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<\/a>I\u2019ve begun writing down notes for the presentation that I plan to give on Friday, 8 August, at the 2025 FAIR Conference. \u00a0And, by the way, the conference organizers have included a special discount code that folks can use in order to register for the conference at a reduced rate \u2014 which, the organizers say, is \u201cjust our way of saying thank you and making it easier for more people to attend.\u201d<\/p>\n
The discount code that they\u2019ve given to me is \u2018DAN10.\u2019 \u00a0And further information about the 2025 FAIR Conference can be found at\u00a0https:\/\/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org\/conference\/august-2025-fair-conference<\/a><\/p>\n One of the great figures in early Utah Latter-day Saint history is the Indian agent and \u201cmissionary to the Lamanites\u201d Jacob Hamblin. \u00a0(Although he was never a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, he is sometimes called the \u201capostle to the Lamanites\u201d or the \u201cbuckskin apostle,\u201d and it seems that, in 1876, Brigham Young did in fact ordain him as, in some sense at least, an \u201capostle to the Lamanites.\u201d) \u00a0 I\u2019ll cite here some contiguous passages about him and his adopted son Albert from <\/span>W. Paul Reeve, <\/span><\/span><\/span>Christopher B. Rich Jr., and <\/span><\/span><\/span>LaJean Purcell Carruth,\u00a0<\/span>This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024), 194-196.<\/span><\/p>\n Hamblin had been involved in violent conflicts with the indigenous peoples of Utah Territory, but he later recalled a profound change of heart that occurred during one of those conflicts when his gun jammed. \u00a0He said that the \u201cHoly Spirit forcibly impressed upon me that it was not my calling to shed the blood of the scattered remnant of Israel [the American Indians], but to be a messenger of peace to them\u201d (195).<\/p>\n In February 1853, in Tooele Valley, Hamblin purchased a ten-year-old Goshute or Shoshone boy from his destitute mother. \u00a0(The boy\u2019s father had been killed.) \u00a0Hamblin named him Albert and, having adopted him, raised him as a son. \u00a0Albert referred to Jacob Hamblin as his father and enthusiastically accepted the faith of the Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n On one occasion, Albert reported to Hamblin that he had been herding sheep when he saw a personage in a white robe who proceeded to take him on a tour of the heavenly realms. \u00a0He was told that someday he must \u201cbear witness to all the Indians on the earth and try and bring them to occupy the same sphere that this glorious personage did.\u201d \u00a0Thereafter, Albert often expressed a desire to serve a mission to the Shoshone. (195)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Jacob Hamblin soon settled in southern Utah. \u00a0But, when Albert was seventeen, Hamblin sent him up to Salt Lake City for six months under the patronage of Brigham Young, who, among other things, sponsored the boy\u2019s education there and ordained him an elder. \u00a0After Albert returned southward, he kept in touch with President Young, the young man signing at least one of his surviving letters \u201cyour Bro. in the gospel, Albert Hamblin.\u201d<\/p>\n Two years later, while Jacob Hamblin was on a mission to the Hopi people in Arizona, Albert died of pneumonia. \u00a0Before Hamblin left, Albert had predicted his own death.<\/p>\n He told Hamblin that \u201cI shall bloom in another place before you get back. \u00a0I shall be on my mission!\u201d \u00a0When Hamblin asked him what he meant, Albert responded, \u201cI shall be dead and buried when you get back.\u201d \u00a0The mission that Albert referred to was in the afterlife. \u00a0(196)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n One additional note: \u00a0Jacob Hamblin was born in Salem, Ohio, to a farming family. \u00a0On 3 March 1842, at the age of twenty-two, he was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>. \u00a0In a memoir that he wrote later in his life, he described the moment when, after the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, he chose to follow Brigham Young and the Twelve:<\/p>\n 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: \u2018I will manage this voting for Elder Rigdon. He does not preside here. This child [meaning himself] will manage this flock for a season.\u2019 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, \u2018That is the voice of the true shepherd\u2014the chief of the Apostles\u2019.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n An interesting essay was posted today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: \u00a0Seek Ye Words of Wisdom: \u201c<\/em>\u201cWicked Traditions\u201d and \u201cCunning Arts\u201d: Wise Men, Sorcery, and Metalwork in Nephite Society,\u201d<\/a> written by Dan Belnap<\/a>. Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Seek Ye Words of Wisdom: Studies of the Book of Mormon, Bible, and Temple in Honor of Stephen D. Ricks<\/em>, edited by Donald W. Parry, Gaye Strathearn, and Shon D. Hopkin. For more information, go to https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/books\/seek-ye-words-of-wisdom\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the ninetieth year of the reign of the judges, four years after the ministry of Samuel the Lamanite, the \u201cgreat signs and wonders\u201d that he had prophesied of concerning the coming of Christ began to appear. Yet even as they convinced some, others expressed doubt as to what the signs meant, believing instead that the coming of Christ was a \u201cwicked tradition, which has been handed down unto us by our fathers, to cause us that we should believe in some great and marvelous thing which should come to pass . . . therefore they can keep us in ignorance\u201d (Hel. 16:20). As the reference suggests, the belief in the coming of Christ, a prophecy that had defined the Nephite people since their arrival in the New World, was now viewed by some as propaganda that was deliberately espoused and perpetuated by others to keep the general population compliant under the current leadership.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I mentioned the other day that we at the Interpreter Foundation have decided to turn our weekly Sunday evening Interpreter Radio Show into the Interpreter Foundation Podcast. \u00a0A number of factors (and frustrations and concerns) went into our decision \u2014 including, most recently, the radio station\u2019s decision to move its studio (for at least the fourth or fifth time since our show began) to a new location, making the drive much longer for our all-volunteer hosts, and including, also, steadily improving podcast-related technology. \u00a0True, though, to the consistent personal form that he has shown day after day and week after week and month after month over the past fifteen or twenty years of his anonymous public obsession with me, my ever-vigilant Malevolent Stalker is not buying my face-saving tale. \u00a0He knows that I\u2019m lying. \u00a0He knows that we were actually run out<\/em> of the radio station. \u00a0In support of which I offer the illustration above.<\/p>\n<\/a>\n
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