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Walter Murray Gibson: The Shepherd Saint of Lanai Revisited
Utah Historical Quarterly
Vol. 40, 1972, No. 2
Walter Murray Gibson: The Shepherd Saint of Lanai Revisited
BY GWYNN BARRETT
IMAGINATIVE; UTOPIAN DREAMERS were not uncommon in nineteenthcentury America, nor were their activities confined to the eastern parts of the country selected by Robert Owen and John Humphrey Noyes. The Great Basin kingdom also attracted some of the most colorful and imaginative figures of the Civil War era. Samuel Brannan, for example, who had intended to unite with the Mormons following their trek, became involved in the Gold Rush and sensational get-rich schemes in California. A lesser-known but equally energetic convert to Mormonism was Walter Murray Gibson. He was in no wise Brannan's inferior, but to conclude that this island missionary, excommunicant, and premier of the kingdom of Hawaii was simply an intriguer or an opportunist who used the Mormons in order to achieve his own personal objectives would be as inaccurate as to suggest that Brannan was a saint and that Brigham Young was misguided when he elected to remain in the Rockies rather than move on to Brannan's verdant California.
Even before Walter Murray Gibson had come to know the Mormons well his empathy led him in November 1858, to urge John M. Bernhisel, Utah's first delegate to Congress, to propose that the Mormons who were involved in the so-called "Utah War" be relocated on New Guinea in the southwest Pacific. According to the New York Times, Bernhisel was sufficiently persuaded to submit the idea to the James Buchanan administration as a serious proposal.
Having adjourned his own perplexing problems when he expressed sympathy for the Mormons and suggested a haven for them in the Pacific, Gibson went on during 1859 and 1860 to become the confidant of Mormon leaders and a popular lecturer in the Salt Lake Tabernacle and Social Hall. On January 15, 1860, he was baptized along with his sixteen-year-old daughter, Talula, by Heber C. Kimball, counselor to Brigham Young. After filling a six-month mission to the eastern states, he departed for the Pacific November 21, 1860, with an engraved gold watch and a unique commission from Brigham Young. Though Young was willing to give Gibson virtually a free hand in the Pacific, no serious consideration was given to the suggestion that the Mormons evacuate the Great Basin. Nor had Buchanan responded to the idea, for he was committed to the military occupation of Utah Territory and the subjugation of the Mormon community to federal authority.
Gibson remained a Mormon missionary in the islands, spending most of his time on the island of Lanai, until 1864 when he was excommunicated from his adopted church. During the next three decades, while he moved into political circles and eventually became Hawaii's premier and minister of foreign affairs, the tradition developed that Gibson had cheated the Mormons — that he had stolen lands owned by the church while attempting to build an island kingdom over which he, the "Shepherd Saint," would preside. In 1882, Thomas G. Thrum, long-time publisher of the Hawaiian Annual, published a political tract, The Shepherd Saint of Lanai, in which he attacked Gibson. Thrum and Gibson had been on good terms during the previous decade, but after the "shepherd" of Lanai became prominent in politics, Thrum objected to Gibson's nativism. Aligning himself with the white oligarchy, Thrum railed against Gibson who was soon to become the new premier of the kingdom of Hawaii and published his Shepherd Saint with the intention of exposing Gibson as an opportunist and discrediting the David Kalakaua government.
Andrew Jenson, assistant to the church historian in Salt Lake City for many years, compiled a "History of the Hawaiian Mission" and in 1900 published an article on Walter Murray Gibson in the church magazine, The Improvement Era. In both his "History" and in his article, Jenson used Thrum's Shepherd Saint as one of his primary sources, Diaries, letters, and journals heretofore not readily available to scholars do not substantiate the Thrum-Jenson interpretation of Gibson's missionary activities in the islands and cast some doubt upon the traditional view of his premiership. In the pages that follow, Gibson's Hawaiian activities — particularly those relating to the Mormon Church — will be considered in light of this new information.
