Jacob Hamblin (April 2, 1819 – August 31, 1886) was a Western pioneer, a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), and a diplomat to various Native American tribes of the Southwest and Great Basin.He aided European-American settlement of large areas of southern Utah and northern Arizona, where he was seen as an honest broker between Latter-day Saint settlers and the Natives. He is sometimes referred to as the "Buckskin Apostle", or the "Apostle to the Lamanites". In 1958, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
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Early life and family
Hamblin was born in Salem, Ohio, to a family of farmers. He grew up learning farming. He was baptized a member of Church of Christ on March 3, 1842, at the age of 22.
Hamblin and his first wife, Lucinda, had four children. When Hamblin proposed moving west with the Latter-day Saints to the Salt Lake Valley, Lucinda refused to go. In February 1849, Hamblin and Lucinda ended their marriage, and he continued west without her, taking the four children with him. In September, Hamblin met and married Rachel Judd, a widow, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He and Rachel had five children. Hamblin lived the Mormon doctrine of plural marriage and married Sarah Priscilla Leavitt on September 11, 1857, Eliza Hamblin on February 14, 1863 (with whom he had one child), Clara Melvina Hamblin on Nov. 5, 1876 (their daughter was raised by Priscilla after Eliza left Jacob for Paiute Poinkum), and Louisa Bonelli on November 16, 1865. With Leavitt, he had 14 children and also raised Clara, and, with Bonelli, he had 6 children. Leavitt and Bonelli were sealed to him in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City.
Conversion to the LDS Church and migration west
As an adult, Hamblin and his family lived in Spring Prairie, Wisconsin. Hamblin was injured and thought he would die of his wound. Hamblin prayed that if he survived, he would serve God the rest of his life. Soon after, a woman knocked on his door who said she had felt called to go to his house. A nurse, she had the medicines and poultices needed, and helped heal Hamblin's wound and saved his life. Hamblin felt Mrs. Campbell, the tall white Nordic looking nurse, was sent to him from God (see autobiography of Jacob Hamblin, "My Life with the Indians"). Note that the first nine pages of Hamblin's autobiography "My Life with the Indians," were omitted in later reprints, so Mormon readers wouldn't know about the beautiful tall white nurse that appeared in Spring Prairie, Wisconsin in 1842, long before Hamblin had any neighbors, there were no nurses within miles of Spring Prairie in 1842.
In his memoir, Hamblin wrote of the moment he decided to support Young:"On the 8th of August, 1844, I attended a general meeting of the Saints. Elder Rigdon was there, urging his claims to the Presidency of the Church. His voice did not sound like the voice of the true shepherd. When he was about to call a vote of the congregation to sustain him as President of the Church, Elders Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt and Heber C. Kimball (all members of the Quorum of the Twelve) stepped into the stand. Brigham Young remarked to the congregation: 'I will manage this voting for Elder Rigdon. He does not preside here. This child [meaning himself] will manage this flock for a season.' The voice and gestures of the man were those of the Prophet Joseph. The people, with few exceptions, visibly saw that the mantle of the Prophet Joseph Smith had fallen upon Brigham Young. To some it seemed as though Joseph again stood before them. I arose to my feet and said to a man sitting by me, 'That is the voice of the true shepherd—the chief of the Apostles'."
Hamblin was a Mormon pioneer and in 1850 settled in Tooele, near Salt Lake City. He became well known for creating good relations between the white settlers and Indians. After an altercation, when his gun failed to fire as he shot at an Indian, Hamblin said God had revealed he was to be a "messenger of peace" to the Indians, and that if he did not thirst for their blood, he should never fall by their hands. In 1854, Hamblin was called by Young to serve a mission to the southern Paiute Indians and settled at Santa Clara in the vicinity of the modern city of St. George, Utah.
Utah War and the Mountain Meadows massacre
In August 1857, Brigham Young made Hamblin president of the Santa Clara Indian Mission. Young directed Hamblin by letter to
continue the conciliatory policy towards the Indians which I have ever commended, and seek by works of righteousness to obtain their love and confidence. Omit promises where you are not sure you can fill them; and seek to unite the hearts of the brethren on that mission, and let all under your direction be united together in holy bonds of love and unity.
