An Indian Interpretation of The Book of Mormon

An Indian Interpretation of the Book of Mormon
- THE SPALDING RESEARCH PROJECT -

A Spalding Saga
Episode
Back to Conneaut Witnesses Index Page
Sacred Book? | Conneaut Giants | Mormons, Mastodons & Mounds | 1816 Port
Folio
Introduction | Setting the Context | A Lame Theory Run Amok | Going Beyond the Book's
Stories
New Possibilities: the Psycho-social Context | Some Further Discussion | Afterword
http://solomonspalding.com/SRP/saga2/sagawt0i.htm (1 of 44) [21/02/2007 21:56:46]

An Indian
Interpretation
of the Book of
Mormon
by Merry C. Baker
2006
And long they ’ ve

lived by hunting,
Instead of work
and arts,
And so our race has
dwindled
To idle Indian
hearts...
(early Mormon hymn)
Introduction
If the modern reader concludes that the LDS (Latter Day Saints)
Book of Mormon is but an
artifact of 1830’s Americana, is there any worth to it at all? I say
yes, and in this paper I will attempt to show why I believe that the
Mormons' text can help answer a number of questions posed by
past writers. For example: Was there a pre-Columbian higher
civilization north of what is now Mexico? Was it indigenous or
imported? Where does the legend of an ancient "lost book" fit into
America's past? Can any such lost book help explain some of the
variety in American Indian traditions, appearance, or genetics? Why
did some early Indians refuse to live in the "dark and bloody land"
of Kentucky? The list goes on and on.

Might the Book of Mormon be something other than what it

purports to be, and yet still preserve vague recollections of
America's forgotten past? Before I outline my main conclusions in
this regard, I'll need to first address Mormon claims regarding their
sacred book. I do this not out of any wish to offend that people's
beliefs and traditions, but out of my deep desire to present an
alternative, Indian view of that book's stories and their probable
origins.
From the very beginning, advocates of the Book of Mormon have

asserted that its antiquity can be demonstrated by archaeological
evidence. Rev. David Marks, one of the earliest writers to notice this
strange volume, said in 1831:
"When I was in Ohio, I had quite a curiosity to know the origin of the
numerous mounds and remains of ancient fortifications that abound in
that section of the country... Having been told that the 'Book of
Mormon' gave a history of them, and of their authors...I wished to
read it... and I read two hundred and fifty pages; but was greatly
disappointed... From all the circumstances, I thought it probably had
been written originally by an infidel, to see how much he could impose
on the credulity of men."
But the Mormon book does not stop with its supposed identification
of the prehistoric Ohio Valley earthworks builders; it also purports
to reveal who extermined that mound-building race. As early as
1830, Mormon missionaries were teaching that the people guilty of
this alleged mass genocide of God's chosen race, were none other
than the American Indians (who are themselves said to be devolved
Israelites):
"This new Revelation [the Book of Mormon], they say is especially

designed for the benefit, or rather for the christianizing of the
Aborigines of America; who, as they affirm, are a part of the tribe of
Manasseh, and whose ancestors landed on the coast of Chili 600 years
before the coming of Christ, and from
them descended
all the Indians
of America." [emphasis added]

Orson Pratt, one of the top leaders of Mormondom, was still

teaching these same allegations several months later, when he and
his missionary companion preached at the Venango County
courthouse in Franklin, Pennsylvania, on Feb. 11, 1832:
"We are commanded by the Lord to declare his will to effect his
intended purpose.... Six hundred years before Christ a certain prophet
called Lehi went out to declare and promulgate the prophecies to
come; he came across the water into South America... there they
[Lehi's people] were divided into two parties; one wise, the other
foolish; the latter were therefore cursed with yellow skins; which is
supposed to mean the Indians of the Rocky Mountains... The greater
part of the people were... destroyed 400 years after Christ. The last
battle that was fought among these parties was on the very ground
where the plates were found... at Manchester. -- The plates state that
we shall drive back the Indians to the South and West: with a
promise, however, to be brought back in the fulness of time."
Are these sorts of professions and accusations really "God's truth"

about where American antiquities came from? Do the pages of the
Book of Mormon really really provide evidence of its great antiquity?
Were the fallen remnant of God's chosen people really massacred in
a final, great battle fought at Manchester, New York more than
fourteen centuries before the book's 1830 publication? Do the Book
of Mormon's stories really date from the days of Noah's flood, and
from the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, and from the crucifixion
of Jesus -- or are the book's stories based upon events significantly
more recent than LDS assertions make them out to be?

"Gold Bible Hill," Manchester, NY -- Scene of a Massacre?
Who was Joseph Smith, Jr.? -- was he a religious impostor; a self-

announced prophet gone astray; or was he truly what he
proclaimed himself to be? If a close study of the Book of Mormon
can shed useful light upon these questions it may indeed possess
golden value.
Setting the Context
Since the Book of Mormon purports to describe pre-Columbian

American societies, perhaps the first question it should be able to
answer, is: Who are the native tribes of the "New" World? How did
they come to inhabit the vast stretches of two continents? Why
were they so unlike the Old World peoples, when first "discovered"
by the ocean-crossing European explorers? Two centuries ago there
was a great deal of speculation in regard to these very same
questions. Scholars on both sides of the Atlantic pondered such
matters very seriously. After all, if the inhabitants of the Americas
were not somehow accounted for, as descendants of the biblical
Adam and Eve, they might not be human at all! And
the Holy Bible might prove to be an incomplete or imperfect record
of human history!
There were many theoretical explanations as to who (or even what)

American Indians were. Those natural historians and antiquarians

who reported upon the New World's archaeological remains saw

evidence in North America that it had once been home to a high
level of civilization -- to cultures nearly comparable to those of the
Valley of Mexico and MesoAmerica. Some speculative writers could
not bring themselves to admit that even the highly organized pre-
Columbian societies of Latin America could have possibly developed
all by themselves, in a world totally detached from Europe, Asia and
Africa, however. Surely, they thought, the American Indians could
not have originated the impressive antiquities and social orders of
the seemingly vanished early inhabitants. Whatever was admirable,
artistic or civilized in the New World must somehow have
been imported from across the sea. And, once the Pope in Rome
had declared that the western hemisphere tribes were truly
"people" with savable souls, some
reasonable explanation had to be given
for their Old World origins, as well.
Any two unrelated tribal human societies will naturally share

some cultural traits, even if they have never interacted. It
is therefore not surprising that some early investigators began to
see what they felt were striking parallels between the American
Indians and certain biblical peoples. The Bible was the most ancient
historical record commonly available to investigators, two or three
centuries ago, and its old stories of "Hebrews" (the Israelites and
later the Jews) appeared to offer ready sources for everything from
New World languages to New World cities. Seeing the accidental
cultural similarities of matrilineal clan descent and monotheism,
prohibition of intercourse during menstruation, arranged marriage,
seclusion of mother and infant during the first month after
childbirth, prayer when the killing of an animal for food, harvest
celebrations, etc., more than a few European-Americans became
convinced that the Indians were the devolved "lost tribes of Israel"
or were "degenerate Jews." Numerous articles and books were
written, published and widely read, which attempted to prove this
strange theory. The Book of Mormon is one of those writings: more
than that, it was designed as a quasi-
scriptural "proof text," which would put an end to all the Indian
origins speculations once and for all. Assuming that to be true, how
then did the seminal idea for the Book of Mormon first begin to

develop?
A Lame Theory Run Amok
Indian legends of an old war between the native Americans and a

band of evil white people, in which many of the whites chose to
become Indians and the remainder were killed off, entered into
some origins theories. The presence in some Indian tribes, of
religious beliefs and customs resembling those of Christianity
became better known after the Bible and its miraculous stories had
been introduced to the American tribes. The figurative language of
Indian responses to the Bible, such as “We once had that Book, but
lost it,” were evidently misunderstood by some Christians. To this
very day, the seal of Dartmouth College (a school established to
Christianize and "civilize" the northeastern tribes), depicts two
Indian students carrying their book to the school, while the Holy
Bible shines its light upon the scene. While such paternalistic
symbolism may have been progressive in its time, it generally fails
to comprehend native American spirituality.
A correspondent of the Georgia Cherokee

Phoenix, who had read some recently
published speculation on Israelite origins for native Americans,
offered this response in 1829, a year before the Book of Mormon
was published:
"I noticed in a late number of your paper a selection from the

Monthly Review, containing
an extract from Worsley's view of
the American
Indians, in which he gives a summary view of
his argument in favor of the proposition that they are descendants of
the long lost ten tribes of Israel. Several statements are there made,
as of general application to the Indians, which, being inserted in the
"Cherokee Phoenix," if they stand uncontradicted, will be inferred to
be true as applicable to the Cherokees. It is doubtless best that the
truth should be known, that those, who pursue the inquiry respecting
the origin of the Indians, may build their conclusions on only real
facts..."