Mormon missionaries had been assigned to the Hawaiian Islands in 1850, eleven years before Gibson's arrival. Led by George Q. Cannon and others, they had found the small foreign population unreceptive to their message and many of the Hawaiian converts unreliable or unwilling to consistently follow the advice of the Utah elders. An Elder Naylor reported that the Waialua Branch of the church on Oahu had for all practical purposes apostatized by December 1856, and six months later Elder Smith B. Thurston reported many of the converts were leaving the church daily due to the anti-Mormon influence of Calvinistic friends. In September of 1857, Elder John R. Young reported that the Keanae Branch on the island of Maui was in a complete state of apostasy, and the Ulaino Branch was also in sad condition. Similar reports were received from time to time in Great Salt Lake City. In the face of these adverse reports, Brigham Young decided to recall the missionaries from Hawaii. In a letter dated September 4, 1857, the church president told Henry W. Bigler — among the first to discover gold in California — who was then serving as president of the Hawaiian Mission,
Following receipt of these instructions all but eleven of the Utah elders left. Those who remained also left after receiving a letter from Young instructing them to return home as soon as possible because of the Utah War.
The Hawaii years of Walter Murray Gibson began three years after the withdrawal of Young's missionaries. Arriving in the islands with his daughter, Talula, in 1861, he began immediately to proselyte. While his activities with the church passed in a few years, the remainder of his life was devoted to Hawaii.
But Hawaii was not the only island kingdom in Gibson's life nor were the Hawaiians the first minority group whose cause he attempted to champion. Nearly half his thirty-nine years, prior to coming to Hawaii in 1861, had been spent in foreign parts, far removed from the South Carolina of his boyhood. When the bride of his youth died in childbirth with their third child, Gibson placed his small daughter and two sons with relatives. During the next few years he gained some little fortune aboard a steamship which ran from Savannah to Florida and in the California gold fields.
Returning east in 1851, he purchased the Flirt, a surplus revenue cutter, for $3,500 in New York, and set sail on a seven-months' voyage to Sumatra. Here Gibson became acquainted with several of the leading natives, but he failed to develop a friendly rapport with the government. Though he had cleared with the captain of the port at Palembang, Gibson soon discovered that his affinity with native peoples contributed to a growing suspicion among the Dutch officials. They assumed that he was a revolutionary intriguing among the natives even though his unarmed Flirt carried no objectionable cargo. In the spring of 1852 Gibson was arrested, detained, judged guilty, and locked-up, remaining in the prison at Weltevreden for nearly a year before escaping disguised as a native.
Two matters occupied most of Gibson's time and attention upon his return to New York in 1853: the publication of his East Indies adventure and an attempt to press charges against the Dutch for the loss of his property and what he considered to have been illegal imprisonment. With monetary compensation as his objective, Gibson went to Europe where he associated with the staff of the American legation in Paris and unsuccessfully pressed his charges at The Hague. Returning to New York, he became interested in the "Mormon problem" so widely discussed at the time. When President James Buchanan decided to move an army into Utah under Albert Sidney Johnston, Gibson wrote a letter to Utah's delegate in Congress, John M. Bernhisel, suggesting that the Mormons might find greater peace and solitude in the Pacific.
New York, Nov. 26, 1858
My dear Sir:
I have some intention to visit Utah and design to start for that territory, enroute to the Pacific Coast. ... I hope to accomplish a long cherished purpose of establishing a colony upon an island of Central Oceania. ... I wish to have some correspondence with your constituents . . . and . . . the name of anyone in this city . . . who enjoys the confidence of the principal persons of your constituency. I wish to tell him freely the objectives I have in view in visiting Utah. . . .
Yours very respectfully
Walter M. Gibson
Hon. J. M. Bernhisel Washington, D. C.
Gibson contacted Bernhisel in Washington and proposed that the latter seek congressional appropriation for the purpose of moving the Mormons to the western Pacific. Bernhisel did not actively promote the plan, but, nevertheless, both Brigham Young and James Buchanan were given an opportunity to consider the idea.
