Metallurgy

Hopewell gold, sil­ver, cop­per, and mete­oric iron arti­facts have been ver­i­fied by mod­ern day arche­ol­o­gist. List­ed below are pic­tures of con­firmed Hopewell arti­facts and accounts of ear­ly settlers.

Ornate plates or sheets of cop­per (Fig­ure 7), as well as effi­gies, head­dress­es (Fig­ure 8), bracelets, and rings were found in the mound but not at the oth­er select­ed sites. Fig­ure 9 pro­vides an exam­ple of one of the orna­ments from the cop­per deposit in Mound 25. Even with­in the cat­e­go­ry of cop­per cutouts or sheets, great vari­ety was present in the spe­cif­ic shapes and forms. Ani­mals such as birds or fish were rep­re­sent­ed, as were geo­met­ric or oth­er more abstract forms, such as swastikas. How­ev­er, types such as celts, beads, bear teeth of cop­per, breast­plates, and but­tons were com­mon to oth­er sites. Moore­head (1922:118) lists a cop­per awl as com­ing from Mound 25, but this awl is not list­ed in Gre­ber and Ruhl (1989) or Case and Carr (2008:Appendices 6.1A, 6.2).”

(In ref­er­ence to mound ruins)

Besides, had the peo­ple who raised these works, been in pos­ses­sion of, and used ever so many tools, man­u­fac­tured from iron, by lying either on or under the earth, dur­ing all that long peri­od which has inter­vened between their authors and us, they would have long since oxy­dized by “rust­ing,” and left but faint traces of their exis­tence behind them.”
(Atwa­ter 1833 pg. 140)

(In ref­er­ence to Hopewell ruins)

Gold and sil­ver orna­ments have been found in many of the tumuli (mounds) in Ohio. Sil­ver very well plat­ed, has been found in sev­er­al of the mounds : cop­per in many: pipe bowls of cop­per, ham­mered, and not weld­ed togeth­er, but lapped over, have been found in them.”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 343)

Hopewell sil­ver ear­spools artifacts

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Hopewell cop­per bracelet

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Smelting

Arche­ol­o­gist have not con­firmed smelt­ing by Hopewell Indi­ans they have only spec­u­lat­ed. Ear­ly set­tlers found ancient Indi­an fur­naces and iron swords and tools that could have only been made by smelt­ing. The Hopewell Mann site has giv­en anthro­pol­o­gist anoth­er look of ancient smelt­ing. The fur­naces that anthro­pol­o­gist have found are believed to have been tam­pered with. It is no doubt the Hopewell and Ade­na Indi­ans were excel­lent met­al smiths and used heat to manip­u­lat­ed met­al into tools and weapons.

That may be answered in the last, and per­haps the most remark­able dis­cov­ery at Mann. Lin­der­man says sci­en­tists are start­ing tests on what appears to be evi­dence of lead smelt­ing. The prac­tice of melt­ing met­als at a very high tem­per­a­ture is just one of the many ques­tions archae­ol­o­gists will be confronting.”

(In ref­er­ence to Hopewell ruins)

There appears to have been a row of fur­naces or smiths’ shops, where the cin­ders now lie many feet in depth. The remains are four or five feet in depth even now in many places.”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 349)

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Arling­ton Mallery exca­vat­ed a long tube of iron slag from an Ade­na site in the Ohio Valley.

Breastplate/Head Plate Artifacts

Today’s anthro­pol­o­gist have found cop­per breast Plates and head plates met­al jew­el­ry and knifes. Pic­tured below are Hopewell Indi­an breast­plates and dig that found 92 cop­per and Iron breast­plates found still posi­tioned on top of skeletons.

Dis­cov­ered with a Skele­ton, near Fall Riv­er, Mass­a­chu­setts, in the year 1831. With this skele­ton were found a cor­rod­ed plate of brass, sup­posed to have con­sti­tut­ed a breastplate.”
(Squier 1849)

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Breast plate with pearl necklace

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Hopewell Head plate artifact:

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In this dig 92 cop­per and iron breast plates with skele­tons were found as shown in the picture.

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Swords

The Book of Mor­mon men­tions swords. Swords were found in Indi­an Hopewell mounds by ear­ly Amer­i­can set­tlers. Mod­ern arche­ol­o­gy has not con­firmed the use of iron smelt­ing by Hopewell Indi­ans or swords; they have con­firmed woven cloth cop­per breast plates, mete­oric iron tools, cop­per and sil­ver jew­el­ry and cop­per tools. Why mod­ern day archae­ol­o­gy has not con­firmed iron swords can be explained by two things:

1. The descrip­tion of the iron swords are of an extreme state of oxi­da­tion. Some of the swords had noth­ing left but the han­dle and iron oxide left for the blade.