The writer closed his critical letter by asking for more "information
on the subject." It is perhaps notable that none of the
Phoenix's Indian readers stepped forward
in support of the "Hebrew Indians" speculation. And why not? The
only reasonable answer is that they had not yet had the opportunity
to study European history, geography, and culture, so as to be able
to respond effectively to such theories. The Native Americans of
that day also knew they had little physical evidence with which to
substantiate their oral traditions of prehistoric events.
For forgotten reasons which still elude any good explanation, many
of the European-Americans who came to the New World equated
light skin with mental or social superiority. This racist notion was
extended to the quaint belief, expressed as fact in the 1809
Natural and
Civil History of
Vermont, that when Indians were
Christianized and taught European culture, their hair and skin would
naturally take on "civilized" Caucasian tones. Those tribes already
having light coloration were explained away as descendants of lost
Welshmen or as a devolved remnant of the conjectured "white
mound-builders" of America's pre-history.
The 1830 Palmyra edition of the Book of Mormon
At this point, the Book of Mormon shows its intrinsic worth, by

preserving within its pages exactly these same racist

misconceptions of twenty decades past. When the first promoters
of the book arrived in Ohio, in 1830, a local newspaper recorded
the oddity thusly:
"They [Mormon missionaries] are now on their way to the Western

Indians, for whose benefit the new Revelation was especially
designed. The Indians, as fast as they are converted are to become
white men....The sagacious Indian, when he sees, that in spite of their
incantations, he is an Indian still, will not suffer himself to be any
further befooled."
This old racist conceit -- that Indians become lighter-skinned after

repentance and an LDS baptism -- is forever sealed within the
Mormon book, even though many modern Latter Day Saints have
forgotten the strange doctrine (as they have also seemingly
forgotten their recent ancestors' expectations that Indian children
adopted or fostered in the LDS Indian Placement Program would
experience lightened skin pigmentation).
But the religion based upon the 19th century misconceptions

preserved within the Book of Mormon does not reserve its racist
precepts for the Indians alone. Despite its paternalistic expressions
of concern for the welfare of the Jewish people, and despite its
obvious borrowings from biblical Judaism, Mormonism is basically
an anti-Semitic religion. That pronouncement may sound harsh to
the ears of modern Latter Day Saints, but there are several solid
reasons for a careful investigator of Mormonism coming to just that
conclusion. The "golden bible's" 2 Nephi 10 and 2 Nephi 25 contain
some obviously anti-Semitic passages. Mormon leaders and
teachers have long claimed that American Indians are degenerate
Jews. The fiction of the "wicked Lamanites" can be seen as an
insult to Jews as well as to Indians -- or is it a racist excuse to
continue past injustices against American Indians? Deriving their
indefensible notions from the Book of Mormon, the early Latter Day
Saints referred to the native tribesmen as "cousin Lemuel." Lemuel,
in the Mormon book, joins with his Manassehite brother Laman, to
propagate a nasty, brutal and lazy race of devolved Israelites,
whom God curses with a "skin of blackness," so that the righteous
descendants of Nephi (another Manasseh Israelite) and of Mulek (a
Jew) can spot the cursed apostates at a distance and avoid

"mingling" with them. And of course the “Hamitic” curse
pronounced by early Mormons weighed just as heavily upon our
brethren of African descent.
Given the behavior of many LDS people toward Indians over the
years, and the above referenced passages, it is clearly the third
option (a racist excuse) that has prevailed among "the Saints."
Their more thoughtful members may deny or disown such a
viewpoint, but the Book of Mormon and history tell a different story.
Perry Armstrong made this point clear around 1900, when he wrote
The Sauks and
the Black Hawk
War. The LDS claim that Indians are the lost people of
Laman and Lemuel (united with certain wicked Nephites and
Mulekites who were also eventually cursed with the "skin of
blackness") -- tribes of backslidden former Israelites and Jews,
whose main purpose is to facilitate a latter day Manifest Destiny, in
which racially superior "Ephraimites" (Mormons of northern
European ancestry) lord it over their lesser cousins (Indians and
Jews) in the "gathering of Israel." Furthermore, it has been clearly
shown (Southerton, 2004) that American Indians are NOT
"degenerate Jews" -- there is no Semitic ancestry nor genetics
(DNA) among American Indians (unless it has come through recent
intermarriage). In modern times some Latter Day Saints have
begun to admit that not every Indian is an Israelite.
Perhaps that is about all the "progress" that can be expected from a
belief system that takes the Book of Mormon as being literal
history. This change in LDS beliefs is perhaps a step upward from
the old Mormon notion, that the plains Indians would come to the
aid of "cousin Ephraim" in raging amongst the U. S. Government
troops, and other "wicked Gentiles," as "young lions" amid flocks of
prey. Except for a handful of misguided converts at the Mountain
Meadows Massacre of 1857, American Indians have shown
themselves "sagacious" enough to avoid being "befooled" into
serving as the Saints' cannon fodder in apocalyptic battles against
North America's non-Mormon whites (see Smith's Dec. 1834 "Civil
War revelation," 3 Nephi 21:12-13, and LDS D&C 87).

J. Smith preaches the Book of Mormon to "Cousin Lemuel"
Going Beyond the Book's Stories
Some LDS apologists assert that most of the events described in

the Book of Mormon happened in MesoAmerica, with the notable
native civilizations of that region -- or, perhaps alongside those pre-
Columbian cultures but isolated from them in some inexplicable
way. As far back as the days of the half-charlatan, half-scientist,
Constantine S. Rafinesque, some theorists have argued that the
seeds for the great MesoAmerican civilizations were planted by
West Africans. Mormons have long been intrigued with such
Rafinesque-style explanations, with some of their writers claiming
his interpretation of Mayan/"Lybian" glyphs as proof for the Book of
Mormon's alleged "reformed Egyptian characters." In more recent
years, some Mormon writers have supported the theory that the
Central American Olmecs were Hamitic Jaredites from the Book of
Mormon stories. The Mexican legend of Quetzalcoatl, as described
by Gallencamp (1959) has been superficially explained by Chapman
(1973). This is said to be evidence that one of the missionary
monks of St. Brendan made a significant mark in the history of
Mexico around 600 A.D. Other theorists, reaching back to the time
of Von Humboldt and Ethan Smith, have seen Quetzalcoatl as
having been the Welsh Madoc, Moses, the Apostle Thomas, or as
Jesus Christ himself (a view long popular among the Latter Day
Saints). Solomon Spalding, who seems to have inadvertantly

contributed to the Book of Mormon stories, once wrote a shorter

novel, in which the most important character is a wondrous, light-
skinned visitor to America's prehistoric inhabitants -- a founder of a
new religion and of a new social order, whose name is "Baska." Like
the legendary pre-Columbian god-men "Bochica," "Viracocha," and
"Cuculcan," Spalding's imitation of Quetzalcoatl one day
mysteriously leaves the Americas, never to be seen again.
Other than the Saints' time-line for the stories told in the Book of
Mormon, there are no significant correlations between the events
and places spoken of in the Book of Mormon and MesoAmerican
reality. No reputable modern archaeologist or anthropologist, who is
not already a Mormon, agrees with the supposed history, ethnicity
and technology provided by that book for pre-Columbian America.
Rather, the book itself imposes a fictional, non-historical scenario
upon the native Americans which is insulting to Indians and Jews
alike.
Was there any pre-Columbian New World contact with Europe

(other than old traditions such as Prince Madoc and St. Brendan’s
missionary monks)? Simon Southerton’s recent biological research
may be helpful here: as he shows, American Indians have the
strongest DNA resemblance to east Asians -- this conclusion is
substantiated by physical and linguistic evidence. Archaeological
evidence and DNA research indicate that the American Indians have
been on the western continents for more than 15,000 years.
According to Southerton, there is also an "X" genetic lineage which
shares its origin with certain western European peoples. It is a rare
sub-type, found primarily among Algonquin people in the
Northeastern part of North America. I propose that because it is
rare, data that suggest it is also ancient might be skewed by small
sample size and attenuation through mixing with the DNA of Asian
origin.
My suggestion is that those particular American Indian ancestors (of

the X lineage) came to the Americas about 1000 years ago, only a
little more recently than the Inuit peoples. Who were those
ancestors? Obviously, the most likely, reasonable, lasting, and
logical answer would be Scandinavians (the Vikings). This

conclusion seems especially justified in consideration of non-

Iroquoian tribes living in the Great Lakes area (and to the north and
east of that area). There have been rumors in the white population
for hundreds of years that the Vikings made significant explorations
and "lost" settlements in North America. Thomas Jefferson had
questions about this, and initiated a primitive linguistics survey,
using word-lists in European languages and Indian languages. He
found that the most frequent cognates were between the Indian
languages and Russian, a language related to Old Norse. Verified
Viking remains have been found in eastern coastal Canada and
there is no reason to assume that some of these Scandinavian
wanderers did not venture farther south and farther inland --
seeking not only adventure, but new homes as well.
Fanciful depiction of a prehistoric Viking-Indian encounter

© 1947 King Features Syndicate -- (Harold R. Foster, illustrator)
My thesis does not rule out the possibility of a prior European

migration to North America, late in the last "ice age." Some writers
have pointed out that an ice age people in western Europe, referred
to as the "Solutrean culture" may well have ventured in small boats
along the southern edge of glaciers and pack ice, all the way
westward to what is now New England or further south. The
genetic makeup of the Solutrean (perhaps part of the European "RI-
b haplogroup") may be related to that of American tribes like the

Ojibwa. The Solutrean theory is attractive, in that it provides a

seemingly necessary lengthy period of independent development of
the "X" genetic lineage in North America. On the other hand, it is a
problematic theory, because it has little or no archaeological
evidence to back it up. Scandinavian people are generally of the "I
haplogroup," and those peoples may also have contributed their
DNA to America's "X" genetic lineage. The "jury is still out" in
regard to any firm decision among these possibilities.
If, as I suspect, current calibrations of the time required for

independent DNA evolution in the New World are erroneously
skewed, the Viking explanation may yet provide the best origin for
lineage "X." At any rate, neither "X" nor any other American DNA
lines came from Middle Eastern peoples -- they are not "Jewish"
and they are not "Israelite." If any "Israelite" DNA ever reached pre-
Columbian America, it died out almost immediately, leaving no
traces among the ancient or modern Indians. How poorly this fact
matches the traditional Book of Mormon picture, given in that
volume's 3 Nephi and 4 Nephi -- in which all the Western
Hemisphere population known to the writer is good, white and
Christian. The "true religion" of the book is so powerful that it
sweeps across two continents, converting every single person and
making everybody light-skinned. Educated Mormons are beginning
to realize how false this portrayal has always been, and some are
backing away from it. But the picture remains, untouched (save for
a few modern word alterations), in the Book of Mormon.

