The Great I Am

And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.

Exodus 3:14

Samuel Pointer first comes to historical notice in 1836, when he and Alfred Watt sold slaves to Philip Maher in New Orleans.

Lecturing Joshua

Samuel was taken before Recorder Joshua Baldwin (1794-1852) for the first time on September 11 1840. The Recorder was a city official who had the power to examine, fine or imprison for minor offenses, without a jury.

Among the prisoners who paid their obeisance yesterday to Recorder Baldwin, was Samuel Pointer, alias The Great I Am. Most of our city readers must have recently noticed a man who goes through the highways and the byways, preaching about the approaching termination of the world, and proclaiming many other prophetic forebodings. He generally wears a linen, skirted coat, nankeen pants and broad-leafed hat, and does not appear to be so demented as his actions would indicate; his monomania is apparently confined to scriptural revelations.

“Samuel Pointer?” said the Recorder, “Samuel Pointer?”

The police officer went over to Pointer, told him to stand up, and asked him why he did not answer his name?

“That is not my name. I am the Great I Am, and I have come to tell you of the destruction of the world. I say that the world was to exist but a time, and a time and half a time, and that its dissolution is come. I have been telling this for the last thirty years, and if you be all burned in everlasting fire I’m not to blame.”

“Mr. Pointer, you were found lying drunk last night?”

“And there appeared another great wonder in heaven, for behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns upon his head, appeared to me and related all that is to happen.”

“Do you recollect the name of the street in which you were found?”

“This is the city, Sir, that is to be consumed. You will find it, Sir, in the sixteenth chapter and nineteenth verse of Revelations; but I have told it to them over and over again, and they will not believe me. When the fire comes they may cry out, but I will not save one of them. Open the book, Sir, and you will find that the great city was divided into three parts, and that the cities of the nation fell.”

[New Orleans had been divided into three separate cities in 1836, because the Anglos could not stand the Creoles, with their infernal race-mixing. It would remain divided until the Consolidation Act of 1850.]

“Mr. Pointer, I shall let you go this time.”

“You are right, Sir, because I saw the beasts and the kings of the earth, and they told me all that was to happen, for I am, Sir, the Great I Am—there is no mistake about it. You know it, Sir, and I know it, and the whole world will know it, for he that sat upon the throne said unto me, behold I make all things new—and he said, write, for these words are true and faithful. Now, Sir, there is no mistake but I am the Great I Am.”

“Take him out!”

“And he carried me away into the Spirit!”

Times Picayune, September 12 1840

Two weeks later he was again before Baldwin:

“Well, your honor, allow me to explain.

I am the Great I Am; I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy: these things have all been testified unto me; I have been announcing them for the last fifteen years, I am now, and I shall be to the end of the world.

I again repeat that I am the Great I Am; there is no mistake about it. Let nations and kingdoms and worlds hear it. This city, Sir, hath no need of a sun, neither of the moon to shine in it, because I am unto men a burning light.

Well, Sir, it has been given unto me to make war with the Saints, and although you may not believe it, kindreds, and tongues, and nations will know it; because I am the Great I Am, and have been preaching this doctrine for the last two score and ten years.

I will give power unto my witnesses, and they shall prophecy a thousand two hundred and three score days, and have power to shut Heaven that it raineth not in the days of their prophecy.

Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits which are, for I am the Great I Am, and verily I say unto you there are false teachers and false prophets among you.

I know, Sir, I know I am to suffer persecution, because it is written, they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails, and their power was to hurt men five months.

But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast those there (pointing to a group of police officers who stood inside the bar) that hold to the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel.”

Times Picayune, September 27 1840

Corn Meal

Samuel worked as a blacksmith and machinist when he was not preaching, and soon acquired enough notoriety to be compared to Corn Meal.

He is well known everywhere, and has an inveterate whim of haranguing any knot of people, no matter who they are or where he meets with them. His fame is scarcely equal to that of Corn Meal, and scarcely below it. He is not pleasantly and shrewdly cute enough to make his oddity a source of profit, as Corn Meal did, though it is said the poor old fellow died poor enough. Still, for a period, “I Am” has flourished in a manner as the white lion and Corn Meal as the black lion of the town. The difference between white and black, in human form, philosophical abolitionists define to be the whittled down little end of nothing, but with lions it may be a horse of another color.

Times Picayune, June 19 1842

He preached of the four parts.