2. When some swords were found ear­ly set­tlers assumed it to be of Euro­pean man­u­fac­ture and not of the native abo­rig­ines. Most researchers believed that abo­rig­ines did not make iron tools. The Hopewell and Ade­na have proven they did make and use met­al tools and weapons. In these cas­es list­ed below many of the swords were found in graves of the mound builders.

Alma 44:18

18 But behold, their naked skins and their bare heads were exposed to the sharp swords of the Nephites; yea, behold they were pierced and smit­ten, yea, and did fall exceed­ing­ly fast before the swords of the Nephites; and they began to be swept down, even as the sol­dier of Moroni had prophesied.

Mosi­ah 8:11. In ref­er­ence to Jared­ite swords

11 And again, they have brought swords, the hilts there­of have per­ished, and the blades there­of were cankered with rust;

In dig­ging the Louisville canal, nine­teen feet below the sur­face, with the coals of the last domes­tic fire upon them, medals of cop­per and sil­ver, swords and oth­er imple­ments of iron. Mr. Flint assures us that he has seen these strange ancient swords.”
(Conant, pg. 111, 1879)

(Items found in Hopewell Indi­an Ruins)

A few miles from the town of Colum­bia, in Mau­ry coun­ty, in West Ten­nessee, and on Duck riv­er, are a num­ber of for­ti­fi­ca­tions, … also, sev­er­al frag­ments of earth­en ware, and a sword about two feet long, dif­fer­ing from any in use since the white peo­ple vis­it­ed the coun­try, appar­ent­ly once high­ly pol­ished, but now much eat­en with rust. Those who buried these arti­cles there, could fash­ion the sword, and could make bricks, and use them by the mason­ic art.”
(Hay­wood 1823, pg. 179)

(The sword at this site was found in the state of New York by Smith­son­ian Researchers)

Engrav­ings of the sil­ver-plat­ed discs and also of the embossed sil­ver plate sup-posed by Dr. Hil­dreth to have been a sword orna­ment, are here­with pre­sent­ed. These arti­cles have been crit­i­cal­ly exam­ined, and it is beyond doubt that the cop­per “boss­es” are absolute­ly plat­ed, not sim­ply over­laid, with sil­ver. Between the cop­per and the sil­ver exists a con­nec­tion, such as, it seems to me, could only be pro­duced by heat…. Again, if Dr. Hil­dreth is not mis­tak­en, oxy­dized iron, or steel, was also dis­cov­ered in con­nec­tion with the above remains ; from which also fol­lows, as a neces­si­ty upon the pre­vi­ous assump­tion, the extra­or­di­nary con­clu­sion that the mound-builders were acquaint­ed with the use of iron,”
(Squier, pg. 87)

(Items found in Hopewell Indi­an Ruins)

On the back side, oppo­site the depressed por­tion, is a cop­per riv­et or nail, around which are two sep­a­rate plates, by which they were fas­tened to the leather. Two small pieces of the leather were found lying between the holes of one of the boss­es. They resem­ble the skin of an old mum­my. The plates of cop­per are near­ly reduced to rust. Around the riv­et of one of them is a quan­ti­ty of flax or hemp in a tol­er­a­ble state of preser­va­tion. Near the side of the human body was a plate of sil­ver, the upper part of a sword scab­bard, six inch­es long, two wide, weigh­ing one ounce. Three lon­gi­tu­di­nal ridges were on it, which per­haps cor­re­spond­ed with the edges or ridges of the sword.”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 347)

(An iron sword was found in a North Car­oli­na mound. Due to this item Cryus Thomas who believed that the mounds were built after the Euro­peans arrived. We know the Hopewell mounds were built before Columbus)

The iron imple­ments which are allud­ed to in the above-men­tioned arti­cles also in Sci­ence, as found in a North Car­oli­na mound. “
iron sword (3)
(Cyrus Thomas 1889 pg. 31)

(Items found in Hopewell Indi­an Ruins)

The iron was con­sid­er­ably oxi­dat­ed, and when exposed to the air, dis­solved and fell into small par­ti­cles of rust, leav­ing only the han­dle, which was thick, and cen­tral parts adher­ing togeth­er. There were four or five of these swords, if we may so call them. The han­dle was round and cylin­dri­cal, and encir­cled with fer­ules or rings of silver.”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 328)

(Items found in Hopewell Indi­an Ruins)

The abo­rig­ines had some very well man­u­fac­tured swords and knives of iron, and pos­si­bly of steel.”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 349)

(Items found in Hopewell Indi­an Ruins)

Where the mak­ers of bricks, swords and entrench­ments lived, and could not fail to have some sur­plus com­modi­ties to exchange for those for­eign coins.”
(Hay­wood 1823, pg. 177)

Metal Plates

It’s a fact that Hopewell Indi­an made met­al sheets. There are tra­di­tion­al Indi­an accounts of met­al plate being used as records.

