American Antiquities: Corroborative of the Book of Mormon (17 March 1860)

(From Catlin’s “Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians,” published in London in 1844.)

“The first and most striking fact amongst the North American Indians that refers us to the Jews is that of their worshipping, in all parts, the Great Spirit, or Jehovah, as the Hebrews were ordered to do by Divine precept, instead of a plurality of gods, as ancient pagans and heathens did, and their idols of their own formation. The North American Indians are nowhere idolaters. They appeal at once to the Great Spirit, and know of no mediator, either personal or symbolical. The Indian tribes are everywhere divided into bands, with chiefs, symbols, badges, &c.; and many of their modes of worship I have found exceedingly like those of the Mosaic institution. The Jews had their sanctum sanctorums; and so may it be said the Indians have in their council or medicine-houses, which are always held as sacred places. As the Jews had, they have their high priests and their prophets. Amongst the Indians, as amongst the ancient Hebrews, the women are not allowed to worship with the men, and in all cases also they eat separately The Indians everywhere, like the Jews, believe that they are the favourite people of the Great Spirit; and they are certainly, like those ancient people, persecuted, as every man’s hand seems raised against them; and they like the Jews, destined to be dispersed over the world, and seemingly scourged by the Almighty, and despised of man. In their marriages, the Indians, as did the ancient Jews, uniformly buy their wives by giving presents; and, in many tribes, very closely resemble them in other forms and ceremonies of their marriages. In their preparations for war and in peace-making, they are strikingly similar. In their treatment of the sick, burial of the dead, and mourning, they are also similar. In their bathing and ablutions, at all seasons of the year, as a part of their religious observances, having separate places for men and women to perform these immersions, they resemble again. And the custom amongst the women of absenting themselves during the lunar influences is exactly consonant to the Mosaic law. This custom of separation is an uniform one amongst the different tribes. … In nearly every family of a tribe will be found a small lodge, large enough to contain one person, which is erected at a little distance from the family lodge, and occupied by the wife or the daughter to whose possession circumstances allot it, where she dwells alone until she is prepared to move back. … After this season of separation, purification in running water, and anointing, precisely in accordance with the Jewish command, is requisite before she can enter the family lodge. … In their feasts, fastings, and sacrificing, they are exceedingly like those ancient people. Many of them have a feast closely resembling the annual feast of the Jewish passover; and amongst others, an occasion much like the Israelitish feast of the tabernacles, which lasted eight days, (when history tells us they carried bundles of willow boughs, and fasted several days and nights,) making sacrifices of the firstfruits and best of everything, closely resembling the sin-offering and peace-offering of the Hebrews. These and many others of their customs would seem to be decidedly Jewish. … Amongst the list of their customs, however, we meet a number which had their origin, it would seem, in the Jewish ceremonial code, and which are so very peculiar in their forms, that it would seem quite improbable and almost impossible that two different people should ever have hit upon them alike, without some knowledge of each other. These, I consider, go farther than anything else as evidence, and carry, in my mind, conclusive proof that these people are tinctured with Jewish blood.”

(From Jones’ “History of Ancient America, founded upon the Ruins of Antiquity,” &c., published in London in 1843.)

“The Northern mother, after childbirth, is secluded for a given number of days, varying according to the sex of the newborn infant. By the law of Moses, the mother’s purification was to last forty days for a male, and eighty days for a female child. All other seclusions are as strict as when the wife becomes a mother. When a wife becomes a widow, and is childless, her husband’s brother marries her. These were essential laws of the Hebrew, and especially the latter—that a name should not be lost in Israel. … The ease of childbirth by the Hebrew mother is distinctly stated in Holy Writ, in contrast to the dangerous sufferings of the Egyptian parent. … The same peculiar facility of childbirth is one of the chief characteristics of the Northern female; for in the Rocky Mountains, while journeying in cavalcade, and being taken in travail, the mother will leave her companions alone, and within an hour will remount her horse and overtake her associates, with the new-born infant in her arms. . . The Northern aborigines have a traditional knowledge of the deluge and the dove of peace, which to them, under the name of the “medicine” or “mystery bird,” is sacred from the arrow of the hunter. They have their Ark of Covenant, in which is deposited some mystery, seen only by the priests of the tribe. It is said to be a shell, and supposed to give out oracular sounds. This is in analogy to the Book of the Laws placed in the Ark of the Covenant by Moses, preceding his death on Mount Nebo, the oracular wisdom of which has guided civilization to this day. The ark is never suffered to touch the earth, but is always raised on a stand of wood or stone. It is invariably carried by a tribe when they march to battle. A similitude is here to Joshua at the siege of Jericho. When it is in their peaceful encampment, it is surrounded by twelve stones, indicative of the original number of the tribes of their ancestors. This is strictly in analogy with the twelve statues (probably rude blocks of stone) erected by Moses around the Altar of the Covenant to personify the twelve tribes of Israel. Joshua, also, after the passage of the Jordan, erected twelve stones in his encampment at Gilgal, and the same number in the river at the place of the passage. They select their “medicine men” (i.e. priests or prophets) from among a portion of the tribe not warriors. Here is the custom of the Levites or descendants of Aaron being in the sacred office of priesthood; for, with the Israelites, they were not to be taken from the ranks of the soldiery. These aborigines “dwell in booths,” as when “brought out of the land of Egypt;” for they are still wanderers. (Lev. xxiii.) They offer a flesh or burnt offering from the chase, which is first cast into the flames, before even a starving family may eat. They have their corn and harvest feasts; also one in observance of every new moon; another in festivity of the first-fruits; and the great feast in direct analogy with the Hebrew Passover, even to the blood being stained upon the posts and lintels, and the mingling of the most bitter herbs. Then their fastings and purifications are practised with the greatest severity. The breastplate or ornament worn by their religious prophets, containing twelve shells or stones of value, is in direct imitation of the ancient pectoral worn by the Hebrew High Priest, and which contained twelve precious stones, inscribed with the names of all the twelve original tribes of Israel. They have their cities of refuge, or huts of safety, where the most deadly foe dare not enter for his victim. They never violate a female captive, and upon the Hebrew principle, that their blood shall not be contaminated by interunion. This has been strictly followed in all their wars with the Europeans. … Then the absence of all idols or symbolical devices, and the worship of the one God (i.e. Great Spirit); their never pronouncing the name, Jehovah, but in syllables, and those separated by long ceremonies, thus truly fulfilling the Hebrew law, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." The name with them sounds as if written, Ye-hoh-vah, and is only pronounced by the Aaron of the tribe. In their hymns of rejoicing, the word Hal-le-lu-yah is distinctly uttered. To the foregone analogies is to be added the general and firm belief in the immortality of the soul. But beyond all this, as proof of their origin, is the practice of the great covenant between the Almighty Father and the Patriarch Abraham—viz., circumcision! … If all other evidences were not received, that of circumcision, as a religious ceremony, must be viewed by the most sceptical as direct proof of identity between the Northern aborigines and the ancient Hebrews. The custom we have written is not general: it is only found in the more settled tribes. … Then in regard to the physique of the race, they possess the essential characteristics of the ancient Hebrew in regard to physiognomy—viz., the broad and elevated forehead, the aquiline nose, the high cheek-bone, brilliant red countenance, and teeth pure as ivory, black hair, the dark heavy eyebrow, the sunken but brilliant eye, like a diamond within a ring of pearl, and both deep set beneath a brow of ebony.”

(To be continued.)