It was this initial contact with the Mormons that led to Gibson's long sojourn in the Hawaiian Islands. When he arrived in Great Salt Lake City and related his East Indies venture in public lectures as well as in conversation with Young, the church president encouraged Gibson to join the church, promising that after his baptism further consideration might be given to his interest in the Pacific. But Gibson was called by Young to serve as a missionary in the States before being sent to the Pacific. In the company of apostles Amasa M. Lyman and Charles C. Rich and their sons Francis and Joseph, Gibson and his preaching companion, James S. Brown, departed from the valley on May 1, I860. Since Brown had been a missionary in the Society Islands more than a decade earlier, Gibson probably learned a great deal about the central Pacific while traveling and preaching with Brown. Just two months later, they were in Williamsburg, New York, across the East River from Brooklyn, engaged in their missionary labors.
Gibson left his daughter, Talula, with the family of Brigham Young while he labored for the church in the East during the summer of I860. Gibson and Young exchanged several letters in which the latter expressed approval of Gibson's work and confidence in his judgment. In June, Young told Gibson, "Should duty and the dictation of the Spirit to you permit . . . you are at full liberty to return home this fall if you wish." Acting upon this permission, Gibson returned to Great Salt Lake City in October bringing with him his two sons, John and Henry. He reported on his mission in the East on November 4, 1860, in the Tabernacle, and just two weeks later he stood behind the same pulpit as a departing missionary. Gibson spoke of the feelings that inspired him to again go forth. Then Brigham Young arose and said that "Elder Gibson is . . . fully authorized to negotiate with all the nations of this world who will obey the gospel of Christ."
With a special ribbon-bedecked commission addressed to the "wise, powerful, and gracious potentates, even the illustrious Sultans, Pajas, Panjoranges and Kapallas of the renowned Malay People," and a "good will message" to the "illustrious, Imperial Majesty and Tycoon of Japan," signed by the "First Presidency of the Church of the Most High God," Gibson departed. He traveled southwestward to San Bernardino and then on by steamer to San Francisco where he was given a letter from Brigham Young instructing him to go to Hawaii and minister to the native converts who had joined the Mormons during the early fifties. Not just one, but several letters were exchanged between the Mormon president and his emissary before Gibson's departure for the islands. Instructions were plentiful, but funds for the journey were difficult to come by. Nevertheless, Gibson soon raised more than enough to pay for the voyage by lecturing in San Francisco, in Sacramento where he addressed the California legislature, and in other nearby communities.
Though Gibson held a commission that permitted him to "negotiate with all the nations of this world," it was understood that Japan would be his ultimate destination, and he hoped to go to Malaysia as well. But, upon his arrival in Hawaii July 1, 1861, aboard the Yankee, he decided to delay his voyage — as Young had suggested — after finding that the islanders needed and desired his leadership. "My counsel is cordially acquiesced here," Gibson wrote to Young soon after his arrival in Honolulu. The "Kanaka Saints," he reported, were a small, scattered, utterly poor, and despised portion of the population of the island.
On July 14, 1861, Gibson conducted a baptismal service for two young men, one of whom he had met in San Francisco and another who had made himself acquainted with the Mormon missionary aboard the Yankee. Haven B. Eddy, age twenty-six, told Gibson that he was the son of a Congregational minister in New York, while Charles O. Cummings, just twenty-two years of age, made no such claim with regard to his own background. Two days after the baptismal, much too soon, Gibson later found out, he dispatched Eddy and Cummings to the islands of Maui and Kauai as missionaries. Eddy soon returned to Oahu, making his headquarters in Honolulu. From here he sent letters to members of the church, dunning them for money under the lofty title of the "Chief President" of Oahu and Kauai, and "Bishop of Lahaina and President of the Quorum." When Gibson became aware of the unauthorized activities of Eddy and Cummings he brought them to Lanai for counsel, but they did not remain very long. Rejecting Gibson's leadership, they returned to Honolulu where they became the perpetrators of derogatory rumors against Gibson.
Actually, Eddy and Cummings did more than spread rumors. They signed sworn affidavits charging that Gibson was a scoundrel — that he was stealing the natives' lands and using the Mormon Church for his own ambitions — but they failed to document their accusations. Nevertheless, their charges were published in the planter-owned press.
In November 1861, in a letter to certain native Saints, Gibson extolled Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball as men who had given "all they had two or three times over to help build up the church in Missouri and Illinois" and told his correspondents that he intended to follow their example by doing all the good he could for the Saints in the Hawaiian Islands. Anxious to correct Eddy and Cummings, Gibson also sent a report to the Hawaii minister of foreign affairs, Robert C. Wyllie, in which he explained that the religious principles of the Mormons in the islands differed from those in Utah only in not inculcating polygamy, a doctrine which he believed was never preached outside of Utah.
