LAND AMONG CANNIBALS—DENOUNCED AS THE AMERICAN PLANT—HIS DESTRUCTION DEMANDED—SENTENCED TO BE ROASTED AND EATEN—FIRE PREPARED—HIS DEFIANCE OF THE RABID HOST—EFFECT UPON THE WILD HORDE WHO WERE EAGER TO ROAST AND DEVOUR HIM—FIERCE FIGHT AMONG HIS OPPONENTS.

An intense anti-"Mormon" feeling had developed on that island since his last previous visit, and he had scarcely landed when his life was threatened by a leader of the anti-"Mormon" faction named Tabate. These people had formerly been cannibals, and now when their passions were aroused, as they frequently were on religious and other questions, their state bordered very nearly on their original degraded level if it didn't quite reach it. They not only gloried in their former practices, but they dwelt with unction upon the hope of returning thereto. They practiced grimmaces and distortions and incantations, gave free rein to their wild passions and in anticipation reverted again to their old lives of crime and cannibalism.

Unfortunately there were persons unscrupulous enough to play upon the prejudices of the natives in this time of excitement to gratify their own malicious desires and gain a mean advantage for their own pet faction. Two young protestant ministers engaged in making inflammatory speeches against the "Mormons" and especially against Elder Brown, whose influence among the natives they greatly feared and saw no prospect of coping with. They alluded to him as "that American plant" which they predicted would soon grow to such proportions as to overshadow the land and stifle all other creeds or ministers. They demanded that the natives give this "American plant" no further tolerance, but drive him from their midst.

About the 5th of May, 1852, the whole people were called to assemble at the village of Tatake and prepare a feast, and at the same time to decide what to do with the "Mormon" minister and his disciples. The young braves came together armed with muskets, and apparently bent upon extreme measures. The people brought together an immense quantity and great variety of edibles, including roast pigs, fish, poultry and fruits of all kinds known in the region. The food was divided up according to families and the number in families, and the portion of ten men was set before Elder Brown with the injunction to eat and get fat for the roast. Much jesting was indulged in during the banquet, and many allusions made to the feast of roast missionary which was to follow, as if it were a good joke, but at the conclusion of the banquet all became silent as if they had eaten to satiety and required a rest. But to the friends of Elder Brown this silence was ominous. They could not believe that the dire plot against the missionary had been abandoned or forgotten. The silence, they feared, was but the precursor of a more dreadful and revolting orgie than any they had witnessed. About 1 p. m. the excitement was renewed. Two great ruffians armed with clubs entered Elder Brown's apartment and announced that they had been sent to summon him before the council. If he refused they said they were under orders to forcibly drag him there. He immediately arose to go with them, and as he did so the promise of Brigham Young and also that of President Willard Richards, made to him when he was called to go upon his mission, came to his mind, with the assurance that the time had arrived for their fulfillment. As predicted, his life was now being sought, but his enemies would not succeed, for his life would be spared to return in safety to his mountain home and friends. He had no feeling of doubt or depression, but on the contrary he was calmly confident and cheerful. He walked out to the beach where the people had assembled, and the few faithful members of the Church upon the island followed close behind him. As they passed the heap of burning timber which had such a significance, they faced a formidable row of about fifteen young athletes with close cropped hair and bodies naked except for a cloth around their loins, and oiled so that they shone with a savage fierceness in the firelight, standing with folded arms as if ready for the word to offer a victim to the flames. As the missionary and his friends approached the demon-like Tabate stepped forward and commanded that "all the Britons stand on the right hand with the sheep, and the 'Mormons' stand on the left where the goats are." Among the followers of Elder Brown was a brave young native named Rivae and his wife who had an eight-months'-old babe in her arms. With sublime courage this devoted young husband stepped forward and said "If you are going to burn this man," pointing to Elder Brown, "you burn me first!" His wife immediately followed and, holding her babe at arms' length shouted "I am a 'Mormon' and this baby will be a 'Mormon' if he lives, so you will have to burn all of us to put a stop to 'Mormonism.'" Rivae and his wife were ordered to stand aside, and Elder Brown was ordered to take a position in a space between the two parties. Then Tabate, the spokesman or judge taunted him with being the cause of all the trouble, and, pointing to the heap of burning embers, declared the decision to be that he must there be roasted and eaten.

Yielding to a sudden feeling that came over him at that moment, Elder Brown stood erect before them, and, with arms raised high in the air, shouted "In the name of Israel's God I defy the host of you; for I serve the God who delivered Daniel from the den of lions and the three Hebrew children from the fiery furnace!"

