Evidences of the Book of Mormon—Some External Proofs of Its Divinity: Part IV. Religious Observances of the Lamanites

EVIDENCES OF THE BOOK OF MORMON.

SOME EXTERNAL PROOFS OF ITS DIVINITY.

Part IV.

RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES OF THE LAMANITES.

Having drawn attention to some of the traditions of the Lamanites, which strongly corroborate the statements of the Book of Mormon, we now turn to the religious observances of the natives of this continent, which bear testimony to the truth of that sacred record wherein it is declared that the ancestors of the Indians were of the house of Israel, that they observed the ordinances and requirements of the law of Moses, and also were taught the principles of the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The Latter-day Saints believe that the Polynesian races are offshoots of the Nephites and Lamanites. That originally they came from America. Their traditions and personal appearance confirm this belief. True, in some cases, as in Fiji, they have unfortunately mixed with other races, but this has not been so to any marked extent with the inhabitants of the groups of islands that lie nearest to America. The Hawaiians, Samoans, Tongans, Tahitians, Maories and others may be considered relatively pure families of the Israelitish race. Their religious observances confirm the testimony of their traditions and appearance; and what would be very remarkable, if the Polynesians and American Indians had not descended from the same common stock, is that these observances are so nearly alike that many may be termed identical.

In a recent letter from Tonga,1 Elder Andrew Jenson enumerates seven very remarkable survivals of Hebrew observances that have until quite lately been religiously observed among the Polynesians. What Brother Jenson states of these islanders is equally true of the Lamanites of this continent, they retained like observances until long after the coming of the Spaniards and those that followed them; indeed, some are observed in remote tribes to the present day. Nor are those enumerated by Elder Jenson all that bear record of the Lamanites’ Israelitish descent; we shall refer to others before we close this chapter.

The following are the chief points of Brother Jenson’s statement:

1. There obtained among the Tongans a regular division of time into months and years, these divisions being marked by the recurrence of sacred seasons and public feasts, which were observed with religious ceremony, and were under the sanction of the most rigorous laws. It is also remarkable that the Tongans have some knowledge of an inter­calary month, the use and disuse of which have led to many discussions among themselves.

2. The entire system of tabu, by which times, persons, places, or things are made sacred, and the many religious restrictions and prohibitions con­nected therewith, may be easily interpreted as a relic, much changed and corrupted, of the ceremonial observances of the Jews.

3. The great feast of the offering of the first-fruits to the gods every year, seems a custom of religious ceremony of purely Jewish origin.

4. The same may be said of the rite of circumcision which was regu­larly practiced by them. An uncircumcised person was considered mean and despicable; and the custom has only disappeared in recent years.

5. Every person and thing that touched a dead body was considered unclean, and remained so until after the lapse of a certain number of days. During that allotted time those whose duties compelled them to do the rites of the burial, were not allowed to feed themselves, or touch the food prepared by others. They were therefore carefully fed by attend­ants.

6. Females after child-birth, and after other periods of infirmity, were enjoined strict separation; and were subjected to ceremonial purifications.

7. The Tongans had cities of refuge corresponding to those instituted among the Jews; their uses and functions resembled, in some of their features, those of the Mosaic law.

We shall now appeal to some of our former witnesses to prove that these and other Israelitish customs obtained among the natives of the American continent. It may also be well to remind our readers that the Hebrews, the Nephites, and the Mexicans all wrote from right to left, instead of from left to right, as we do. The prophet Joseph tells us that the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated were thus engraven.

“Like the Jews, the Indians offer their first-fruits; they keep their new moons, and the feast of expiation at the end of September, or in the beginning of October; they divide the year into four seasons correspond­ing with the Jewish festivals. According to Charlevoix and Long, the brother of a deceased husband receives his widow into his house as a guest, and after a suitable time considers her as a legitimate consort. In some parts of North America circumcision is practiced, and of this Acosta and Lopez de Gomara make mention. There is also much analogy between the Hebrews and the Indians In that which concerns various rites And customs, such as the ceremonies of purification the use of the bath, the ointment of bear’s grease, fasting and the manner of prayer The Indians likewise abstain from the blood of animals, as also from fish without scales; they consider divers quadrupeds unclean also certain birds and reptiles, and they are accustomed to offer as a holocaust the firstlings of the flock. Acosta and Emanuel de Moraer relate that various nations allow matri­mony only with those of their own tribe or lineage, this being in their view a striking characteristic very remarkable, and of much weight. But that which most tends to fortify the opinion as to the Hebrew origin of the American tribes, is a species of ark, seemingly like that of the Old Testament; this the Indians take with them to war; it is never permitted to touch the ground, but rests upon stones or pieces of wood, it being deemed sacrilegious and unlawful to open it or look into it. The American priests scrupulously guard their sanctuary, and the high priest carries on his breast a white shell adorned with precious stones, which recalls the urim of the Jewish high priest, of whom we are also reminded by a band of white plumes on his forehead.”2