Young had become aware in July of an approaching United States army ordered to invade the Utah Territory to put down a supposed "rebellion" among the Mormons. Anticipating what would become known as the Utah War, Young urged Hamblin to "not permit the brethren to part with their guns and ammunition, but save them against the hour of need." He wrote to Hamblin that the Indians "must learn to help us or the United States will kill us both."
In late August, Hamblin traveled north to Salt Lake City with George A. Smith, of the church's First Presidency, who had been dispatched to the southern Mormon colonies to warn of the approaching U.S. army and recommend against colonists trading with non-Mormons, then traveling through their territory. At Corn Creek near Fillmore, Utah, Smith, Hamblin, and Thales Haskell encountered the Baker–Fancher party, a wagon train of Arkansans en route to California. Hamblin suggested to them that they stop further south in Mountain Meadows, where he maintained a homestead at a traditional stopping point on the Old Spanish Trail from New Mexico to California.
Hamblin and his party continued on to Salt Lake City, where he stayed for roughly a week to "conduct Indian business and take a plural wife". This "Indian business" included bringing a delegation of Southern Paiute to meet with LDS Church leaders. In Salt Lake City, Hamblin reported later that he was told that the Fanchers had "behaved badly" and had "robbed hen-roosts, and been guilty of other irregularities, and had used abusive language to those who had remonstrated with them. It was also reported that they threatened, when the army came into the north end of the Territory, to get a good outfit from the weaker settlements in the south."
Later missions to Native Americans
In 1858, while he was in Salt Lake City, Hamblin was made a sub-Indian agent. That same year he was called on a mission to the Moquis (Hopis) of northern Arizona. He traveled southeast through Pipe Springs, crossed the Buckskin Mountain (Kaibab Plateau), and forded the Colorado River at the Crossing of the Fathers which is now under Lake Powell at Padre Bay. This was somewhat north of the later crossing at Lee's Ferry which he discovered. Upon his arrival at the village of Oraibi, he was told by the Hopis that it was prophesied that he and his companions would come and bring the Hopi knowledge which they formerly had. However, they were also told that the Hopi would not cross over the Colorado River to live with the Mormons until the three prophets which had led them to their mesas returned to give them further instructions. (See Hopi mythology). The Hopi also questioned why they should cross the Colorado River to meet the Mormons when they would soon have settlements to their south in any case. At the time, there were no plans for Mormon settlements to the south of the Hopi, although Hamblin helped found Mormon settlements on the Little Colorado River years later.
Hamblin went home, but returned on several occasions to keep up good relations with the Hopi and the Navajo. In 1862, three Hopi men accompanied him to Salt Lake City to meet Brigham Young. In 1870, he brought a minor Hopi leader, Toova, and his wife across the Colorado River to visit the Mormon settlements in southern Utah. Tuba eventually joined the LDS Church, and invited the Mormons to settle near his village of Moencopi where they founded Tuba City, named in honor of their Hopi friend.
Earl Spendlove's article, "Let Me Die in Peace", states that Hamblin originally purchased Eliza, a Paiute from Utah of the Shivwit or Cedar Band, to free her from slavery. Hamblin adopted Eliza (nicknaming her "Suzie"), when she was a teen. Jacob later took wives Priscilla and Louisa, along with Mary Elizabeth, Clara Melvina, Jake (Jacob Jr.), and the rest of his children to Kanab, Utah. A Paiute known as Old Poinkum later married Eliza and took her to New Harmony Valley, Utah. Later, after Priscilla Hamblin left Nutrioso ranch in Arizona, Priscilla Hamblin and Jacob moved to Eagar, then Alpine, Arizona. Louisa Hamblin later wrote to her daughter that she had knit a pair of "pink stockings" for "Eliza's baby", illustrating that Jacob continued to help the Paiute woman he freed from slavery.
Hamblin was an invaluable diplomat between the Latter-day Saints and the Native Americans, surviving numerous dangerous encounters between the two. In 1870, he also acted as an adviser to John Wesley Powell before his second journey through the Grand Canyon. Hamblin acted as a negotiator to ensure safety for Powell's expedition from local Native tribes. Powell related that Hamblin "speaks [the Indians'] language well and has great influence over the Indians in the region round about. He is a silent, reserved man, and when he speaks it is in a slow, quiet way that inspires great awe." Said a Native Chief to Powell, "We believe in Jacob, and look upon you as a father .... We will tell [the other Indians] that [Powell] is Jacob's friend."