http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/pdfnewsletters/116saltlakecitymessenger.pdf
p. 18 Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon
According to various accounts, some of the North American mounds also contained metal plates. Plates constructed by the Indians were usually made of hammered copper or silver and were sometimes etched. . . . In 1775 Indian trader James Adair described two brass plates and five copper plates found with the Tuccabatches Indians of North America. According to Adair, an Indian informant said “he was told by his forefathers that those plates were given to them by the man we call God; that there had been many more of other shapes, . . . some had writing upon them which were buried with particular men.” . . . Perhaps such discoveries of metal plates encouraged the persistent legend of a lost Indian book. The legend, as related by Congregational minister Ethan Smith [in his 1825 book, View of the Hebrews] of Poultney, Vermont, held that the Indians once had “a book which they had for a long time preserved. But having lost the knowledge of reading it, they concluded it would be of no further use to them; and they buried it with an Indian chief”
p. 11 Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon
Once the red men were many; they occupied the country from sea to sea— from the rising to the setting sun; the whole land was theirs; the Great Spirit gave it to them. . . . Thousands of moons ago, when the red men’s forefathers dwelt in peace and possessed this whole land, the Great Spirit talked with them, and revealed His law and His will, and much knowledge to their wise men and prophets. This they wrote in a Book; together with their history, and the things which should befall their children in the latter days. . . . This Book, which contained these things, was hid in the earth by Moroni, in a hill called by him, Cumorah, which hill is now in the State of New York, near the village of Palmyra, in Ontario county.1
p. 30 Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon
Mormon writers have traditionally associated these geographic areas with South America, the Isthmus of Panama, and the Great Lakes region. Accordingly, the Nephites landed on the western coast of South America about 589 B.C., founded a civilization, and eventually built the magnificent pyramids and temples found in Peru. Those in Joseph Smith’s day who believed that mound-builder culture commenced in the south and progressed northward would not have objected when Joseph explained that Lehi “landed on the continent of South America, in Chili [sic], thirty degrees south latitude” or when the editor of the Times and Seasons said Lehi “landed a little south of the Isthmus of Darien [Panama], and improved the country according to the word of the Lord.”69 Later the Nephites spread into “the land northward,” discovered the remains of the Jaredites, and built the cities in Central America, Mexico, and the Great Lakes region. The Jaredites, who had migrated from the tower of Babel and inhabited “the land northward” until their destruction shortly after the arrival of the Nephites, had rendered a portion of the land desolate of timber and littered the ground with their bones. Hence the Nephites called the region the “land of Desolation” (Al. 22:30-31; He. 3:3-6; Eth. 7:6). Joseph Smith and other early Mormons referred to North America, especially the prairies, as the “land of Desolation.”70 In 1844 John Taylor, then editor of the church’s official Times and Seasons, remarked that the Jaredites “probably made the present prairies by extensive cultivation.”71 Many in Joseph’s day believed that the prairies were created when the aborigines removed the forests to cultivate their crops.
p. 39-40 Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon
But the theory which received perhaps the greatest support and captured the popular imagination in Joseph Smith’s day was that which asserted that the Indians were the lost ten tribes of Israel. The theory is based on the apocryphal book 2 Esdras (written about A.D. 100), and included in some nineteenth-century editions of the Bible,which mentions the Assyrian captivity of the northern kingdom of Israel around 734 B.C. An angel shows Ezra a vision of a crowd of people, explaining: These are the ten tribes, which were carried away, prisoners out of their own land in the time of Osea the king, whom Shalmanaser the king of Assyria led away captive, and he carried them over the waters, and so came they into another land. But they took this counsel among themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the heathen, and go forth into a further country, where never mankind dwelt. . . . For through that country there was a great way to go, namely, of a year and a half: and the same region is called Arsareth. (13:40-41, 45, in KJV)
According to Montezinos, an Indian named Franciscus, learning that Montezinos was Hebrew, had taken him into the wilderness to meet a group of Jews. This tribe of “unknown people” disclosed to Montezinos that they were of the tribe of Reuben and recited the Hebrew formula: Shemah Israel Adonoy Elohenu Adonay Ehad (“Hear O Israel the Lord Our God the Lord is One”). They also reportedly revealed to him their plan to one day destroy the Spaniards, liberate the Indians, and govern the whole continent
p.43 Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon
Later that fall the Wayne Sentinel published another story about the Indian issue, printing a speech by Mordecai M. Noah, a prominent New York Jew who purchased Grand Island in the Niagara River and there dedicated the city of Ararat as a refuge for oppressed Jews around the world. In the dedicatory speech, Noah proclaimed that the Indians were “in all probability the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel.” Noah further remarked that the research of antiquarians showed the Indians to be “the lineal descendants of the Israelites,” and added, “My own researches go far to confirm me in the same belief.”45 He invited the Indians to join with their brother Jews on the Island. Using similar arguments, the following January the Susquehanna Register, a newspaper published in Pennsylvania not far from where Joseph Smith would later translate most of the Book of Mormon, reprinted the prospectus for a paper arguing that the Indians with few exceptions are “the literal descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”46