One of the most remarkable Identifications is the widespread practice of circumcision. This ordinance was given of God to the descendants of Abraham only, as a sign and token of the covenant He made with that patriarch and his posterity. If the American Indians and Polynesians are not of Abrahamic descent, how can their observance of this distinctive and restricted rite be reasonably accounted for? That they did practice this rite when the Europeans first came in contact with them is testified to by Herrara, Garcia, Diaz, Torquemada, Gomara and Martyr. Herrara states that this custom was prevalent among the Mexicans. Bernal Diaz says: “In some provinces they were circumcised, and they had flint knives with which they performed the ceremony.”3

Martyr and Gomara both assert that the Indians were circumcised. The former in a letter to Pope Leo X. says of the inhabitants of Yucatan; “They are circumcised, but not all.” Dr. Boudinot states: “The Indians to the eastward say that previous to the white people coming into the country, their ancestors were in the habit of using circumcision.”4

Dr. Beatty, in his Journal of a visit to the Indians on the Ohio, now more than a hundred years ago, says an aged Indian informed him, that an old uncle of his who died about the year 1728, related to him several customs and traditions of former times, and among others, “that circum­cision was practiced among the Indians long ago.” Gomara and Gumelli5 say that the Silivas circumcise their children on the eighth day after their birth. Indeed, there is testimony from all parts of the continent and from the adjacent islands—from Mexico and Peru, from the regions of the Orinoco and La Plata, from the West Indies and Polynesia that this rite was formerly observed, but since the arrival of the white races it has fallen into contempt and disuse.

Regarding the widow’s marriage to the deceased husband’s brother or nearest kinsman, “Charlevoix writes of the Hurons and Iroquois, that the wife is obliged to marry her husband’s nearest kinsman.”6 “If the deceased has left a brother, he takes the widow to his lodge, after a proper interval, and considers her as his wife without any preparatory formality.”7 Among the Chippaways “sometimes a brother of the deceased takes her for his wife at the grave of her husband, which is done by the ceremony of walking over it. And this he has a right to do.”8 Among some of the Canadian tribes a period of six months was permitted to elapse before the surviving brother claimed the widow.

We now take up the testimony of Mr. Adair,9 with regard to some of the many likenesses which existed between the customs of the ancient Hebrews and those of the Indian tribes with which he, for so long asso­ciated.

“The Indians have among them the resemblance of the Jewish sin offer­ing and trespass offering. … The Indians observe another religious custom of the Hebrews in making a peace offering. ..... They always celebrate the annual expiation of sins in their religious temples. The red Hebrews imagine their temples to have such a typical holiness, more than any other place, that if they offered up the Annual Sacrifice elsewhere, it would not atone for the people. ….. The Hebrews had various ablutions and anointings, according to the Mosaic ritual, and all the Indian nations constantly observe similar customs from religious motives. …. The Indians have customs consonant to the Mosaic laws of uncleanness. They oblige their women, in their lunar retreats, to build small huts at as considerable a distance from their dwelling houses as they imagine may be out of the enemies’ reach, where, during the space of that period, they are obliged to stay at the risk of their lives. …. The non-observance of this separation, a breach of the marriage law, and murder, they esteem the most capital crimes. When the time of the woman’s separation is ended, they always purify themselves in deep running water, return home, dress and anoint themselves …… correspondent to the Mosaic law of woman’s purification after travail, the Indian women absent themselves from their husbands and all public company for a considerable time …… At the stated period the Indian woman’s impurity is finished by ablution, and they are again admitted to social and holy privileges. By the Levitical law the people who had running issues or sores were deemed unclean. The Indians in as strict a manner, observe the very same law ….. The Israelites became unclean only by touching their dead, for the space of seven days; and the high priest was prohibited to come near the dead. ’Tis much the same with the Indians to this day ….. Like the Jews, the great­est part of the Southern Indians abstain from most things that are in themselves, or in the general apprehension of mankind, loathsome or unclean …… They reckon all birds of prey and birds of night to be unclean and unlawful to be eaten …… None of them will eat of any animal whatsoever, if they either know or suspect that died of itself ….. They reckon all those animals to be unclean that are either carnivorous or live on nasty food, as hogs, wolves, panthers, foxes, cats, mice, rats     ….. The Indians, through a strong principle of religion, abstain in the strictest manner from the eating of the blood of any animal ….. The Indian marriages, divorces, and punish­ments of adultery still retain a strong likeness to the Jewish laws and customs in these points .... There never was any set of people who pursued the Mosaic law of retaliation with such fixed eagerness as these Americans .... They forgive all crimes at the Annual Atone­ment of sins, except murder, which is always punished with death …. The American Indians are more eager to revenge blood than any other people on the whole face of the earth ….. The Israelites had cities of refuge, or places of safety, for those who killed a person unawares and without design .... According to the same particular divine law of mercy, each of these Indian nations have either a house or a town of refuge, which is a sure asylum to protect a manslayer, or the unfor­tunate captive, if they can once enter into it.”