Three Possible Migration Routes During Last Ice Age
Some American Indians have denied the Viking explanation,

because they knew that certain whites would exploit it (due to
prevalent racism) and use it to divide the tribes. The white man
might not believe it, either -- because the Northmen who had
stayed in America assimilated so thoroughly with earlier populations
as to become indistinguishable from them. There are many hints
and leads on a previous invasion from Europe in Eckert (1992), who
creatively wove together from primarily white sources the story of
Tecumseh. Some of these non-Indian sources were probably the
same gang of river pirates mentioned later in this paper. The
famous Indian leader Tecumseh attempted to organize a resistance
against the contibuing European invasion of his own day. However,
his coming from the Shawnee nation, one of the surviving tribes
most profoundly affected by white immigration, brought to the
surface too many lingering hostilities among some other tribes
(such as the Lakota) for them to join his cause. Tecumseh and his
allies were convinced that, because an Indian alliance once drove
off an invasion of the Shemanse ("long knives"
-- the Shawnee word for white man -- referring to their swords),
that the same defense could again be successfully mounted. As
things turned out, Tecumseh's hopes were dashed and the tide of

European-Americans continued to roll westward.
There are numerous Indian traditions concerning ancient war

alliances and it becomes difficult to separate truth from fantasy in
these old stories. For example, the Tuscarora historian David Cusick
wrote in 1827 about an old war between "the confederacy" of "the
northern nations" and the forces of "the Emperor" from the "Golden
City." Not many years later, the story of the prehistoric
extermination of the Eries, by an alliance of five Iroquois tribes was
recorded from the lips of Blacksnake, and other "venerable chiefs of
the Senecas." Similar tales were told of alliance wars of
extermination conducted against the "Allegewi" and other
mysterious peoples of the past. Somewhere, in the mixture these
many similar traditions may survive a few faded memories of a
struggle against pre-Columbian Europeans -- but not against the
Book of Mormon's white Hebrews. The exterminated Nephites of
that pseudo-history were not the source of Indian
war traditions; instead, the fictional, extinct Nephites were
plaigiarized from Indian accounts
and from pre-1830 speculation about the "mound-builders." See
Roger G. Kennedy's 1994 book, Hidden
Cities: The
Discovery and
Loss of Ancient
North American
Civilization, for an excellent
documentation of this subject.
Could the Book of Mormon be based upon a muddled account of

the Viking invasion of North America, re-written by racists who
were eager to disprove it, understanding that an ancient Viking
invasion implicitly refuted much of the developing Doctrine of
Manifest Destiny? This suggestion may sound too implausible for
some readers to consider. However, it is what some people have
believed all along, but have been unwilling to share, for a number
of reasons, including fear of a Mormon backlash. Notice the subtle
Indian reference to shame this semi-humorous report
from the year 1844:

"An old Indian, having attended a Mormon meeting and heard one of
its advocates extol Mormonism, was requested to give his opinion of
its merits. He began by detailing the great good that had been done
by the Bible, God being its author; and, said he, the devil seeing this,
determined to have a bible of his own also; but on examination, he
felt ashamed of his work, and hid it in Ontario county, N. Y. But Joe
Smith dug it up, and published it as a Revelation from God."
New Possibilities: the Psycho-social Context
When the Europeans arrived in North America, many came with the
idea that the land was free for the taking. They believed that they
had a right to claim vast territories, for their nations and for
themselves, because most Indians did not use the land intensively
and did not adhere to the concept of individual land ownership. The
Indians were, to many of these newcomers, an inferior and
primitive people: pagans, perhaps even inhuman worshippers of
demons. Many of the European immigrants believed that they had
the right of ownership and lordship, based on the belief that would
later be called "Manifest Destiny." That is, it was their providential
fortune to take over lands and peoples, making the original
Americans their subjects. In Latin America countless native
Americans were forced into lifelong slavery. Not every arrival from
Europe saw the situation in these stark terms, of course -- there
was the occasional, more moderate William Penn or Roger Williams
-- but the vast majority of newcomers seem to have been perfectly
willing to displace the native tribes and to subdue them (through
conversion to Christianity, the spread of disease, or open force,
when necessary). The doctrines of Mormonism continued this Old
World view, with a few subtle differences. A close look at early
Mormon teachings and actions will show that they considered
themselves to be the "true Israel," a chosen people, destined to
subdue or destroy "the wicked Gentiles," and to act as leaders for
subservient Jews and Indians. Some investigators of Latter Day
Saint history might even go so far as to accuse that people of
forced conversions through fraud and psychological manipulation.
The Mormons -- the new "chosen race" -- offered even the most
lowly individuals the possibility of becoming modern "Saints," led by

God's one true spokesman, and destined to rule over a soon-to-

come millennial paradise in the Americas. The potential convert
who rejected the Book of Mormon and its message was told that he
or she was damned to an eternity in hell: later on, Mormon
theologizing would divide up the afterlife into somewhat less hellish
abodes for non-converts. On the other hand, the individual who
was ready to convert (in order to become white, righteous, and
saved) was welcomed with open arms. The mesage? "White is
good; dark is bad" (3 Nephi 2:14-15, 5:20, 6:12-14, Alma 13:23,
Alma 23:15-18, 1 Nephi 8, 1 Nephi 12:21-23, 2 Nephi 5:20-26,
Jacob 3:5-9).
Joseph Smith, in his early years, was apparently only marginally

literate, but in close contact with various friends, whom he could
count upon to further his aims. He was, no doubt, supremely self-
confident and personally charismatic -- some said hypnotic -- in his
ability to influence and control many of his followers. By means that
will probably never be fully uncovered, this young "prophet"
assembled the raw materials from which to compile the finished
Book of Mormon. Part of this raw material was obviously taken from
the Christian Bible, with a few additions from apocryphal books. In
these sources Smith found his justification in claiming all of the
western hemisphere as a land promised to the Israelite Ephraim
(and to a lesser degree to Ephraim's brother Manasseh). All Smith
needed to do, to establish his claim of supreme prophetic
leadership, was to convince people that the biblical promises to
Ephraim and Manessah were to be fulfilled in the Americas -- and
that he and his Mormonite followers were the true "Ephraim."
Perhaps Joseph Smith obtained a "backbone" for his Book of

Mormon in the lost writings of Solomon Spalding -- the reported
writer of a manuscript novel based on the idea that Indians
somehow came from ancient Israel or Judah. If so, the literary
skeleton for a "degenerate Jews" story needed only to be fleshed
out with claims that God's "one true church" had been restored,
with Smith as its Ephraimite prophet -- a church which brought
back all of the authority and miraculous powers spoken of in the
Book of Acts, along with the judgments and blessings outlined in
the Book of Revelation. The necessary theology was nothing new:

Christian primitivists, seekers and restorationists had long since

established the revolutionary tenets that would uphold such a
"restored apostolic church." The Ohio Campbellites' "baptism for the
remission of sins" could be joined with the New England
Cochranites' laying on of hands to bestow the "Holy Ghost." Smith's
own authority to head up the new church could be pre-written into
the pages of his new "golden bible." How much of all this Smith
truly believed himself, and how much he obtained, pre-packaged
from other, more experienced church leaders like the Rev. Sidney
Rigdon of Ohio, matters very little. What does matter is that the
new church's doctrines were inserted into the Book of Mormon and
that enough converts accepted the book, for the new religious
movement to become established and begin to grow.
Joseph Smith, reportedly given to fantasy, egomania, a need to

control others and desperate for money, complied with
somebody's suggestion, that he be the
oracle of the new church, and he happily agreed to assume almost
unlimited power over the converts in the new organization. His
contributions to the text of the Mormons' first book of scripture
were sometimes obscure and ambiguous; it is unlikely that he
wrote much more of the book's story, than what was necessary to
join the various sources into a semi-logical whole. One possible
example of this occurs in Ether 10:20: "A great city by a narrow
neck of land by the place where the sea divides the land." This can
be read as either the area between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, or
Panama or the Strait of Belle Isle, between Labrador and
Newfoundland Island. However, it appears to me more than likely
that Smith never fully comprehended the geography of hos own
book. If that geography was consistent when it came to him,
someone's manipulation of the text seems to have left it an
unrecognizable muddle.