Yes, I Am! For there is nothing that has not got four parts; the thing that has not four parts is nothing—and so I Am! Jehosaphat was a blacksmith—I Am! I will tell you all when the day comes, but it aint today, nor it wasn’t yesterday, nor it wasn’t the middle of next week! Hallelujah, I Am! And the land and the houses, and the municipalities and the men and the meat market, and you and this lamp-post, and all—you shall all be four parts—then you’ll see.

And I will say unto Recorder Baldwin—Stand forth, Joshua! His fourth part shall I then take from him—for it is written and the book is sealed. Joshua, give me your fourth part, or a gin-cocktail or a lock of your hair! Yes, you’ve all been going on, some with long hair, and some with short hair, and some with no hair at all. I say unto you all that the eleven thousand years aint a going to last forever. Hallelujah! Julius Caesar! General Jackson! Bustamente! and I Am!

So endeth the second section—take care of yourselves, my friends, and be careful of cold water—I Am!

Times Picayune, June 19 1842

The Picayune lamented the summer-time dullness of New Orleans, when many left town to escape the annual visit of yellow-fever:

The superlative dullness of the season has set in. A lazy languor and state of inert quietude seems now to pervade all!

The organ-grinders, the broom girls, the monkeys and the baboons that used to lead them about through the streets have all gone, either towards Maine or Mexico. Corn Meal has backed his go-cart into eternity, and the Great I Am is in the work-house. In fact, all kinds of fun are suspended, and if we were, as our English kinsfolk over the water are, a misanthropic self-killing people, there are many among us who would suspend themselves.

Times Picayune, July 8 1842

A Dicker Digression

Anastasio Bustamante had been President of Mexico (for the third time) from 1839 to September 1841, when he was overthrown and forced into exile for the second time. In June 1842, the New Orleans papers reported that he was traveling to England aboard the British steamship Solway.

The Solway was a ship of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, which delivered mail and passengers between England and the West Indies. The Solway had sister ships Medina, which sank on May 11 1842 off Turk’s Island, and Isis, which sank October 9 1842 off Bermuda. Edward Dicker was the Surgeon on both of these lost ships; he survived both sinkings and became Surgeon on the Solway. Captain Duncan greeted his new Surgeon, and joked that he would blame Dicker if anything happened to the Solway. On April 7 1843, the Solway left port about midnight from Coruna Spain, and struck a reef about twenty miles offshore. Some passengers made it to land in a lifeboat; the Solway quickly sank, and Captain Duncan and Surgeon Dicker were among the drowned. For €65, you can take a diving tour to see the wreck.

Artaxerxes and Miller

In 457 BC, Artaxerxes, King of the Persian Empire, decreed that the Jews in exile in Babylon could return and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Starting from this date, William Miller (1782-1849) established by rigorous and irrefutable calculation that the end of the world would come in 1843.

THE END OF THE WORLD, — Parson [William] Miller continues to deliver lectures in Boston on the dissolution of this sublunary sphere in 1843.

The “Great I Am” differs with him, for he says the era of the world will terminate with the present year. He proves this from chapter 6, verse 4, of the Revelations, which says:

And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given to him a great sword.

He that sat on the red horse, and to whom was given the great sword, the Great I Am contends, is Governor Dorr, and the beginning of the Rhode Island war, he positively asserts, is the beginning of the end of the world. We shall see whether he or Parson Miller is the sure enough prophet.

Weekly Picayune, July 18 1842

A Dorr Digression

Thomas Dorr (1805-1854) was a Rhode Island politician who opposed the limited suffrage in the state. Rhode Island was the only state which kept its pre-Revolutionary charter instead of writing a new constitution, and severely restricted voting to those white men who owned significant real estate, leaving more than half of them disenfranchised.

In 1840, Dorr led a “People’s Party” Convention, which wrote a new constitution and submitted it to voters, including those who were disenfranchised. The state government refused to recognize it, and wrote their own new constitution, which the existing limited franchise voted down. In May 1842, both sides held elections: Dorr was elected Governor by the People’s Party, and Samuel King was Governor of the existing charter. King declared martial law and began arresting Dorr supporters. Dorr fled, then in June returned with volunteers and led an armed force; King sent the state militia against them and they fled again.

In 1843, a more liberal constitution was finally approved, and Dorr returned, hoping that all was forgiven. He was arrested, tried for treason before the Rhode Island Supreme Court, and sentenced to life imprisonment with solitary confinement and hard labor. He was ultimately released in 1845, his health broken, and lived the rest of his life in retirement.

Preaching to the French

While preaching on St Charles in July 1842, Samuel encountered a skeptical Frenchman.

