| 46 Indian traders, and were camped upon occasionally by fishing parties; but little or nothing else was known of them even at the principal lake ports. Strang believed that there he could establish his church on a secure temporal foundation, and could escape that hostility of Gentile neighbors which had proved so fatal to Smith's settlements at the far west and Nauvoo. Convenient visions, duly communicated to the faithful for their edification and guidance, then ordered him not merely to gather his people at Voree, but to also take them to 'a land amid wide waters and covered with large timber, with a deep, broad bay on one side of it.' 4 There was accordingly some emigration from Wisconsin to Beaver Island in 1847-48, but it acquired considerable proportions in 1849-50, and in the latter year the headquarters of the Primitive Mormons were removed from Voree to the new village at Beaver Harbor, to which the name of St. James had been given in honor of its founder. The Voree Herald was then succeeded by the Northern Islander, an exceedingly creditable specimen of backwoods journalism. The communistic principle was abandoned, and the saints became the owners of their own homesteads. In July, 1850, the government of the church was thoroughly reorganized 'by the union of church and state,' and the formation of a kingdom, with Strang as king. Precisely the nature of his claim to the royal title is thus stated by one of the most.
4 A portion of the vision furnishing authority for the move to Beaver Island is as follows: "1. I, James J. Strang, was at Elizabeth, on the Monongahela River, on the twenty-fifth day of August, in the year eighteen hundred and forty-six, and had a vision, and lo, I beheld a land amidst wide waters, and covered with large timber, with a deep, broad bay on one side of it; and I wandered over it upon little hills, and among rich valleys where the air was pure and serene, and the unfolding foliage, with its fragrant shades, attracted me till I wandered to bright clear waters scarcely ruffled by the breeze. And Indians in canoes glided about, and caught fish and sat down to eat, and they gathered in assemblies and men taught words of truth and ways of holiness, and they harkened, and I beheld wonders there.
"2. And one came near unto me, and I said, What meaneth this? And he answered and said, Behold, here shall God establish his people, even the sons of Joseph, on an everlasting foundation; and from thence shall the gospel of the kingdom go unto the tribes, and they shall not any more be despised; for the nation that set their feet upon their necks will he cut off, that they be no more a people."-Revelations of James J. Strang, p. 11.
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