The laws of the Hawaiian kingdom forbad migration, therefore the island of Lanai, isolated from the sea ports and the more populous districts, had been selected as early as 1853 as a gathering place for the converts to Mormonism. Negotiations had been entered into for the rental of Palawai Valley, a grassy volcanic crater about three miles in diameter owned by one Haalelea, who was sympathetic with the Mormons and anxious to lease his lands. However, when Brigham Young learned that the missionaries were attempting to establish a gathering place in the islands, he told them that all improvements in such a place should be of the type that would sell easily when the Saints wished to leave. Young said that he wanted the Hawaiians to come to Utah as fast as the way could be opened up for them to do so. Lanai, the elders had been told by Young, would be but a temporary gathering place, for all the Saints would ultimately come to Zion in the Rocky Mountains.
In 1856, John T. Caine, Honolulu agent for the Mormon newspaper published in San Francisco, the Western Standard, reported that negotiations had been entered into for the leasing of Palawai Valley, but nothing permanent had been accomplished. About a year later, William W. Cluff called Lanai the "temporal gathering place" in his mission report. "We took a large tract of land belonging to one of the chiefs on trial for five years with the privilege of buying or leasing at the expiration of that time," Cluff reported. Soon after this the Utah elders were called home by the Utah War. By the time they left, Lanai had been designated a temporary gathering place, but no money had been expended for either the purchase or lease of the land, nor had any significant improvements been completed.
After the American elders returned home, Elder Kailihune, president of the Lanai District, claiming that he was the president of all the islands from Hawaii to Niihau, collected funds for the purchase of Palawai Valley from Haalelea, but he spent the money collected for his own interests and was ousted. There is no evidence that the new president, Solomona Umi, made any further effort to purchase the land with the few dollars that were contributed to the church each year. When Gibson arrived on Lanai in October 1861, he found that the land was still available for purchase even though the rental had not been paid.
Gibson reported on his activities in considerable detail and frequently sought the advice of Brigham Young. In the fall of 1861, after several months of travel throughout the islands, but primarily on Oahu, Gibson told Young that his first estimates respecting the number of church members in the islands would have to be greatly reduced. Having had time to review the records left by Elders Cannon, Lewis, Hawkins, Winchester, and others who had preceded him, Gibson decided that the church had less than one thousand converts, and many of them were poor people who had lost all of their lands to whites. The only way they could make any money was to sell a few chickens, potatoes, and bananas to foreign shipping.
Those who had directed the gathering project on Lanai earlier had been "strangely improvident" according to Gibson.
Continuing, Gibson described the island to Young, stating that of the three thousand acres that were available for lease or purchase, only six hundred acres were fit for cultivation. They were drilling for water, he said, and they remained enthusiastic and optimistic. "Talula is teaching the domestic arts. . . . We love the work better every day. We love the whole church," Gibson concluded in his letter to Young.
Within a few months after his arrival on Lanai, Gibson had large fields under cultivation and substantial houses under construction as well as a chapel. The Polynesian, a Honolulu newspaper, was soon to mark Gibson a "philanthropist" and a "social reformer unheralded." In a story which later appeared in both the Sacramento Union and the Salt Lake City Deseret News, editor Abraham Fornander said,
Later, the Mormon Millennial Star in quoting from the Deseret News said, "Lanai settlement . . . demonstrates . . . what one truly earnest, practical and benevolent man can do for the improvement of this people. . . . And not the least remarkable and beneficient effect of Capt. Gibson's presence ... is the sanitary condition of its people, there being not one deceased during the past year." Not all reports were complimentary, however. Rumor had it that the "haole" on Lanai had forced his newly won native followers into servitude and that crude plows were hitched to men, women, and children. Gibson later gave his version of the reported "outrage upon humanity" in his Nuhou. As the New Year's Day of 1862 approached, Gibson desired to begin the year with some planting. He found an old plowshare that had been used by a native as an anchor, tied a rope to its beam, and invited some of his Hawaiian friends to lay hold of the rope with him. Talula took hold of the handles and away they went "the Shepherd in the lead amid the shouts and laughter and merriment of the crowd of natives looking on." A feast, Gibson said, had followed this commencement of cultivation.