“I am the Great I Am, and I have told you all that is past, and what is present, and what is to come. He who harkeneth unto me shall be saved, and those who scoff and cry foul shall be sent into the Bottomless Pit, there to remain for a time, and a time and half a time. All this I have told you before …”

Before he could finish his sentence, a queer little Frenchman, in a queer little skullcap and a queer striped cotton jacket, hobbled up towards the orator, and gave a kind of random slap to his cap, which placed it jauntily on the side of his head, the tassel falling over his right ear. He addressed the rum-inspired prophet:

“What you say, you be the big I Am me; by Gar, I believe you be one damn impostor, one humadebug.”

“I tell you again, and I tell the dog that barked at me today in Poydras street—I tell the old woman in Lafayette, and I tell the whole world that I am the Great I Am—that I am the apostle of the prophet Isaiah, and that I could foretell all that has taken place within the last five millions of years or that will take place till the coming of the Beast, which according to Noah is three calendar months and twenty-nine days from the period of the eclipse.”

“You know all, eh?”

“Yes, it all, and …”

“Vel dere, by damn, you know you got dat, eh?” the Frenchman said while giving the Great I Am a rather severe blow right under the right eye.

“Yes, I know it all, because power was given unto me to redeem the world and all things therein.”

“Ah Ha! You redeem all tings in dis world, eh? By Gar, den we shall see what we shall see.” Pulling out a five dollar bill of the Exchange Bank, and two of the same denomination of the Atchafalaya, he exclaimed “You redeem every ting in de world, eh? Now you redeem dem bills, sacre damn!”

This drew a loud laugh from the crowd, and the Frenchman walked away triumphantly elated with having put down one false prophet.

Times Picayune, July 19 1842

The Great Eclipse of 1842 was on July 8, and was depicted by many artists, including Ippolito Caffi in Venice.

Ether and Dancing

The ” Great I Am” was at Greensburg, on the other side the Lake [Ponchartrain], a few days since. He was holding forth with as much zeal as ever, and declared that he had received orders to wander for thirty years, after which he is not to die but be exhaled into ether. He says that this world is to last until 4486, and this he proves without the aid of times, half times, rams, dragons or he-goats. He “puts up” at the hotel in Greensburg, and says that as he has no money the landlord must take his pay in ether.

Times Picayune, March 31 1843

We saw the “Great I Am” perambulating our streets yesterday, drunk as usual, and performing various new eccentricities. He did not upraise his voice in boisterous exhortation, as has been his wont in former times; but on the contrary was seen performing a variety of whirling, toe-and-heeling and fanciful gyrations, all which were wonderfully enjoyed by the urchins in his wake. What object he had in view by indulging in his exercises saltatory we are at a loss to imagine: it may be that he was practising the new Polka dance, but never having seen the steps we cannot say with certainty.

Times Picayune, June 19 1844

The Polka was introduced in Paris in 1844, and then swept into America.

The polka reached New Orleans in September.

Society danced, and the End of the World did not come in 1843, or in 1844. This caused the Great Disappointment, which led to the creation of Seventh-Day Adventism. The Great I Am continued preaching, and occasionally misbehaved.

A Knife and a Ruler

Mr Richeman seems to have recovered, for we hear no more of his punctures.

Pointer appears many times in the New Orleans police arrest reports, such as the night of February 9 1846. For this offence, he was sent back to the workhouse for 60 days.

Arrested by Hanks and Brewer on the Levee between Montegut and Clouet Streets as being crazy, and not knowing where going to, at 9 3/4 o’clock.

Samuel Pointer, better known as the Great I Am, was arrested yesterday evening by officers McClusky and Busby, being engaged at his old practice of disturbing the peace. Sam, when brought to the watch-house, was found to have a knife and a ruler. The former, he said, he carried to carve his way through life; the latter instrument was to rule his conduct, except when he ruled himself out of the bounds of temperance; then, said he, “I suppose I am subject no longer to my own rule, but to the rule of the law.” Recorder Baldwin will give him a practical illustration of his latter proposition on Monday morning.

Times Picayune, July 19 1846

The Delta offered a poetic salute to him, and was sure that he could be a valuable citizen, if only a charitable hospital existed for derangement.

The unfortunate wanderer of the coast and our streets has his lucid intervals of months, and devotes himself to his trade, being one of the best machinists we have—and in his crazed moments he is inoffensive and harmless, and did not the idle curiosity and mischief of children, as well as the sporting humor of mature minds, cause him to be thronged, he would give no trouble to any, and his infirmity would not be cultivated.

He is committed for the usual want—for six months. If he could be occasionally placed under restraint for few days, in a place appropriate for such disorders, he would be yet a valuable citizen.