The change that immediately came over the scene was as if caused by magic. A spirit of division rested upon the judge who had passed the sentence, his councilors and the executioners, and they were soon engaged in a deadly grapple. This seemed to be the signal for the whole assembly to enter into the fiercest kind of a fight. They used clubs and stones and any other kind of a weapon they could get hold of; also pulled hair, bit and scratched and gouged in the most desperate struggle, inflicting all the damage they could upon one another until they were compelled to cease from sheer exhaustion at the close of the day.

In this final conflict some of the Church members seemed impelled to take a hand. They fought with savage ferocity until the time came when, as if by common consent, they all ceased to fight and demurely slunk away to their homes with many sore heads and aching bodies, to think over, but perhaps without being able to recall, their reason for engaging in the deadly struggle.

The rest may soon be told.

Elder Brown continued to live upon the small island of Laivavai, for he had no opportunity to get away, but he was treated with consideration, and apparently regarded with superstitious awe.

Those who had contemplated roasting and eating him must have been careful to shun him thereafter, for he never knowingly met any of them. Upon one occasion he recognized one of them at a distance but noticed that he almost immediately commenced running from him, as if in fear. In a spirit of fun Elder Brown pursued him and succeeded in overtaking him after a long chase. On questioning the man as to his reason for running away from him, he was told that he was feared because he seemed to be divinely assisted; that when he defied the populace as he was about to be sacrificed there appeared to be a pillar of light extending from the heavens down to his head, and it was regarded as a sign of divine favor, and those who saw it feared to touch him.

They were not the only ones who gave the Lord the credit for coming to his relief. Elder Brown did so himself. He acknowledged that it was only through the mercy and power of the Lord that he was delivered from that howling mob who had set their hearts upon subjecting him to a most horrible death and were then intent upon devouring his flesh.

We can imagine how easy it was for the Lord to create the impression that He did upon the hearts of those ignorant depraved people. James S. Brown was a magnificent specimen of physical manhood. He was tall and well proportioned, with a fearless manner about him, betokening the possession of unusual courage. He had a sonorous voice and a penetrating look that was well calculated to make cowards quail. When he stood forth in the majesty of his strength and in the firm belief that the Lord was going to protect him, even as His prophets had declared, and defied the superstitious horde that sought his life, it seems the most natural thing in the world that they should be stricken dumb with astonishment and terror. It is not detracting any from the credit due the Lord to explain that His purpose might have been and probably was accomplished in a perfectly natural way. It was long before remarked by the Protestant ministers when they sought to have his liberties curtailed because he had baptized an invalid and she had been healed of her ailment, that he had "such a fierce countenance and expressive voice as to excite a person suffering the most excruciating pain until he would not realize that he had any suffering at all." The governor of the French protectorate had also complained of his so terrifying a witness by simply looking at him as to disqualify him for service. He therefore ordered that Elder Brown cease to look at the witness, saying his countenance was so "fierce and vivid as to baffle the most substantial witness." Then too, he had the reputation of being a man of nerve and resource—a man who did things. He had in many instances extracted teeth with no better instrument than a bullet mold or a hammer and chisel, or rusty nail that could be used as a punch. He had performed surgical operations successfully when he had found people suffering from carbuncles or abscesses by use only of a sharp pocket knife. He had acquired the native language and other dialects with wonderful facility and spoke several dialects fluently; in fact, he was almost a natural linguist. All these and other things as well as his appearance caused him to be regarded as a remarkable man. His unconcern too as to the identity of the people who tried to sacrifice him was probably also noticed. It was sufficient for him to know that he was no longer molested. To him the incident was closed. He probably never thought of it afterwards except in a casual way. When he returned home after an absence of three and two-thirds years and had occasion to mention his narrow escape from being burned and devoured in connection with his various other experiences, he found it was wholly lacking in corroboration; he could not refer to anyone who had witnessed it or knew of the facts. And so it continued for nearly if not quite forty years, when he again found himself upon a mission in the Society Islands. He was a greatly changed man then, enfeebled by age and sickness, and under the necessity of walking with crutches as a result of his having lost a limb through being accidentally shot. He found only few people then who remembered his former labors upon the islands and fewer still who recognized him. He casually mentions in his autobiography that on visiting the island of Laivavai in company with Elder Wm. A. Seegmiller "we met a man—the fourth on the island—who was on the island of Laivavai when the natives had built a fire to burn me, and when I was delivered by the power of God. They claimed to have been present when I was sentenced, but denied taking any part in the proceedings."

Elder Seegmiller, who is now a Bishop in Richfield, Utah, remembers meeting those men as mentioned. He also had the place pointed out to him where the sacrifice so nearly occurred, and heard the circumstance incidentally alluded to many times in connection with the folk lore of the island, or as a legend of the days of heathendom. All that he heard was substantially in accord with the narrative as here given.