Our next extracts are from the writings of the well-known American artist and traveler, Mr. George Catlin.10

“The first and most striking fact amongst the North American Indians that refers us to the Jews, is that of their worshiping, 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 idolators. 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, etc.; and many of their modes of worship I found exceedingly like those of the Mosaic institution. The Jews had their sanctum sanctorum; 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 favorite 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 absenting themselves during the lunar influences is exactly consonant to the Mosaic law. This custom of separation is a 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 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 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 first-fruits 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.”11

Indeed it may be said that from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave, the aborigines carried with them the traces of their Israelitish ancestry. Even in their feasts and festivals there was strong incidental testimony to the truth of the Book of Mormon. Numerous writers remark how much the festivals of the Indians resemble either the Jewish feast of the Passover, of the New Moon, of the First Fruits, or of Tabernacles; but not one word is said about a feast which reminded them of the Jewish Hanucah, which feast recalls the glorious exploits of Judas Maccabees and his associates. The reason is obvious from the standpoint of a Latter-day Saint; all the feasts of which the modern Lamanites have an imitation were instituted before Lehi left Jerusalem (B.C. 600), while the Maccabees did not live until the second century before Christ, consequently neither Nephite nor Lamanite knew anything about them, nor of the festival established in honor of the heroic deliverance they wrought for Israel.

Torquemada, Sahagum and Boturini all draw attention to the fact that the Mexicans at certain festivals were in the habit of sprinkling blood on the door posts of their houses, a dim recollection, doubless, of the rites of the Passover.

Other statements of the earlier writers fully confirm those of Mr. Adair and Mr. Catlin; for instance: Father Joseph Gumilla says in the 59th chapter of the “Orinoco Illustrade;” “I affirm in the second place that the nations of the Orinoco and its streams, observe many Hebrew cere­monies during the time of their paganism, which they followed blindly without knowing wherefore; they had been transmitted by tradition—handed down from father to son, without their being able to assign any reason for the practice of them. There is not that Jew in existence,” he adds, “who holds the flesh of the pig, etc., in such abhorrence, as these said Gentiles.” Lafitau and Rochfort, observe of the Caribs: “They reject with abhorrence some of the richest bounties of nature; refusing to eat the hog, the sea-cow, the turtle, and the eel, with which their rivers are stored; this motive,” it is added, “has been supposed to arise from relig­ious motives like the Jews.” Edwards remarks in his “History of the West Indies:” “The Indians would not eat the Mexican hog or the turtle, but held them in the greatest abhorrence.”

Regarding “Cities of Refuge,” Dr. Boudinot says:12 “In almost every Indian nation there are several peaceable towns, called old beloved, ancient, holy, or white towns. They seem to have been formerly towns of refuge, also.

“In another part of the Muskagee was the ancient beloved town, called Coosak, which implies a place of safety for those who have slain undesignedly. In almost every tribe, there are these peaceable towns which are called ‘sacred beloved towns.’” The City of Cholula, in Mexico, was a City of Refuge.

Father Joseph Gumilla, in his account of the nations bordering on the Orinoco, relates that they punished adultery like the ancient Hebrews, by stoning the criminals to death before the assembled people.

“The Hebrews became polluted by touching a dead body. The Indians, in order to prevent pollution, when the sick is past hope of recovery, prepare a grave and tomb, anoint his head, and paint his face; when his breath ceases they soon inter the corpse. One of a different family will not pollute himself for a stranger; though, when living, he would have hazarded his life for his safety. The relations who became unclean by performing the funeral duties, must live apart from the clean for several days, and be cleansed by one of the religious order.”13

Smith, in his history, observes regarding the Indians of his time (1681): “Their religious solemnity of singing and dancing was performed rather as something handed down from their ancestors than from any knowledge of its origin. They said their Great King also created them, and that He dwelt in a glorious land where the spirits of the just should go and live. Their most solemn worship was the sacrifice of their first fruits, in which they burnt the fattest buck and feasted together on what else they had collected. But in this sacrifice they broke no bones of the animal. When done, they gathered them very carefully.”