But it was not simply the exploitation of human resources that eventually convinced many Utah Mormons that Gibson was a scoundrel; it was the charge of economic exploitation. While contemporaries expressed little or no concern about his acquisition of real property, important Mormons eventually came to believe that Gibson had managed to gain title to church lands, failing to realize that the Utah elders had not completed any fee simple land transactions before their departure in 1858.
Gibson may have felt that he was simply following the example of his religious mentors in Great Salt Lake City when he placed Lanai lands his own name. Since the days of Joseph Smith, Mormon leaders had held church property in their own names. While serving as "trustee" for church property both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young had also acquired large tracts of personal property. What had been considered a wise policy became a necessity in the 1850s after Utah's delegate to Congress, John M. Bernhisel, reported that Justin S. Morrill of Vermont planned to introduce a bill in the House intended to restrict the influence of the Mormon Church in the territory of Utah. In 1862, Congress passed the Morrill Act limiting the total value of church owned property to $50,000 and providing for fines and imprisonment for polygamists. Therefore, while church policy regarding deeded property may have been an important factor in Gibson's land practices, it is not certain that he ever considered any portion of the Lanai lands to be church property.
Brigham Young had told the elders that all island assets must remain fluid, so that items of value might be quickly disposed of when the Hawaii Saints gathered to Utah. Gibson was aware of Young's policy, and this may have been the reason he did not buy land for the church. More important, the Mormon Church did not provide Gibson with funds to buy land or to carry out his missionary work, nor were monies available from the Utah headquarters of the church for most of its missionary activities throughout the world. Elders were expected to provide for themselves and build up the branches of the church with the assistance of the members among whom they labored. Seldom, if ever, were the missionaries expected to acquire large tracts of land for the church — a plot for a chapel, perhaps, but not plantations. In his efforts to acquire land for church purposes, Gibson soon learned that the members were too poor and too factious to be able to rally behind a land program. Therefore, he personally assumed the responsibility for the accumulation of property and in so doing he allowed the Saints to use his land as their own as long as he remained in the church. Brigham Young, who was busy demonstrating his own business acumen in Utah, said that neither he nor his associates cared how much property Walter Gibson acquired.
Missionaries were called by Gibson to travel throughout the Hawaiian Islands and other parts of the Pacific. Two elders, Belia and Manoa, were sent to Samoa where they inaugurated the work that paved the way for the Utah elders in 1888, and other missionaries were sent to proselyte in "Central Polynesia." In so doing, he kept Brigham Young and the apostles informed about his activities. "I have thought it best to ordain some seventies, and some Aaronic priests," he reported to Young in January of 1862, for six hundred and fifty new members had been added to the church since the previous September. Gibson had the authority to ordain male members to the offices in the priesthood and appoint missionaries, for elders were endowed with the right to perform these tasks before they were sent to their fields of labor.
Gibson concluded that the Hawaiians should not be required to migrate to Utah but remain within range of their own tropic and fruitful latitudes. They would be helpless additions to the church in the mountains, he told Young, but they would prosper under good leadership should a "centre stake" of the church be established in the Pacific. Gibson felt that a great deal could be accomplished but not simply by preaching to the people. The Mormon missionary must help the people to improve their standard of living while teaching them the gospel, he told Young. "I design to . . . have every family in a snug and wholesome dwelling. I am now pulling down many of their . . . unhealthy straw kennels. . . . Dear brother, I am indeed preaching the Gospel here with scissors and soap. But we are not altogether neglectful of the mind; and of preaching, praying and rejoicing." After receiving this letter and additional reports from Gibson, Brigham Young told the captain that he rejoiced that so much was being accomplished in the islands and thanked Gibson for giving his ability to provide for so many of the things essential to the Hawaiian people. Later, Joseph F. Smith concluded that the course adopted by Gibson with regard to the gathering and the instructing of the people in agricultural pursuits had been just what was needed.