Weeky Delta, August 17 1846

In August 1847, the Delta printed a mistaken report that the Great I Am had died in Natchez Mississippi.

A mistake, Mr. Delta—we saw Mr. Poynter yesterday; he was then alive and kicking, and engaged as usual in explaining numerous matters and things “as laid down in the book of Prophecies.” He says that his death will take place on the 6th December next, three months thereafter his body is to be resolved into ether, and that immediately after the whole world will be thrown into chaos.

Mississippi Free Trader, August 18 1847

Vanishing for a time, or a time and a half, he returned in the summer of 1849.

Arriving at the Second Municipality, we perceived a crowd at the corner of a street, and found the Great I Am, who had been missing for a year or two, and who was supposed to be dead, holding forth as usual. He said his name was Samuel Pointer, that he was born in Powhatan County, Virginia in August 1793, in this generation. That he was the great foreordained; he was John the Apostle, known in the Book of Prophecies; he was the roaming prophet, and had been on the earth 200 years ago. He was “crowled in a crow’s nest, in a hole in a rock, and the earth throwed, the rock opened, and he was born.”

Times Picayune, August 18 1849

The Late, Great I Am

An anonymous writer signed only as H wrote a Characters About Town series for the Delta, and paid an unflattering tribute to Samuel in 1849. H was obviously a fan of Edgar Allan Poe, who would die the next month. Poe had published Eureka in 1848, a work on the origin and fate of the universe; the Great I Am had similar views of the immensity of the cosmos.

Samuel Pointer, the Great I Am, is an unredeemed sinner. View him in his lunatic fit; standing on street corners; seeking the most populous places, with a crowd around him in silent amazement, lifting up his voice and crying aloud. Extravagant in action, in demeanor wild, and eccentric in attire, he is fearful to see in his lunatic fit. Now mixing in bacchanal revelry, dropping with wine, howling strange songs, and reeling in obscene dances. Now a fiend, enacting weird orgies, and, anon a saint, in posture penitent, moaning in heart-felt contrition. To busy curiosity, he is an unceasing wonder. See him now, glancing high scorn on the awe-stricken crowd; calling them his creatures; himself their creator.

“I am monarch of all I survey. From my throne in the blue fields of ether, did I descend, riding on a sunbeam, and in six days did I create the heavens, and also the earth, and all that it inhabit—men, female women, and you, thou ebony scion from the root of Cain—even you—and as I have created, even so can I annihilate—with the breath of my mouth can I annihilate you!”

A rare blasphemer is the Great I Am. In his stange wild mein and extravagant action, he is a theme for the poets or painters art. The freshness of his springtime has lapsed into the sere and yellow autumn of decline, giving promise of the decay that follows ripeness, and Lethean waters have swept away all record of his May-day memories. Like one awakened from a life-long slumber, the forms that were his familiars in vanished years, have been gathered to the repose that knows no awakening—the places that have known him, know him no longer, and his heritage has passed to the dominion of the stranger. The Great I Am, that rare old sinner, is a melancholy wreck of a long-ago greatness. Reason in him has been spoiled of its empire, and an eccentric lunacy has usurped its role. Once reveling in luxury, he is now sore smitten with ruthless want. Deserted favorite of undistinguishing Fortune! Your summer-day friends have fallen from you like leaves from the [illegible] tree.

He was once a man of a rigid morality, a member of a Christian sect, he reasoned high of Providence, fore-knowledge, will and fate. Devotion was his pastime, and devotion made him mad. Ambitious, above all mortal aspiration, he believed that he is the architect of Infinity, and that Deity is a usurper in his high inheritance. At times he is wrapt in meditation, and preaching to erring humanity repentance and Christ crucified, and again, he is blaspeming, and with mock majesty proclaiming “I am the Great I Am!” Anon vowing to dethrone the Eternal; making the blood run cold and each particular hair to stand on end.

A rare old sinner is the Great I Am, man-despised and God-Forgotten! A high soul was his, and a capacity equal to the grasp of infinity, but now, Alas, dissolved in chaotic wreck, prostrate and powerless, and given over to the rule of confusion. Time has stamped wrinkles on his lofty brow, and dimmed the brightness of his flashing eye. Tottering with age and thick gathered infirmities, his long, fleecy locks blown vagabond and streaming on the wind, he looks the representative of an entombed generation—the resurrection of a sepulchred race, long forgotten in the dark backward and abyss of departed years.

