Whence Came the American Indians?

WHENCE CAME THE AMERICAN INDIANS?

James E. Talmage

OF THE COUNCIL OF THE TWELVE.

In the closing years of the seventh century B. C. there lived in Jerusalem a person of influence named Lehi. He was a righte­ous man and a prophet, of the tribe of Manasseh and therefore a descendant of Joseph, son of Jacob.

At the time of which we speak, Lehi and his wife were the parents of four sons, of whom the elder two were of disobedient and unruly character, in which respect they stood in striking contrast to their dutiful brothers. Other children, both sons and daughters, are of later mention.

Those were troublous days for Israel. The people had largely forgotten the God of their fathers; and the calamities voiced by Moses and the prophets, as the contingent result of sins against which the people had been specifically warned, were multiplying apace. Already the shadows of the Babylonian captivity were falling athwart the nation. Many prophets, Lehi among them, lifted their voices in admonition and warning, crying repentance to the recreant Israelites, and predicting that unless they turned from their wickedness the City of David, their national boast and pride, would be despoiled and Israel be made captive. Instead of heeding these men of God, the people went wild with resentment and tried to slay them.

In the year 600 B.C., when Zedekiah ascended the throne of Judah, the word of the Lord came to Lehi directing him to take his family and flee from Jerusalem into the wilderness of Arabia. The scattering of the Israelitish nation had been foretold, and the departure of Lehi and his household, together with another en­tire family which was of the tribe of Ephraim, and part of a third, was in line with the general dispersion. Had it not so been de­clared by Isaiah? “For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a rem­nant, and they that escape out of mount Zion: the zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this.” (II. Kings 19:31; also Isaiah 37:32).

The migrating colony journeyed by slow stages for about eight years in the desert, during which time Lehi and his faithful younger son Nephi received many revelations of the divine word and will, through which the purpose of their own exodus was made known, as were also the portending vicissitudes of the nation from which they had become expatriated by the Lord’s command. Eventually they reached the shores of the Arabian Sea, where, divinely directed, they built a vessel, in which they were carried by wind and current across the ocean to the western coast of America.

So long as unity prevailed the colony prospered in the Promised Land, and with high birth-rate and few deaths soon became a numerous people. With prosperity came pride and avarice, and the inevitable accompaniment, dissension. The more righteous part chose Nephi for their leader and called themselves Nephites, while the rebellious and evil faction came to be known as Lamanites or followers of Laman, who was the eldest and most wicked of Lehi’s sons.

As the decades linked themselves into centuries the breach be­tween Nephites and Lamanites became wider, the enmity fiercer, and the disparity in customs and culture greater; though for brief and exceptional periods there was truce between them. The Nephites maintained a relatively high standard of civilised ac­tivity, while the Lamanites became a degenerate people, of nomadic and predatory life, devoted mostly to warfare and the chase; and as a mark of divine displeasure they were cursed with a dark ruddy skin. Many and bloody were the wars they waged against their more peaceable contemporaries. Nevertheless the Nephites developed and throve in proportion to their varying degrees of allegiance to the laws of God, as made known by the succession of prophets whom the Lord raised up among them; and their departures from the ways of righteousness were followed by the disciplinary suffering incident to Lamanite victories, which were permitted to afflict them at intervals.

The Gospel of salvation was taught and the fundamental ordinances were administered among the Nephites; and the resurrected Lord, Jesus Christ, ministered among them in Person, and declared them to be the sheep of that other fold to which he had referred while preaching to the Jews. See John 10:10.

About 420 A.D., the Nephites, having fallen into wickedness all the more convicting because of their intellectual superiority, were destroyed as a nation by their hereditary enemies. The savage but victorious Lamanites have lived on as the degraded race of red men, whom Columbus found in the land on the occasion of his rediscovery of the Western Continent. Snell is the origin of the American Indians. They are of Israelitish descent, belonging to the House of Joseph who was sold into Egypt.

From the time of Lehi’s exodus from Jerusalem down to the end of Nephite history, a circumstantial record was kept by scribes set apart to the Work. That record has been restored to human knowledge, and the translated part has been given to the world as the Boole of Mormon. Embodied within it is a divinely in­spired assurance of personal testimony as to its truth or falsity, to everyone who shall read with pure purpose and desire. Read it, and learn for yourself.