Doctor Beatty visited the Delaware nation, of whom Sir William Penn bears a similar testimony. The occasion of a great council was a proposi­tion whether they should go to war. “At this time,” says he, “they killed a buck and roasted it, as a kind of sacrifice on twelve stones, which they would not suffer any tool of iron to touch. They did not eat of the middle joint of the thigh.” “In short,” he adds, “I was astonished to find so many of the Jewish customs prevailing among them.”

Regarding divisions of time Coturini remarks “that the week of the Chiapanese, like that of the Tulticas, consisted of seven days, which is the more remarkable as the alleged ignorance on the part of the Indians of a week of seven days, has been used as an argument to prove that they could not have descended from the Hebrews.” The Book of Mormon shows that the Nephites followed their Israelitish ancestors in the meas­urement of their time: days, weeks, months and years are frequently mentioned in its pages.

Dr. Boudinot, speaking of other tribes says: “They count time after the manner of the Hebrews. They divide the year into spring, summer, autumn and winter. They number their year from any of those four periods, for they have no name for a year; and they subdivide these, and count the year by lunar months, like the Israelites, who counted by moons as their name significantly testifies. The number and regular periods of the Indians’ religious feasts, is a good historical proof that they counted time by and observed a weekly Sabbath long after their arrival on the American continent. They began the year at the first appearance of the first new moon of the vernal equinox, according to the ecclesiastical year of Moses.”

Not only was the semblance of Levitical ordinances brought down through the ages to these modern days, but also remnants of Gospel teachings and Gospel ordinances. So much so that it became a pet theory with many of the Catholic ecclesiastics that St. Thomas, of the Twelve Apostles, had visited America and ministered to her people. As an evidence that the Gospel had been taught to the forefathers of the Indians we submit the testimony of Herrara, who, in his ‘‘History of America,” states: “Baptism was known in Yucatan; the name they signified to be born again.” The italics are ours. “Original sin, repentance, vicarious atonement, a future Redeemer and the resurrection of the body” were also understood, with more or less clearness, as testified by Acosta, Martyr, Garcia and Torquemada.14

Gomara15 speaks of an oath which was administered by the high priest to the kings of Mexico at their coronation in which “they made a coven­ant with the people to protect the established religion, to preserve the laws and maintain justice.” This is almost identical with the oath taken by the ancient Nephite chief judges and governors (see Alma 50:39), in which they promised “to judge righteously, and to keep the peace, and the freedom of the people, and to grant unto them their sacred privileges to worship the Lord their God, yea, to support and maintain the cause of God all their days, and to bring the wicked to justice according to their crime.’

In conclusion we present the summary of identifications which appears in Lord Kingsborough’s “Mexican Antiquities.”

“The first reason for concluding the Indian tribes to be of Hebrew descent is in their belief in the symbolical purification of water. The inhabitants of Yucatan gave to water, with which they baptized their chil­dren, the title of the water of regeneration. The Indians of Yucatan in­voked Him, whom they believed to be the living and true God, of whom they made no graven image. The second reason for believing that the religion of the Indians was Judaism is, that they used circumcision. Third, that they expected a Messiah. The fourth, that many words connected with the celebration of their religious rites, were obviously of Hebrew extrac­tion. Fifth, that Las Casas, the bishop of Chiapa, who had the best means of verifying the fact, was of that opinion. Sixth, that the Jews them­selves, including some of the most eminent Rabbis, such as Menasse Ben Israel, and Montesinos, maintained it both by verbal statement and in writing. Seventh, the dilemma in which most of the Spanish writers, such as Acosta and Torquemada, have placed their readers, by leaving them no alternative, than to come to the decision, whether the Hebrews colonized America, and established their rites amongst the Indians; or whether the devil had counterfeited in the New World the rites and cere­monies which God gave to His chosen people. The eighth is the resem­blance which many ceremonies and rites of the Indians bear to those of the Jews. The ninth is the similitude which existed between the Indian and Hebrew moral laws. The tenth is the knowledge which the Mexican and Peruvian traditions supplied, that the Indians possessed the history contained in the Pentateuch. The eleventh is the Mexican tradition of the Teo-moxtli, or Divine Book of the Toltecs. Twelfth, is the famous migra­tion from Aztlan, (Asia). Thirteenth, the traces of Jewish history, traditions, laws, customs, manners, which are found in the Mexican paintings. Four­teenth, the frequency of sacrifice amongst the Indians, and the religious consecration of the blood and fat of the victims. Fifteenth, the style of the architecture of their temples. Sixteenth, the fringes which the Mexi­cans wore fastened to their garments. Seventeenth, a similarity of the manners and customs of the Indian tribes far removed from the central monarchies of Mexico and Peru, to those of the Jews, which writers who were not Spaniards, have noticed, such as Sir William Penn.”

Geo. Reynolds.

[To be continued.]