A letter from Brigham Young received in September 1862 was the last correspondence Gibson received from any member of the church hierarchy for more than a year, but Dwight Eveleth whom Gibson had met in San Francisco sent along the news from Salt Lake Valley from time to time and assured Gibson that Young and his associates regarded him kindly. Gibson wrote a letter to Apostle George A. Smith in the spring of 1864 which he intended should "meet the eye of bro Brigham." Gibson reviewed his activities of the past two and one-half years for Smith, observing that with the exception of "a lot of pestersome old sore heads" a good spirit prevailed among the members of the church in Hawaii. When he arrived in the islands in July 1861, he had found religious profession everywhere among the islanders, many of whom were "glib with the scriptures at their tongues ends, but at the same time . . . objects of white men's contempt." The people needed improvement in their daily lives more than preaching, Gibson had decided soon after he arrived. By the spring of 1864, he had a little flock of converts who would live their religion and who were a benefit and honor to their country.
Gibson told George A. Smith that two parties had developed in the church in the islands — workers and idlers. The workers, Gibson claimed, were for him, and together they had made some "civilized tracks" on Lanai. A flourishing village with a chapel, male and female schoolhouses, a hospital, broad fields of sugar cane and corn, and several thousand head of sheep and goats occupied Palawai Valley. W T hile working closely with the people in developing the settlement, Gibson had found that the Hawaiians were human like everyone else. Some had faith that motivated them to action, others a faith that prompted only talk. "There are true and traitors, faithful and apostate; and I have done my best to sift a good article out of this . . . Polynesian material, in order to carry out this work further in other lands. We have built up a permanent Stake and home for the Saints on this island. I have bought six thousands acres of land and leased twenty thousand," Gibson told Smith.
In the spring of 1864, several Utah elders arrived on Lanai and sent word to Gibson that they were on the beach awaiting transportation to Palawai Valley, an uphill climb of several miles. "Kipikona," as Gibson was called by some of the Hawaiians, sent horses for his unexpected visitors, the first Utah representatives of the church to visit him since he had left the Rocky Mountains in November 1860. Gibson and the native Saints were cool and very formal, according to one of the group, Lorenzo Snow. But Gibson must have warmed to the situation, for the visitors were given a guided tour by Talula on April 3, 1864. They were shown what had been accomplished — the houses, chapel, schools, gardens, fields, and flocks — but the elders, whose visit to Lanai had been prompted by one or more letters Brigham Young had received from disgruntled islanders, concluded during the next three days that Gibson, pleased with his situation, wanted to remain on Lanai indefinitely; and they later reported he was unwilling to subordinate himself to their dictation. The apostolic delegation, consisting of Ezra T. Benson and Lorenzo Snow, accompanied by Joseph F. Smith, William W. Cluff, and A. L. Smith, attended the April conference held in the branch chapel where they denounced the "Shepherd Saint" and announced their decision to excommunicate Gibson from the church. Though the decision was considered final as far as the Utah delegation was concerned, the members of the Lanai priesthood were asked to approve Gibson's removal by the customary "uplifted hands." The response was singular; only one of the Hawaiian elders voted against Gibson. Nevertheless, Gibson accepted the verdict of the Utah elders, and there is no evidence that he objected strenuously to their decision. While Benson and Snow prepared their report for Brigham Young, Gibson penned a note in which he attempted to explain his position.
Palawai, April 7, 1864
Dear President Brigham Young,
As such I would hail you, but I suppose you will deny me the privilege when you receive the report that will accompany this.
I cannot forget my love and regard for your person, although you have dealt precipitately and harshly with me. My daughter remembers tenderly your interesting family. I think and feel that though my spirit has not responded to your call, and we are now in different channels, that yet my course will never lead me into an attitude that will be hostile to you or the work you direct.
I aim to write to you more fully by and by and at present must leave with bros. Benson and Snow, the details respecting my present action, and relative to the church.
Yours fraternally, Walter M. Gibson
If Gibson did write to Young more fully later on, the letter has been lost. As far as the record shows the above letter was the last that Gibson sent to Young.