Early Photographs of a sea-going Inuit "umiak" and "kayaks"
Another probable example of multiple conflicting authorship may be

found in Ether 2:17, which distinctly describes a kayak. Later in the
story, the craft is described as something truly bizarre. In
examining such accounts the modern reader may come away with
the feeling that Smith did not understand certain parts of his own
book -- say, the difference between a barque and a
barge, or what "the length of tree" was supposed
to mean. It is possible that Joseph had a source describing some
ancient Viking invasion. However, the Book of Mormon appears to
have became a confused jumble because Joseph was also mindful
of the then current notion, that the Indians were of Jewish
heritage, and due also to the semi-literate compiler's need to
engage in extensive plagiarism. Describing a Viking invasion as
having been a Jewish phenomenon also had the advantage of
providing the first Mormons with claims to the biblical "blessings of
Ephraim," the prophesied "gathering of Israel" in America (rather
than in Palestine), and to the potentially useful servitude of
Manasseh (a.k.a. "Cousin Lemuel").
If Joseph Smith made use of pre-existing writings left behind by

Solomon Spalding, it is equally possible that Spalding himself was
aware of English translations of old Norse sagas -- and of evidence
of a pre-Columbian presence in North America. In 1809 Spalding
relocated to what is now Conneaut, Ohio, a place littered with
"mound-builder" artifacts and the site of a very unusual cemetery.
This very old extensive burying ground was laid out in a rectangular
pattern, unknown in any original Indian culture. The buried dead

were large people whose remains did not match those of any
known American tribe. A second, similar cemetery was discovered
in Spalding's time, nearby at Ashtabula. A strangely inscribed rock,
bearing traces of Roman letters was also discovered in that locality.
So also were small primitive iron smelting furnaces. The area was
so rich in "bog iron ore" that Solomon Spalding himself built a more
modern iron furnace on the banks of Conneaut Creek. See Arlington
Mallery's 1951 Lost America,
for a well-argued thesis attributing these iron furnaces to long-
forgotten Celtic and/or Viking settlers. Modern archaeologists tend
to discount such "diffusionist" explanations for pre-Columbian
ironworking in North America, but Spalding was likely aware of
speculation in his day, for early European penetration of the St.
Lawrence Valley and the fringes of the Great Lakes. Even so, it
appears that Solomon Spalding had intentions of showing the
Indians to be of Jewish stock in his lost writings. Perhaps Spalding
also carried on a mental argument, as to which explanation of the
Indians would be most saleable in a fictional history. Other
evidence of the back-and-forth struggle between these two
competing explanations will appear in my chapter-by-chapter
review of the Mormon book below.
By "struggle" I do not mean to say that the various authors were

contemporaries: Solomon died when Joseph Smith was yet a boy.
The Book of Mormon, borrowing from several sources conflicting
sources, contains many inconsistencies. Thus, it is often read like a
projective test, in which each reader interprets meanings from the
context of his/her own cultural heritage and pre-conceived notions.
This literary battle of ideas, between the book's original sources, is
one of the causes for Latter Day Saint doctrinal splintering and
probable future acceleration of this splintering process. In the final
product, the Book of Mormon came out based upon Jewish tradition
-- and, as Vogel (2005) points out in his Joseph Smith biography,
with some input from Smith family tradition. None of this
necessarily excludes important traces Indian lore (and perhaps even
fragments of Norse sagas) from the book's pages.
On its title page the book purports to be a message to the Indians

and the Jews (and such unknowing Ephraimites who are yet

numbered with the Gentiles). As such, Smith must have been

looking forward to the day when his "golden bible" would be
presented to Indians eager to accept it as their ancestors'
traditions. With a band of zealous "Israelite" followers, perhaps
Smith even envisioned moving to the Missouri; capturing the Santa
Fe trade; extending his power to the California coast and beyond.
Certainly there were news reports published during the 1830s and
early 1840s, in which writers and editors expressed their concerns
about a sort of Mormon "Manifest Destiny," (before that term
became a popular excuse for Americans annexing Mexican land and
displacing hundreds of thousands of native people).
For the reader who knows where to look, there are echoes of
Shawnee tradition and history in the Book of Mormon. The
Ammonites (Alma 27:27-30) are respected as peaceable people --
Quaker pacifists, some writers have called them. The Shawnee
(along with the closely related Delaware) had early contact with
pacifist Mennonites (Sharp, 2001). The Delaware were an unwarlike
people long before "Last of the Mohicans" was ever dreamed of.
The Moravians Christianized and assisted Indians in reputable ways
Jesus himself might have approved of. Not all native Americans
were scalp-hunting Pawnee warriors. The Book of Mormon appears
to have a dim knowledge of these things. The story of hiding silver
in a spring, and losing it, appears both in the Book of Mormon,
Mormon 1:1 and in Shawnee legend -- there is perhaps some
connection. The Book of Mormon's Gadianton robbers sound rather
similar to a band of river pirates who plagued the Shawnee and
gave them a worse reputation than they deserved. This story has
echoes in Helamon 6 and 7, as well as in other Book of Mormon
passages. The refusal of the U.S. government to deal with criminal
acts (in many places and at different times) against Indians
certainly makes the U.S. government appear criminal in those
instances. Allen Eckert, in his noteworthy A
Sorrow in our
Hearts: The Life
of Tecumseh, makes a comment
about Black Hoof’s band that "went white." It is possible that the
Joseph Smith, Sr. family obtained part of their heritage from this
band, thorugh intermarriage or from their having lived in close

proximity to those people.
The Nephite warrior Teancum, who appears in Alma 50 to 62, is

clearly modeled after Tecumseh, although his Book of Mormon
exploits draw upon the biblical David, an Indian warrior in Southey's
"Madoc" and tidbits from classical epics. The protagonists,
Amalickiah and brother Ammoron, are also possibly modeled after
Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, who was a survivor of a
head injury. The Book of Mormon's stories of Lamanites and king
men sound much like British-Indian cooperation during the
Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. There are too many other
echoes of Indian history and tradition for anybody to attribute the
similarities to pure chance. Some of them probably came from the
pen of Spalding (who saw the aftermath of British-Indian military
cooperation in Cherry Valley, New York and who lived under the
threat of similar violence at Salem, Ohio at the beginning of the
War of 1812) -- other bits and pieces may have entered the text, as
Smith attempted to make it more interesting to potential Indian
converts.
Records yet exist telling of one or more Viking invasions of the New
World, but modern historians have limited access to them, just like
they have limited access to certain Mormon records. The few
fragments available may, however, help confirm that the movement
of Northmen into the Western Hemisphere was more extensive than
contemporary scholars might imagine. From Nabokov (1978)
immediately upon landing in Nova Scotia, Thorwald Erikson’s sailors
killed eight skraelings (p. 19) and he
was himself killed. Vikings and Indians who met along the North
American coast quickly began trading knives and axes for pelts (p.
38). Indian legends also help confirm the forgotten Viking invasion,
and tribes in the Great Lakes area possess physical evidence for
such an invasion. The LDS church is no more likely to be given
access to these relics than are the LDS to grant permission for their
most scared rituals to be shown on national television.
Important American-Viking archaeological evidence has been

discovered and scientifically examined in recent years. Can this be
lined up with anything in the Book of Mormon? If it can, then the
ultimate irony may be that the people whom Joseph Smith's book

calls stiff-necked Jews were modeled after "Aryan," pagan Vikings,

following a tradition that long included raping, pillaging, and killing
in the name of Northerner superiority. Of course the Scandinavian
warriors did not limit their wrath to transoceanic
skraelings. They pillaged each
other and their southern Christian neighbors (before becoming
Christians themselves). Perhaps, as in early 20th century Europe,
some of these half-converts later apostatized: they retained a
Viking lifestyle, hidden under their leaders' Christian profession.
These Northern people long resisted the encroachment of
Christianity, calling it a weak mode of life, encumbered with ethics
that were alien to Scandinavia. The basic Christian morals called for
non-violent adaptation in the face of oppression, kindness and
generosity for those who are less fortunate and the deification of a
leader who chose crucifixion rather than fighting his persecutors.
Another irony may be found in 1940's Nazi hope for a pro-German
Scandinavian uprising in America's Great Lakes region: they had
already appeared -- though their presence may be difficult for some
to recognize -- in the Book of Mormon.
The Book of Mormon presents the claim that its Lamanites and
Nephites were originally one people. They became two peoples
through disobedience and due to God's supposed disfavor, the
Lamanites became dark and evil, while the Nephites were white and
good. In this fictional division of peoples, the basis is set for the
view that the "Lamanite" Indians (unless they convert to
Mormonism) have no right to the American "promised land,"
because they long ago gave it up by choosing to be God's enemies.
The alleged property rights of the fair-skinned Nephites were
renewed for later European immigrants (Mosiah 10:12-20). In the
Mormon explanation of history, these white newcomers would also
be divided -- into converts to Mormonism (Ephraimites) and non-
converts (wicked Gentiles). Therefore, Indians have no right to
complain of their mistreatment, unless they leave their friends,
family and clan, to accept Mormonism and serve the LDS
priesthood. Yet another great irony arose for Joseph Smith at that
very point -- the native Americans were wise enough not
to convert. A book written to win their servitude to the Mormon
cause failed in its original purpose: hardly any Indians (or Jews)

have ever become Mormons. The great "mission to the Lamanites"

set afoot by Joseph Smith at the end of 1830 proved to be a terribly
embarrassing failure.
Joseph Smith preaches Book of Mormon to Cousin Lemuel
Some Further Discussion
In the following overview, I will go through the Book of Mormon, and

present some theories which link the "history" provided there, to
what I perceive to have been a Viking "invasion" c. 980-1430 A.D.
Although this story and its time period have been largely forgotten or
overlooked in modern times, in my mind, the Book of Mormon is
clearly NOT an account of events from a dim past stretching back to
Jerusalem in 600 B. C. My interpretation is only what I see in the
Book of Mormon, based on my cultural heritage and preconceived
notions -- when I relate the events to particular events outside the

