A LEPER HIMSELF

AMBROSE KANOEALI’I HUTCHISON  was a long-time Native Hawaiian resident of the leper settlement of Kalaupapa on the island of Molokaʻi,  residing there for fifty-three years from 1879 until his death in 1932. During his residence, he assumed a prominent leadership role in the patient community and served as luna or resident superintendent of Kalaupapa from 1884 to 1897.

Ambrose Hutchison was born in Honomāʻele, Hāna (one of my favorite places on earth), Maui, in 1856, the son of Ferdinand William Hutchison, originally from  Edinburgh and Maria or Malie Moa, a Native Hawaiian woman. His father was an influential politician during the reign of King Kamehameha V and served as president of the Board of Health during the early development and management of the leper settlement of Kalaupapa. His mother died when he was young and his father left Maui for Honolulu to pursue a political career, leaving Ambrose and his siblings William and Christina in the care of their mother's relatives.

When Ambrose was  one month old he was given to his mother's sister who was a kahuna known for herbal cures. He wrote, in later life, that he may have contracted leprosy from a man "with large ears and bloated face, swollen hands and feet", who his aunt had treated. Another possible source was a vaccination using the lymph fluid from the arm of another boy. 

At an early age, Ambrose was sent to boarding school in Honolulu under the auspices of the Anglican Archdeacon George Mason. At this time, the first symptoms of leprosy developed in 1868 when he was twelve years old and developed slowly until he became an adult.

In December 1878, Ambrose was arrested for being a suspected leper and detained at Honolulu's Kalihi Hospital for examination. Hawaiian law required anyone suspected of contracting leprosy to report for medical examination or face arrest. On January 5, 1879, the diagnosed young man was sent to the leper settlement of Kalaupapa on the island of Molokaʻi to be isolated with other sufferers of the disease.

He worked as chief butcher and beef dispenser and head storekeeper of the Kalawao store until 1884 when he was appointed as resident superintendent. He was the first government appointed superintendent of Native Hawaiian descent. Although Hawaiians had held the positions as luna or resident superintendent prior to 1884, they were all subordinates and not trusted with financial affairs.

Ambrose married Mary Kaiakonui, a local resident of Kalaupapa, in 1881, in a ceremony blessed by Father Damien. According to historian John Tayman, Mary may have also contracted leprosy and they had a daughter who did not suffer the same infection as her parents. Other sources claimed they were childless. They lived at Hutchison's house, in a part of the settlement called Makanalua .  Kaiakonui cared for her husband as his mea kōkua (caregiver) until her death on May 16, 1905, at the age of forty-seven. She was buried in the Catholic section of Papaloa Cemetery and a white bronze grave monument marks her final resting place.  Members of his family were present at the 2009 canonization of Father Damien in Rome.

Ambrose was highly regarded by the Native Hawaiian patient community and the Board of Health in Honolulu. According to resident physician Arthur Albert St. Mouritz, he "displayed marked ability and highly creditable administrative powers for a man so young." In 1898, Hutchison and his wife along with more than seven hundred people at Kalaupapa signed the famous Kūʻē Petitions against the annexation of Hawaii to the United States.

During his residency on Kalaupapa, Ambrose worked with Father Damien, whom he had met on his arrival in 1879, and became one of the closest friends of the Catholic priest. Dr. Mouritz described the partnership of the two men and how they greeted new arrivals "steaming hot coffee and warm food". Their friendship lasted until the priest’s death in 1889 and Ambrose was possibly one of the eight pallbearers at his funeral.

Ambrose noted: There was nothing supernatural about Father Damien. He was a vigorous, forceful and impellent man with a big kindly heart in the prime of life and a jack of all trades, carpenter, mason, baker, farmer, medico and nurse, grave digger ... He was that type of man of action, bull headed, strong will high minded ... of determined tenacity to attain results of his aspiration, but of kindly disposition toward all who came into contact with him ... I loved to work with him in his crusade to put down evil for his quality of open heartedness. There was no hypocrisy about him.

Father Damien and girls

Around 1930, Ambrose started writing "In Memory of Reverend Father Damien J. De Veuster and Other Priests Who Have Labored in the Leper Settlement of Kalawao, Molokaʻi", his personal account of Father Damien's work on the island and a memoir of his own fifty-three year of experience living on Kalaupapa. It was discovered unpublished at the time of his death in 1932, at the age of seventy-six, from an attack of influenza pneumonia. After his death, the unfinished manuscript was sent to the Sacred Hearts Archives in Leuven, Belgium for storage. Portions of the memoirs, an unfinished will and his other writings are stored at the Hawaii State Archives. According to historian Anwei Skinsnes Law, "despite all his accomplishments and influence, Ambrose Hutchison had been largely left out of his own history."

In his incomplete will, Ambrose expressed his love for his mother, his wife and the dwindling Hawaiian race:

For the love and affection I hold for my mother, Maria Mo-a, and Maria Kaiakonui, my wife (deceased), who were of the pure Hawaiian aboriginal ancestry, from whom sprung from and hold dear and my heart longing desire to perpetuate their race from extinction which forecasting shadow of time forbode their doom, which only the power of a mercifull and all loving God can stay, from the evident fate which await them and leaving firm faith in the love and mercy of God, who alone can save and perpetuate and multiply from being effaced from the land, which, by His grace he gave to their forefathers and foremothers and their descendants as a heritage forever and to this end and purpose, I consecrate my worldly estate both real, personal or mixed.