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.
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| 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.