BOM, I am only being speculative, unless I've noted otherwise. It is

my intent to bring forward the best and worst of that book thus
substantiating my belief in multiple authorship through contrast in
content, particularly as it deals with the concept of racism. My intent
is not to make an attack upon contemporary Latter Day Saints, but to
outline one reader's "interpretation" of the so-called "Nephite record."
Those who do not have a copy of the book close at hand, may wish
to consult the current Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
version of the text, here: Project Gutenberg's Book
of Mormon
In 1 Nephi 3 and the following chapters, the story of Erik the Red
may come to mind, to any reader has studied Viking history. In both
sources the main character kills another man, must flee into exile,
and chooses to go with his family to a previously unknown land in the
Western Hemisphere. The gist of the Viking account had been
published in newspapers during Joseph's younger days. The story
given in the Book of Mormon likely relies upon Ethan Smith's having
begun his own 1823 book on Israelite Indian origins with a story of
the subsequent fall of Jerusalem. Of course any knowledgeable Bible
scholar could appropriate that initial setting from the biblical text --
where a few members of the "lost" ten Israelite tribes reportedly
linger near Jerusalem, as late as King Josiah's reign, only a few years
prior to the city's initial conquest and destruction by the Neo-
Babylonians.
In 1 Nephi 8, the biblical story of Adam and Eve is recast without its
original characters. However, in the revised, dream-story, the eating
of a fabulous fruit, by my perception, is portrayed as being a good
thing. Two of the dreamer's sons (Laman and Lemuel) refuse to eat
of the fruit, foreshadowing their coming exclusion from the dreaming
prophet's righteous family. In later passages these two rebellious
sons end up fathering the Indian peoples: in the process they and
their multitude of descendants become increasingly sinful and are
"cursed" with a "skin of blackness." The fruit eaten in the dream, by
the righteous portion of the prophet's family, was "white, to exceed
all the whiteness" in the world. The Book of Mormon's message is a
clear one: the whiter a thing is, the better it is. Those people who will
not affirm this precept become God's dark and evil enemies.

1st Nephi's Chapter 13 preserves a rant against the Roman Catholic

Church. It reflects attitudes common in the United States during the
early 1800s -- and especially so among New York Protestants when
Catholic laborers, hired to work on the Erie Canal, first poured into
the western regions of that state. Part of the genesis for this is attack
in the Mormon book lies in the previous valiant efforts of the Catholic
"BlackRobes" to spread Christianity among the North American tribes.
These Jesuit missionaries were well aware that Greenland had once
been a Scandinavian Christian country, with a Bishop appointed in
Rome. It appears that they also knew something about early Viking
explorations westward and of tribes with partial Northman ancestry.
To claim their own Manifest Destiny, as the God-appointed masters
of the Americas, the first Mormons had to somehow obscure and
negate this earlier Catholic missionary activity. Thus the Book of
Mormon turns the Roman Catholics into the "Great and Abominable
Church," which had "perverted the right ways of the Lord" and "kept
back" from the Indians biblical truths about their being the "remnant
of the house of Israel." All of this, in the Mormon book, opens the
way for LDS missionaries to tell the Indians that they had been lied
to, and that they should leave any "Gentile" church they might
belong to -- in order to have their "curse of a skin of blackness"
lightened by God's miraculous power. This is in curious contrast to an
historic Roman Catholic practice of protecting their Indian converts
from racism by refering to them as “black Irish” and, at the same
time, encouraging them to retain much of their unique cultural
heritage.
The book of 1st Nephi closes with the arrival of Lehi's ship in the
Americas -- where Jaredite tame goats and castrated bulls yet linger
"in the forests." But those previous inhabitants have destroyed
themselves, leaving the "land of promise" vacant for its new Israelite
settlers. The book of 2nd Nephi continues the story, telling what
happens to these Old World pilgrims in their paradisical "land of
promise. In 2 Nephi Chapter 5, the previously telegraphed fate of
Laman and Lemuel "comes to pass" and God darkens their skins as a
genetically transmitted punishment for their sins. There are some
biblical parallels in this story, with the curse God set upon Cain. In
Joseph Smith's 1830s rewriting of the King James Bible, he

embellished the Cain story, creating even closer parallels with the
Book of Mormon's genetically transmitted "skin of blackness."
Mormons have long realized that none of America's native tribesmen
have such a dark pigmentation and have sometimes explained away
the discrepancy by speculating that pre-Columbian Americans were
darker than their descendants of historical times.
Official LDS depiction of men with a "skin of blackness"
A more likely explanation is that the writer(s) of the Book of Mormon

simply believed what was symbolized in Lehi's dream (as discussed
above) -- the lighter anything is, the better it is. "Righteous"
Ephraimites must have the skin coloration of an Arctic Circle
Norwegian; angels are even whiter; "celestialized" gods, who have no
blood in their veins, have the color of driven snow. In such an
obscene fantasy of racial characteristics, the vast majority of human
beings on this planet, in Mormon terms, possess a "skin of
blackness."
In 2 Nephi, Zion (post-Columbian America) is depicted as favored by

God -- any nation that fights America, no matter its reason, will suffer
divine punishment. These Book of Mormon precepts naturally lead to
a racist nationalism that frightfully resembles the tenets of the old
Teutonic Knights, the National Socialists, and the American Ku Klux
Klan. In terms of the anthropology set forth in the Book of Mormon,
such policy is wrong only because Indians, Mestizos and Polynesians

are unknowing "Israelites," and not because all human beings share
a God-given equality.
In Jacob Chapter 1, Joseph Smith clarifies his terminology. This

clarification will later fall apart, repeatedly, as the book's plot
becomes more convoluted. Enemies (intrinsically bad people), are
called "Lamanites," dark people, of various nations -- even if they
have righteous parents, their wickedness turns them dark, savage
and slothful in short order. Friends (intrinsically good people), are
called "Nephites," no matter their ancestry. In Jacob 1, a people
seemingly patterned upon the Vikings are depicted as hungering after
gold and silver, and become increasingly racist. Jacob 3 is a
particularly racist chapter. Jarom 8 characterizes the Nephites as
being prosperous because they are good white people.
In Omni 1, what I interpret as later Northman immigrants arrive upon

the scene, and find that the language and culture of earlier arrivals at
fabulous Zarahelma had changed. In Omni 5 (c. 1320 in my
interpretation of the chronology), the Northlander Christians
predominate among the Nephites, and remaining non-Christian
Vikings are killed off. In Omni 14, there is the story of a battle in the
Land North, called the "Land of Desolation." One possible
interpretation of the geography would place this Book of Mormon
land north of the Strait of Belle Isle. The survivors in the story then
apparently returned to the settlement of Zarahelma, possibly
somewhere on the St. Lawrence River, in the area which is now
Southern Ontario, or even in the vicinity of Niagara Falls. See the
speculative Book of Mormon geographies of writers Phyllis Carol
Olive, Delbert W. Curtis, Vernal Holley and Byron Marchant for their
variations on the Great Lakes-centered scenario previously
championed by early Mormons such as Apostle Orson Pratt.
In Mosiah 1:2-4, there is an attempt by the writer to preserve some

elements of the Norse language, both written and oral. In Mosiah
8:8, people looking for the settlement of Zarahelma (probably later
Northman arrivals), come across the evidence of a ruined civilization
felled by a great battle (possibly from a time very early in the
ongoing Viking invasion). Later, in Mosiah 10:17-12:8, as previously
discussed, there occurs an extremely racist justification for war

against the Indians. Mosiah 21:26, in confusion characteristic of the

BOM, is essentially a repeat of Mosiah 8:8. Mosiah 22:12 describes
the obsession with gold and silver characteristic of European
conquerors like Cortez, Pizzaro, Coronado, etc. This theme repeats
itself multiple times throughout the book, and in ways as reminiscent
of Viking pillage as of Conquistador history. Mosiah 24:4 reports a
spread of what I see as the Old Norse language -- this idea is partly
confirmed by Thomas Jefferson’s old linguistic survey. In the
unfolding story, Lamanites (Indians) learn the ways of the invaders,
the use of swords and iron, and seemingly the use of domesticated
animals, such as chariot-pulling horses. There is some indication of
early horses in Northeastern America, brought by the Northmen and
reported by Menzies, in 1421, the
Year the Chinese
discovered
America, in his discussion of a fantastic theory
that a Chinese expedition was in that area at that time.
The discovery of antique Chinese ship anchors, recovered off the