While some islanders applauded the excommunication, many of the natives stood staunchly by Gibson. More important, he had come to enjoy the support of men of power and influence, including Prime Minister Robert Wyllie and Prince Lot (Kamehameha V). They did not desert him and pointed out that Gibson, in acquiring land, had merely followed the precedent set by his accusers, "who," said Prince Lot, "unlike Gibson, use the lands for themselves while he uses it for the benefit of the natives."
Nevertheless, following the decision of the Utah elders, Gibson no longer attempted to carry out the duties and responsibilities of the commission conferred upon him by Brigham Young four years before. He remained on Lanai with his daughter and two sons, who had arrived in 1864, commuting to Oahu occasionally where he marketed produce and made new friends. The membership of the church on Lanai dwindled, for the Utah elders established a new gathering place on Oahu and urged the members of the church to move to this place called Laie.
Gibson, now well-known throughout the kingdom of Hawaii, followed new pursuits while retaining his headquarters on Lanai. Founding a newspaper, the Nuhou, in 1873, he carried on a skillful campaign of propaganda against the annexation of the islands by the United States, and against the cession of Pearl Harbor, a reciprocity treaty, or for that matter any legislation he considered to be primarily favorable to the white merchants and sugar factors in Honolulu.
The rapid decline of the native population had been a major concern for the Hawaiian monarchy for years, and Gibson attempted to contribute his own ideas for a solution to the problem. In his newspaper Gibson said, "Bad sewage and neglected privys are the fertile sources of disease in cities. . . . The Board of Health should look sharp after the sanitary condition of the city. . . . An ounce of prevention is worth more than a thousand pounds of cure." Several years later, after Gibson had been elected to the legislature, the Honolulu newspaper most sympathetic with the Kalahaua administration, mentioned Gibson's sincerity, his "deep-seated interest in the welfare of the Hawaiians, and his laudable desire to do something about it." According to the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, no other foreign-born gentleman in the legislature wielded the same influence or enjoyed the same confidence of the native Hawaiians. "This has been owing to the sincerity, frankness, courtesy and earnestness with which he has advocated his opinions and the clearly unselfish zeal which has characterized his whole conduct," this newspaper concluded. Later, when Gibson published his 219-page Sanitary Instructions for Hawaiians, the Advertiser readily acknowledged that it was a well-written contribution to the literate populace.
The Honolulu Chamber of Commerce, aware of Gibson's concern with social and cultural affairs in the islands, elected him secretary of a new immigration society in 1872. He had exhibited an interest in the need for the importation of laborers with his pen in the local newspapers, and he spoke out on this matter during the next several years. In an "Address to the Hawaiian People" in 1876, Gibson concluded that the vital question of the day was not reciprocity with the United States, but repopulation. 47 His concern with the two pressing issues of health and labor led to Gibson's election to the legislature in 1878 and his subsequent appointment to the ministry. In May 1882, he was tendered the top post in the administration of King David Kalakaua, that of premier and minister of foreign affairs.
In this position Gibson was a key figure in Hawaiian politics until 1887 when enemies among the determined annexationist "Committee of Thirteen" forced his resignation from the Kalakaua ministry and his deportation. They were aware of the premier's influence with the native Hawaiian faction that was trying to thwart the attempt of the sugar interests to get the islands annexed to the United States. Gibson's entry in his diary for Tuesday, June 28, 1887, was brief and to the point: "Meeting of the Ministers at 10 a.m. Resigned our offices. Hope that our resignation will quiet the public feelings." The next day he recorded, "A somewhat easier feeling since announcement of resignation of ministers"; however, the diary entry for Thursday, June 30, reads, "Threats of violence . . . rumors of armed mob; purpose to lynch me . . . the mob around my house, an anxious night."
The next day, Friday, July 1, 1887, Gibson and his son-in-law, Frederick H. Hayselden, were forced to leave home under guard and were taken to the Pacific Navigation Company's warehouse where friends intervened when ropes were put around their necks. Eleven days later, Gibson recorded in his diary his departure for San Francisco, stating that for a few days before boarding the ship he had enjoyed a degree of peace with his family.
During his last years in Honolulu Gibson found solace in the Catholic Church. He made frequent, almost daily, visits to the convent at Kakaako near present-day Waikiki. His friendship with the sisters, particularly Mother Marianne Kopp whom he referred to as "M" in his diary, provided him with the friendship and approval that he needed, as well as an opportunity to exercise his interest in religion.