By profession a machinist, the secrets of science and the laws of physics were rolled out before him as a scroll, and in the cunning of his craft few equalled and none surpassed him. But Samuel Pointer, the self-entitled deity, has fallen from his high eminence. Yet is he great, even in his fall, like “Moloch, Furious King,” displaying yet faint glimpses of his early luster.

Woeful to the view and [illegible] to the thought; is the blaspheming lunatic. Standing on Camp street, fronting the office of an opulent money-changer, who thirsteth after lucre and boweth down to the golden calf, he is begging the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table—a very Lazarus at the gate of Dives! What! Not one cent from so vast a hoard?

Pause then good Samaritan, and contribute your mite to the extended palm of the sorrowful lunatic. Like bread cast upon the waters, after many days you may find it reproduced a hundred-fold. You will not? Ah! you know the old lunatic—that he is a rare old sinner, and puts an enemy in his mouth that steals away his brains. But [illegible] your refusal, thou good Samaritan, to contribute your mite, the I Am is again in his glory. He has drunk of the cup that fires the blood, and is uttering blasphemy, and wildly laughing with maniac glee.

Thus harangues he, with the air of a minister of the Christian faith:

“Thou fool, who in the vanity of thy heart hast said that I am not that I AM, go look upon the sky.

Spread like an ocean hung on high, 
Bespangled with those isles of light, 
So wildly, beautifully bright! 
Whoever gazed upon them shining, 
And turned to earth without repining, 
Nor wished for wings to flee away, 
And mix with their eternal ray.

Go read the wondrous stars! Were they flung from the hand of chance? Did each bright particular orb, in that all glorious morning, when the spheres all joined in the choral hymn of praise to ME, their creator—did they untaught take their rotation in the march of infinity? Even you, weak worm, are a wonder, and marvelous in your mechanism as the stars you look upon. Can you divine the secrets of your anatomy? You cannot comprehend my [illegible], and therefore I am not the I AM! You can comprehend time—give date to its birth! Is there not an eternity? I imagine its decay! Ponder on space! Can you give it bounds? Give fancy full play, let imagination forth to winnow its way to the remotest star that glimmers on the verge of vision. The full blaze of another system meets your admiring gaze! Have you put a girdle yet about the confines of space? On, still on!—flagging fancy will no farther. You know that such things are, yet can you not divine the secrets of their existence. Am I, the Great I Am, more incomprehensible than time?—more wonderful than space? Away, thou fool, or else I will annihilate you with the breath of my mouth!”

Thus reasons the Great I Am. But a wag not content with such philosophy catechises the I Am:

“The world poised in the dawn air sublime, and the universe we look upon are an infinite creation, and in their infinity too great to exist without you, their creator. Surely, then, you who have made the universe are of stranger birth than the universe you have made. Who made you?”

And the I Am, sorely puzzled, answers from the teaching of the Hindoo faith:

“The world hanging in the dawn air sublime rests upon an elephant, and the elephant upon a tortoise. Tell me on what stands the tortoise, and I will tell you who made me.”

Thus reasons the I Am, the blaspheming sinner.

Time flies fast, and there is a shifting scene. An old man, in the decline of a fast ebbing mortality, bowed down under the silent lapse of unnumbered winters—his grey locks all eloquent of flown and forgotten times! Fleet-footed years, fast fleeing, and a shifting scene. An old woman; a withered, wicked crone; wedded to misery—companioned with despair! Fit consort for the rare old sinner, the Great I Am!

A shifting scene. There’s a tryst tonight of a weird trio. An envious crone, a withered old man, and a guest with a bony arm; and a merry, merry time have they!

With a bony arm and a knuckle stout, he knocks at the door of the old man’s heart.

Rap, rap; tap, tap; at the door of the heart,
With a bony arm and a knuckle stout!

Now speed we to the end. There’s a laugh full fraught with maniac glee; a song; a prayer, and a withering oath! Pale lights, glazed eyes, and a spirit disenthralled, fast winnowing its way to—where? A widow donning gay mourning weeds—a coffin and a shroud—a new made grave—the hollow echo of resounding clods, and—a feast of worms!

Weekly Delta, September 17 1849

Both Pointer and the Great I Am vanish from history after this, so he probably died unnoticed soon after and was sent to the Potter’s Field, to be resolved into ether.

And he [Judas] cast down the thirty pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.

And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.

And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in.

Matthew 27

The original New Orleans Potter’s Field, for the burial of the indigent, is at the north end of Canal St, and became the Charity Hospital Cemetery in 1848. The Firemen’s Charitable Association dug the graves, with the city paying them $2 per grave.