coast of California, have recently promoted further speculation along
these same lines, though without the element of a Chinese
introduction of pre-Columbian horses. Menzies' discussion of a
Chinese expedition is very reasonable; however, the possibility that
they reached areas bordering the Atlantic, and carried horses on their
ships all that distance, is truly implausible. Other information
provided by Menzies in his book appears to be more applicable to
discovering the Book of Mormon's origins, however.
In Alma 3:4, additional racial confusion crops up with the writer's re-
establishment of the dark-is-bad and white-is-good precepts. Alma
4:6 contains a criticism of Northman materialism, and Alma 10:18-24
has a corresponding pseudo-prophecy of punishment from God. At
Alma 13:23, the text is again brought into line with the old racist
theme, as its author re-establishes the notion that "white is right." In
Alma 17:14, the Viking and Indian roles appear to be reversed, as
Lamanites are described as robbing and plundering the Nephites for
gold and silver: what use a savage, slothful people would have for
precious metals is not elucidated. Earlier cross-cultural trade of iron
for silver and gold perhaps evolved into such robbing and plundering

behavior, in some cases. In the "real world," outside of the Book of

Mormon, Indian allies of contending European armies evidently fell
into such practices.
Alma 22:19 provides a substantial amount of geographical

information, but it is unclear how consistant it may be with the
geography indicated in other parts of the book. Generally a Great
Lakes location for Book of Mormon events "fits" the book's underlying
story, though not always its overt narrative. One interpretation of the
Alma text is that Cahokian culture became known to the Viking
invaders and they traveled westward to depose its king. Such a
postulated event might have even been acceptable to the people
living around the great Cahokia ceremonial center, because of a
northward diffusion of the Mexican legend of Quetzacoatl. There
were significant trade and cultural exchange between the North
American Mississippian culture and the Valley of Mexico, an
intercourse that even Solomon Spalding, residing in Ohio, seems to
have been aware of, when he wrote chapter 5 of his "Roman story."
Another interpretation of the Alma text is that it relies upon accounts
of Desoto's explorations among the mound-building Mississippians. In
Alma 22:30-33, the Land of Desolation is described and matches the
treeless land north of the Strait of Belle Isle, as well as some
deforested areas north of Lake Erie. In the former area, the early
Vikings, at the first landing, killed off the native Beothuk and cut
down the sparse tree cover for timber and firewood needed in their
Greenland settlements. In Alma 23, the racial confusion of the writer
(s) again crops up, but the captors in the story again straighten out
the issue. There it is made clear that Lamanite’s skin color changes
when they convert to an incipient, pre-Jesus sort of Christianity. In
Alma 25:4,8, and 12, there is a consistent theme of punishment of
people for the sins of their ancestors, eventually established as
Mormon doctrine but later officially abandoned.
Alma 31 indicates that the "Land South" was an Indian stronghold.

This scenario perhaps refers to what is now the southern United
States and adjacent Mexico. This fits in with present-day knowledge
of the Mississippian people and pre-Columbian Mexicans -- they were
relatively wealthy (Alma 31:13-14, & 28), and were connected
(allied?) by trade routes, maize agriculture, and other cultural

affinities. These peoples would have been a great prize for pre-
Columbian invaders, as well as for the later Spanish (who knew
perfectly well where they were going). The traditions of the Cherokee
may also preserve fragments of this forgotten history.
Alma 43 describes the disadvantage the Indians had in extended

warfare with European invaders. By the end of the book, the Indians
knew enough about the enemy to form great alliances against them,
especially since masses of the Christian Vikings had begun to
assimilate with the native tribes. The pure-blood Northmen, with the
discovery of valuable gold and silver, available to the victors, no
doubt reasserted their old Viking character. Alma 43:13-14 contains a
pseudo-prophecy that the Northmen, who were progressively
assimilating into the Indian population, would become extinct
because of the sin of "mingling" (that is, interracial sexual relations).
The land in the area of the Gulf of St. Lawrence evidently became a
place of refuge for pure-blooded Viking remnant. Alma 47:23-24 is
largely a repeat of 22:19, where a Northman deposes a native ruler
-- perhaps the king of Cahokia, or the Natchez "Great Sun?" or the
emperor of the "Golden City" -- and takes the queen as his wife.
There is a resonance here with a legend of Cherokee fighting against
the Cahokians, who reportedly had a white king. This altered kingship
deteriorates quickly in the legend, leading to the destruction of the
Cahokian culture.

Fanciful Encounter of ocean-crossing Vikings and pre-Columbian Mexicans

© 1936, King Features Syndicate -- Clarence Gray, illustrator
In Alma 48, the Northmen become more evil. By this time, Indians
and Viking defectors have the knowledge and technology to defeat
their enemy. By Alma 62, the great city (Cahokia ceremonial center?)
falls, precipitating the retaliatory end of the Northlander invasion by
the Aztecs or other Mexican tribes. In Alma 63:5-10, the pure-
blooded Vikings, presumably with their haul of silver and gold, build
ships and leave, having been cornered into the land Northward, also
called the land of Desolation, north of the Strait of Belle Isle.
According to my interpretation, the year would have been c. 1420,
(following multiple statements of scholars reporting from
Scandinavian sources).
In the midst of these developments, in Alma 63:14, a rebellion occurs

among the Vikings. Many of them desert to the Indian side and begin
to foment Indian anger and more warfare. In Menzies’ book, a
factory on Ellismere Island, probably used only during the summer, is
described. Given the intensity of the protest and the following final
war. I suggest the use of Indian slave labor during the summer to
melt down the gold and silver for shipment to Europe, with the
abandonment of any survivors every fall. Helaman 3:16 discussed the
reasons for the downfall of the Viking invaders, positing the mixing of
the races as an ostensible cause. I suggest hybrid vigor of the mixed
Indians, and inbreeding among the pureblood Northmen might be a
more logical conclusion. Ultimately, however, it was gold and silver
hunger, and racism.
Helaman 3:4-6 and 10-11, along with Helaman 4:24 address the
attack on the ecology of the land of Desolation. People built houses
of stone because they had no wood; they were logging in other areas
for firewood and lumber for roofing and shipbuilding. Helaman 3:16
is yet another racist passage. However, with the deterioration and
apostasy of the Viking culture, there would no longer be any
particular reason to present explanations of skin-color changes.
Although the recently introduced theme of the Gadianton robbers
runs through this part of the story, the writer(s) may have been
attempting to draw an analogy between the fate of the Viking
invaders and the United States government. The Indians in the Book

of Mormon's story take measures against the Gadianton robbers

(who also have an Indian background), but the "Nephite"
government ignores the situation. As a result, the Nephite
government and the Gadianton robbers eventually merge to become
the same entity.
Helaman 5:3 reports many whites leaving for the Land North; also
reported in Alma 63:4. In Helaman 4:5-7 the whites are apparently
driven out of St. Lawrence River valley and into the Gulf of St.
Lawrence. In Helaman 7:21, there is gold and silver fever among the
European invaders again. Helaman 10:3 reports that the Northmen
are plundering and murdering, because of their desire for gold and
silver. Helaman 11:1 reports four years of famine and the Vikings
repent, for a while. Helaman 11:24-25 appear to again show writer(s)
confusion over which group of pre-Columbians is good and which is
bad. However, the plot here begins to be too realistic for the reader
to ascribe differences in behavior to skin color. In Helaman 12:18-21
there may be a referral back to the previously mentioned legend of
the Shawnee silver. It is lost, leave it there, it is cursed. At this point
in his compilation, Joseph Smith may have been thinking about his
father's family's situation and its relationship to the band who were
apparently exiled from the Shawnee. Helaman 19:24-26: here the
Northmen are outnumbered and humbled; they received these
consequences because their behavior was not "Christian." In
Helaman 13, an Indian prophet rises up, and preaches to the Nephite-
Vikings, telling them to give up their racism and materialism. He
warns them that if they do not, bad things will happen to them. Many
repent, but others become angry, and he flees. Here the Book of
Mormon story may rely upon events centered around the brother of
Tecumseh, or an Onondaga medicine man, or some other historical
native American "prophet."
With the book of 2 Nephi, the story is back on track with its old racist
theme. LDS depictions of visiting Jesus generally show him as a blue-
eyed, blond-haired Arayan, dressed in the purest white garments. At
this point the text again waxes anti-Semitic, depicting a god-man
who looks like he just came from Nordic Valhalla and not from Jewish
Jerusalem. In 3 Nephi 2:14-15 there is more talk of skin color
change; however, later in the same chapter confusion again arises as

to which people are good and which are bad. In 3 Nephi 3:6-10, the
pure-blooded Northmen are given an ultimatum to surrender and join
with the Indians, or die. In 3 Nephi 3:23-25 the ecology north of the
Gulf of St. Lawrence is devastated. In 3 Nephi 4:1 there is war
between the Northmen of mixed-blood and those of full-blood. In 3
Nephi 5, the Vikings repent, again only briefly. The Book of Mormon
narrator appears to claim himself a lineal descendant of Eric the Red
in 3 Nephi 5:20. In 3 Nephi 6, the Northmen continue to degenerate
in their lust for gold and silver fever, and in their racism.
Fourth Nephi is basically a short summary of events stretching over a