In San Francisco, Gibson continued to correspond with "M" while in the care of the sisters at St. Mary's Hospital located at First and Bryant streets. He spent most of his last five months there, but when enjoying good health he lived at the Occidental Hotel. Just a few weeks before his death on January 21, 1888, he paid the following tribute to those who cared for him while he suffered from acute tuberculosis: "What a glorious company of sweet good women they are. The Catholic religious woman is a true woman, and the best of women. Blessed I sincerely feel. How I reverence and love my Franciscans, and these Sisters of Mercy." A few days later he recorded his last entry in his diary: "The improvement in my health continues. Very cold." This was in December, and death was but three weeks away. The following May, Mother Marianne paid tribute to her late friend in a letter to her superior. "Indeed our loss is great," she recorded, "it seemed that nothing gave him pleasure but to serve and wait on us. I have never in all my life seen a man like him. We miss him. He had great plans laid out — what all he was going to do for us, if God had spared his life. God alone knows the why of all the great trials and mean persecutions He allowed to come over this poor man."
According to prediction, tradition tells us, Sam Brannan and Walter Murray Gibson were to depart from this world ignominiously, without funds or friends. The prognosticators were nearly correct as far as Brannan was concerned, but Gibson died comfortably in bed rather than in the gutter reserved for him by his disparagers. His embalmed body was removed from San Francisco's St. Mary's Hospital and returned to Honolulu, where it was viewed by hundreds at his King Street residence.
Some accounts conclude that Hawaii's premier was a "rascal" in his relationships with both the island kingdom and the Mormon Church. He was not merely a scoundrel, but an ex-pirate who, after becoming a Mormon, hoodwinked Brigham Young. But, most Gibson accounts have relied on Andrew Jenson's views, and, in turn, Thomas G. Thrum's Shepherd Saint of Lanai. Some few have based their conclusions on Joseph B. Musser's "Oceanic Adventurer," or Lorrin A. Thurston's Memoirs. Both these latter men favored the cause of the annexationists and belittled Gibson's attempt to champion the native Hawaiians. Thurston was a contemporary of that "splendid body of men" who advocated revolution and the ousting of Queen Liliuokalani in 1893 after overthrowing the Gibson ministry in 1887.
Ralph S. Kuykendall's The Hawaiian Kingdom: The Kalakaua Era and Jacob Adler's Glaus Spreckels are scholarly accounts of the Gibson era in Hawaii, but Kathleen Mellen's An Island Kingdom Passes should also be consulted, for she had access to sources unavailable to others. Through these accounts, and additional sources as they become available, the popular portrayal of Walter Murray Gibson (who remains an anathema for many people today, a schemer and scoundrel who stole the island of Lanai) may give way to a new, more accurate interpretation. Certainly, it should be quite obvious even at this point that "Captain" Gibson was a personality quite different from John C. Bennett, James J. Strang, or even Samuel Brannan, with whom Gibson has been compared. For Gibson, the Mormons remained a "remarkable people" for whom he maintained a love and respect throughout his life. "We have to remember great kindness and hospitality at their hands," he wrote ten years after his excommunication. On at least one occasion he said, "It is my opinion that the system of polity practiced by the Mormon Church is the best in the world. ... it is founded upon true righteousness and I shall love them always."
Two new publications have been issued by the Utah State Historical Society. Prehistoric Petroglyphs and Pictographs in Utah, edited by Roland Siegrist, University of Utah art professor, examines selected Indian rock art. The seventy-two page paperback book was published, in part, to accompany an exhibit of photographs and silk screen prints of rubbings shown by the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and later by the Smithsonian Institution. The second new publication, Mormon Battalion Trail Guide, is the first in a projected series of handy field manuals designed to help travelers locate historic trails. The guide to the 1846-47 march of the Mormon Battalion takes the reader on a day-by-day trek. Prepared by Charles S. Peterson, John F. Yurtinus, David E. Atkinson and A. Kent Powell, the guide contains seventy-four pages of text coordinated with thirty-five pages of United State Geological Survey maps.
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