation? The best thing, perhaps, is
to say Hum meditatively, and think no more about it.