long period of time. It took Joseph Smith some effort to develop a
workable chronology for this section of the story. In V. 20 the spread
of Christianity among the all tribes is recounted, (in the year 1136 of
my interpretation). Verses 10, 20, 24 and 43 present a common
thread of racism. Verse 25 (about 1253 in my count), states that
there was a return to the old European concept of individual
ownership of property. The uniformity of a continent-wide, single
race and religion begins to break down. Evidently the bad people are
again cursed with a dark skin (though perhaps not so "black" as in
the past). The Gadianton robbers (year 1352, V. 45) could have been
new immigrants -- and they may be modeled on the river pirates of
the 1800’s, with a few touches of 1820s anti-Masonry thrown in. The
situation in the Americas goes downhill throughout in the 1300’s, and
by 1400 the people's fate was sealed. How a cross-continent fall into
wickedness occurs so uniformly, the Book of Mormon does not even
attempt to account for. Just as the story in 3rd Nephi was modeled
upon popular expectations of a coming Christian millennium, so also
the story in 4th Nephi was modeled upon the first Mormons'
perception of a universal apostasy. It is not only the blessed white
Nephites who turn away from the religion of Jesus -- the entire world
either rejects that faith, or falls into a wicked perversion of it. This is
a dismal view of what eventually follows a truncated millennium (in
the Americas at least) and appears to provide little reason for
anybody to accept Christianity. Is this yet another hint of the story's
pagan Scandinavian underpinnings?
Mormon 1:18: The story told here again sounds much like the old
Shawnee story of hiding silver in a spring, but it went down too far

and was lost (a slippery treasure, moving about under the earth's
surface). In Mormon 2:28-29 a treaty granted the rejuvenated
Northlanders gives them all the land north of Belle Isle (my
interpretation). There they become isolated and a short peace
follows. In 3:8, the year 362 (1414 by my calculations), there is
renewed warfare, sparked by the defection of more reconstituted
Vikings to the post-millennial Lamanites (see also Alma 63:14). In
Mormon Ch. 4 the whites are swept off like the dew and forced to
leave in ships. By 1425 (in my calculations) all that were going to
depart had gone, presumably leaving the remaining whites to fight it
out with the mixed, adopted, and full-blooded Indians. Mormon 5
records a residual war against remaining Northmen, probably greatly
exaggerated
With the Book of Ether the writer inserts a "flashback" as a sort of

appendix to the story. Here the setting is said to be during the early
days of human history, long before the rise of Israelites, Nephites,
etc. Ether 2:16 presents a very distinctly describes a kayak. Yet, a
few verses later, the description is obscured by a description of a
craft that would not float. In Ether 6:5-12, the passage to the
continent went very well, even though the water was rough.
According to Indian legends, shortly after the Northmen left, a group
of people arrived, and were assimilated into tribes deep within the
Great Lakes area. Given such a perspective, the underlying story of
this book is clearly placed in its appropriate sequence and is not an
appendix. However, the overt or superficial story told here is said to
be of great antiquity. One possible explanation for the confusion may
be that Joseph Smith plagiarized this part of the Book of Mormon
from an independent story by Solomon Spalding, without
understanding the story very well. Of all the pages in the Book of
Mormon, several dozen near the end of this particular book are
reported (by Dale Broadhurst and others) to most resemble the
known prose of Solomon Spalding.
The Book of Mormon probably originally ended with the Book of

Ether. Its last book, Moroni, reads something like parts of 2 Nephi,
but it is obviously a "tacked-on" addition. Basically the book is an
instruction manual on how to operate the early Mormon church.
Some scholars feel that its content reflects the unique religious

concerns of the Campbellite minister, Rev. Sidney Rigdon, c. 1827-

1828. In Moroni 9:5 the writer comes clean -- apparently feeling
guilty over the monstrosity here created in the name of God. It may
be important to note here, that the existence of the Navajo and
"Pueblo" Indians was just beginning to be reported in the American
newspapers a few years before the Book of Mormon's 1830
publication. A view quickly sprang up among the readers in the east,
that western "cliff-dwellers" and Athabaskan shepherds possessed a
high degree if civilization -- indeed, the "Pueblo" Indians were
"civilized" in the dictionary sense of the term -- they built permanent
cities. My interpretation of the book tells me that Moroni is not solely
a religious manual, written by a maverick Cambellite clergyman. Part
of Moroni reads like the description of a siege of the old western
Anasazi people, who evidently had taken in some white Christians.
The siege, perhaps conducted from the south, by Mexican tribes, in
revenge for what had occurred at Cahokia, ended in starvation
cannibalism.
In Moroni 9:9-10 the text describes similar conditions at the

Greenland colony, where Indian skraeling
slaves were raped by their masters. When the Northmen left, they
abandoned the slaves, and possibly the mixed people as well. By the
time they were rescued (by the Inuit) and taken to North America in
kayaks, they too had been forced into starvation cannibalism. This
story is been supported by Indian legends, and is touched upon in
Ether 2:6. There were worse horrors (see my discussion of Alma
63:14, above).
From my perspective, has become obvious to me, Joseph Smith’s

back-and-forth switching from being a compiler of Shawnee
traditions, to being a racist, anti-Indian, that he was struggling with
his conscience and an Indian identity, while assisting in the final
compilation of the Book of Mormon. By the end of Joseph's life,
Thomas Sharp, a journalist in Hancock County, Illinois, was calling
him an anti-Christ. Winneshiek, a respected spiritual leader from
Prophetstown on the Rock (River), listened to him, laughed, and told
him that he was crazy. Fr. John George Alleman, a Catholic priest
who passed through Nauvoo -- who had many opportunities to
observe what was going on -- called him a scoundrel.

Surrounded by many racist whites, it is not surprising that Joseph

Smith lost his earlier sense of purpose (and even his interest in the
Book of Mormon, some scholars have argued). His evolution in this
direction may seen in the incident of "the white Lamanite Zelph."
Coming across an Indian skeleton and some signs of an old battle, on
his way to Missouri in 1834, Joseph concocted a strange explanation
for the remains. From my reading of accounts of that event, I believe
he saw himself as if dead. An Indian alone, separated from his people
by something more than just geography, is not an Indian. Like the
Mennonites and other spiritual people, traditional Indians are
community people. Joseph Smith, in his better moments, knew this,
as exemplified in the "Zelph" incident. Seeing the isolated and
forgotten bones, the Mormon prophet was compelled to put them
into a fanciful context -- giving the dead man a name, a position
among his people, and even the LDS blessing of a skin in the process
of turning white. Thus, I see in the man Joseph Smith, the same
ambivalence, mixed both with sympathy and racist hostility, as I see
throughout the Book of Mormon. As the Nephite story draws to a
close, that fallen people's white skin is no longer a mark of
righteousness. Finally, near the end of his book (in Moroni 9) comes
the common-sense, truly Christian denial of skin color as a measure
of a person's character. Whether that important realization came
directly from the heart of Joseph Smith, or whether from the
influence of Rev. Rigdon or another of Smith's early associates, I
cannot tell. The important thing is, that it comes at the end of a book
brought forth and made ready for publication by Smith -- it thus
bears his implicit stamp of approval.
The Latter Day Saint people will no doubt continue on for centuries to
come, but the content of their problematic religion need not be set in
stone. It is they themselves who so often speak of the possibilities of
change -- of the revelation of new light and truth within their peculiar
religious system. Given the recent changes within their sister church,
the "Reorganized" Saints, it would be unreasonable for me to believe
that old-fashioned Mormonism will last forever. As that old-time,
problematic Mormonism fades away, people of Mormon cultural
heritage might be well advised to review Moroni 9 now and then.
History can repeats itself: can others see the special irony I detect

there?
From my studies of the text, it has become, to me at least, that

somewhere along the line there was an Indian who made significant
contributions to the Book of Mormon. He or she was probably a well
educated Shawnee. Today many people do not realize that there
were literate, English-speaking Indians around when the Book of
Mormon was written and published. Some of the first people the
book was offered to were literate members of the Seneca tribe who
lived just outside of Buffalo, New York. As already mentioned
previously in this paper, Chief Elias Boudinot's
Cherokee Phoenix ran
articles in its pages, both in reference to the Israelite-Indian theory,
and to the Mormons themselves, in the years immediately following
the appearance of the Book of Mormon. If people could intelligently
examine and consider such things, it should come as no great
surprise that one such native American could have contributed to the
Book of Mormon. There was no spiritualist "channeling," no
otherworldly "angel," but an actual person who made significant
contributions. Those contributions are part of what make the book
believable (unfortunately so for those readers who believe its totally).
Those same contributions -- in my humble opinion -- are also what
continue to make the book worth reading. Joseph Smith probably had
a close personal relationship with this person. He may have had some
sense of guilt over the death of the Shawnee who contributed to the
Book of Mormon. Possibly that contribution was as inadvertent as the
posthumous input of Solomon Spalding. A collection of Indian
traditions, and of faded Viking recollections, may have been put
together for an entirely different purpose than creating the "golden
bible.
As I've already said, I believe some evidence of these things can still
be discerned in the incident of "the white Lamanite Zelph" -- and
perhaps even in Smith's little known revelation permitting the first
Mormons to take polygamous Indian brides. While these events
depend upon the Book of Mormon for their context, they transcend
that books false anthropology and frequent negative depictions of
America's REAL first people.

Afterword
Some day, people will not be judged by the color of their skin, or the
texture of their hair, or the shape of their eyes. The survival of the
human race depends upon mutual cooperation and mutual
acceptance of our diversity. The natural and man-made disasters that
threaten a fragile blue planet can only be met and overcome by a
people no longer divided by baseless fears and petty egotism. Sooner
or later the day will arrive when Martin Luther King's prophecy will be
fulfilled. But these advances cannot come until the racist past of
religions like Mormonism is abandoned. Here I am not being hostile
towards the Latter Day Saints. In fact, I hope to see them become a
role model for other religious communities yet enmeshed in false and
divisive errors concerning human ethnicity, gender and social class.
I believe that there is great power in our understanding the

"knowledge of good and evil" to be the knowledge of racism and its
devisive effects upon our global society. Human beings are the only
animal known to kill each other because of hereditary physical
differences within our species: we are also the only animal possessed
of sufficient consciousness to do something to correct that dangerous
trait. I do not blame today's generation of Latter Day Saints for
having accused the Indians of a continent-wide genocide of God's
"chosen people." In many ways the early Mormons were no better
and no worse than their non-Mormon neighbors and I have no
reason not hold today's LDS responsible for old slanders of the
Indians and the Jews, whether those slanders occurred within
American society in general or in the pages of a book published in
1830. I choose, rather, to focus upon the genuine concern many
Mormons have no doubt felt for their native American brethren
through the years. That genuine concern, when divorced from false
paternalism and racial arrogance can become a very good and
positive beginning for a better future. We many not be brothers and
sisters in the sense that the biblical Ephraim and Manasseh were of
one family -- but we all belong to the human family.
This paper began as a record of my personal discoveries, made while

studying the Book of Mormon. Through the assistance of a couple of
other scholars, I've been able to expand the content and in some
places alter its viewpoint just a little. I do not expect every reader to

accept my "forgotten Viking invasion" theory as anything like

established fact. What I do ask, is that readers attempt to suspend
their various beliefs and disbeliefs while they read my words, and in
the process, try to see the picture I've here painted through my eyes.
I ask of my readers, please do not get bogged down in trying to

refute my ideas and methods. In an informal review of this paper,
conducted by several members of the pro-LDS "FAIR Message
Board," it was mentioned that my paper includes no critical apparatus
and no point-by-point, documented defense of my ideas. It would be
a difficult task for me to try and document the various uncompiled
oral traditions I rely upon in forming many of my conclusions. I am
aware of their potential weaknesses -- but I may also be aware of
some of their strengths, that others might not readily perceive.
Perhaps sources in Scandinavia will eventually become more open in
sharing their records. Perhaps the LDS Church leaders will one day
reveal why they have implicitly denied that Chief Keokuk’s Sac and
Fox tribesmen lived on a reservation across the river from Nauvoo
during the 1840’s, and that some of their descendants still live in the
area (after all, these are the very people portrayed in the notable
illustrations featured throughout this article). Perhaps they have
some shame in acknowledging the issues I am raising. But perhaps
the longstanding rift between the eastern tribes and the Latter Day
Saints may begin to heal in the wake of my writing this article. A
thousand arguments might be constructed against my theory.
However, I feel it is stronger than the alternatives I've seen
presented in the past. It is really not my purpose here to offer
arguments and counter-arguments: it is my purpose to offer a new
perspective and a new interpretation. I sincerely hope, readers of all
backgrounds, that you can take what I offer, for whatever value you
can: if you do, then I will have succeeded in my task.
Dedicated to the memory of Tecumseh, Winneshiek, Whirling Thunder, Vine Deloria,

Jr., John Blahna, and all the other heroes who have gone before us. Remembering
Joseph Smith, Jr. who courageously tried to tell our story -- perhaps before it was time
-- but ended up by becoming a controversial problem for all Americans.
Sources
Armstrong, Perry: The Sauks and

the Black-Hawk War, (NYC:

AMS Press, 1979).
Black Hawk: Life of Black

Hawk, (NYC: Dover Publications, 1994).
Chapman, Paul: The Man who Led

Columbus to America,
(Atlanta: Judson Press, 1973).
Coates, James: In Mormon

Circles: Gentiles,
JackMormons, and
Later-Day Saints, (Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley, 1991).
DeLoria, Vine, Jr.: God is Red, (NYC: Grosset and

Dunlap, 1973).
Diamond, Jared: Guns, Germs, and

Steel, The Fates of
Human Societies, (NYC: W. W. Norton &
Co., 1997).
______________, Collapse: How
Societies Choose to
Fail or Succeed, (NYC: Viking 2005).
Diedrich, Mark: Ho-Chunk Chiefs:

Winnebago Leadership
in an Era of Crisis,
(Rochester, MN: Coyote Books, 2001).
Eckert, Allen: A Sorrow in our

Hearts: The Life of
Tecumseh, (NYC: Bantam Books, 1992).
Gallenkamp, Charles: Maya, the

Riddle and
Rediscovery of a Lost
Civilization, (NYC: David McKay Co., 1959).
Kennedy, Roger G.: Hidden Cities:

The Discovery and
Loss of Ancient
North American
Civilization, (NYC: The Free Press, 1994)
Malcomson, Scott: One Drop of

Blood: The American
Misadventure of Race,

(NYC: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000).
Mallery, Arlington, Lost America, (Washington, D.

C.: Overlook, 1951).
______________, (with Mary R. Harrison), The
Rediscovery of Lost
America, (NYC: E. P. Dutton, 1979).
Menzies, Gavin: 1421: The Year

China Discovered
America, (NYC: Harper Collins, 2003).
Metcalfe, Brent Lee "Reinventing Lamanite Identity," Sunstone

(March 2004), 20–25.
Nabokov, Peter, (Ed.): Native American

Testimony, (Thomas Y. Crowell: 1978).
Oestreicher, David M.: "Unraveling the Walam Olum," Natural

History, (Oct. 1996), 14-21.
______________, "The Anatomy of the Walam Olum: The Dissection of a Nineteenth-
Century Anthropological Hoax," (Rutgers University: Ph.D dissertation, 1995)
Parr, Ryan, "Missing the Boat to Ancient America... Just Plain Missing the Boat,"
FARMS Review 17/1 (2005): 83-106.
Roberts, B. H., (Ed.): History of the

Church, II: 79-80 (SLC: various editions).
______________, "Manuscript History of the Church," Book A-1:482-83, (SLC: LDS
Church Archives).
Sharp, John. E.: Gathering at the

Hearth: Stories
Mennonites Tell, (Goshen, Indiana:
Hist. Com. of the Mennonite Church, 2001).
Smith, Joseph, et al.: The Book

of Mormon, (Palmyra, New York: Grandin, 1830 -- various
later editions).
Southerton, Simon, Losing a Lost

Tribe: Native
Americans, DNA, and
the Mormon Church, (SLC:
Signature Books, City Utah 2004).
_____________, "An Apologetics Shipwreck: Response to Dr. Ryan Parr," on-line
paper, (2005).
Vogel, Dan: Indian Origins and

the Book of Mormon:

Religious Solutions
from Columbus to
Joseph Smith, (SLC: Signature, 1986).
_____________, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature,
2004)
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Apocrypha: Essays on
the Book of Mormon, (SLC:
Signature, 2002)
Note: Corrections, minor additions and various links supplied by "Spalding Saga"
editor, Dale R. Broadhurst, April, 2006.
Go to top of this page
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An Indian Interpretation of the Book of Mormon

- THE SPALDING RESEARCH PROJECT -

New Possibilities: the Psycho-social Context | Some Further Discussion | Afterword

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And long they ’ ve

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Might the Book of Mormon be something other than what it

From the very beginning, advocates of the Book of Mormon have

"This new Revelation [the Book of Mormon], they say is especially

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Orson Pratt, one of the top leaders of Mormondom, was still

Are these sorts of professions and accusations really "God's truth"

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"Gold Bible Hill," Manchester, NY -- Scene of a Massacre?

Who was Joseph Smith, Jr.? -- was he a religious impostor; a self-

Setting the Context

Since the Book of Mormon purports to describe pre-Columbian

There were many theoretical explanations as to who (or even what)

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who reported upon the New World's archaeological remains saw

Any two unrelated tribal human societies will naturally share

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A Lame Theory Run Amok

Indian legends of an old war between the native Americans and a

A correspondent of the Georgia Cherokee

"I noticed in a late number of your paper a selection from the

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The 1830 Palmyra edition of the Book of Mormon

At this point, the Book of Mormon shows its intrinsic worth, by

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preserving within its pages exactly these same racist

"They [Mormon missionaries] are now on their way to the Western

This old racist conceit -- that Indians become lighter-skinned after

But the religion based upon the 19th century misconceptions

Jew) can spot the cursed apostates at a distance and avoid

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J. Smith preaches the Book of Mormon to "Cousin Lemuel"

Going Beyond the Book's Stories

Some LDS apologists assert that most of the events described in

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contributed to the Book of Mormon stories, once wrote a shorter

Was there any pre-Columbian New World contact with Europe

My suggestion is that those particular American Indian ancestors (of

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conclusion seems especially justified in consideration of non-

Fanciful depiction of a prehistoric Viking-Indian encounter

My thesis does not rule out the possibility of a prior European

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Ojibwa. The Solutrean theory is attractive, in that it provides a

If, as I suspect, current calibrations of the time required for

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Three Possible Migration Routes During Last Ice Age

Some American Indians have denied the Viking explanation,

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European-Americans continued to roll westward.

There are numerous Indian traditions concerning ancient war

Could the Book of Mormon be based upon a muddled account of

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New Possibilities: the Psycho-social Context

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God's one true spokesman, and destined to rule over a soon-to-

Joseph Smith, in his early years, was apparently only marginally