Hela­man 3:13

13 And now there are many records kept of the pro­ceed­ings of this peo­ple, by many of this peo­ple, which are par­tic­u­lar and very large, con­cern­ing them.

(In ref­er­ence to Hopewell ruins)

In Vir­ginia, near Wheel­ing on Grave creek, is a mound 75 feet high, with many small­er ones around it. In the inte­ri­or parts of this mound, are found human hones of large size, and mixed with them are two or three plates of brass, with char­ac­ters inscribed resem­bling letters.”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 82)

(In ref­er­ence to Hopewell ruins)

The shape of the two brass plates, — about a foot and a half in diam­e­ter. He 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 as long as he could stretch with both his arms, and some had writ­ing upon them which were buried with par­tic­u­lar men; and that they had instruc­tions giv­en with them, they must only be han­dled by par­tic­u­lar peo­ple, ….He said, none but this town’s peo­ple had any such plates giv­en them, and that they were a dif­fer­ent peo­ple from the Creeks. He only remem­bered three more, which were buried with three of his fam­i­ly, and he was the only man of the fam­i­ly now left. He said, there were two cop­per plates under the king’s cab­bin, which had lain there from the first set­tling of the town. This account was tak­en in the Tuc­ca­batchey-square, 27th July, 1759, per Will, Bolsover. “
(Adair 1775 pg. 178)

(In ref­er­ence to Hopewell ruins)

In the inte­ri­or parts of this mound, are found human bones of large size, and mixed with them are two or three plates of brass, with char­ac­ters inscribed resem­bling let­ters. A mound near Chill­i­cothe being removed, dis­cov­ered near the bot­tom, in a cav­i­ty, the remains of some chieftain.”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 82)

(In ref­er­ence to Hopewell ruins)

There are cer­tain enchant­ed beads, cer­tain thin plates of cop­per, of which extra­or­di­nary fig­ures are engraved, with inex­plic­a­ble words and unknown characters.”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 346)

Accord­ing to Mor­gan, the Musco­gee prop­er, and per­haps also their incor­po­rat­ed tribes, have 22 clans. Of these the Wind appears to be the lead­ing one, pos­sess­ing priv­i­leges accord­ed to no oth­er clan, includ­ing the hered­i­tary guardian­ship of the ancient met­al tablets which con­sti­tute the pal­la­di­um of the tribe.” (Palladium’s mean­ing in the 19th and 18th cen­tu­ry: for safe­ty)
(Mooney 1902 pg. 499)

To sup­port their pre­ten­sions, this fam­i­ly hold in their pos­ses­sion a cir­cu­lar plate of vir­gin cop­per, on which is rude­ly marked inden­ta­tions and hiero­glyph­ics denot­ing the num­ber of gen­er­a­tions of the fam­i­ly who have passed away since they first pitched their lodges at Shaug-a-waum-ik-ong and took pos­ses­sion of the adja­cent coun­try, includ­ing the Island of La Pointe or Mo-ning­wun-a-kaun-ing… The old chief kept it care­ful­ly buried in the ground, and sel­dom dis­played it.”
(Williams, pg. 63)

Above these is the arch of the heav­ens, with Roman numer­als and Ara­bic fig­ures scat­tered through and above it. The fig­ure eight is repeat­ed three times, the let­ter O repeat­ed sev­en times. With these famil­iar char­ac­ters are ethers which resem­ble let­ters of ancient alpha­bets, either Phoeni­cian or Hebrew.”
(Peet 1892, pg. 45)

Pic­tured below is a tablet of unknown char­ac­ters from Stephen D Peet’s book The Mound Builders Their Work and Relics.

tablet

Metal Bow

Nephi had a steel bow. Some of the swords found be ear­ly set­tlers were believed to be iron or steel. Here is an ear­ly account of find­ing a steel bow.

I have been told by an eye wit­ness, that a few years ago, near Blacks­burgh in Vir­ginia, eighty miles from Mari­et­ta, there was found about half of a steel bow, which, when entire, would mea­sure five or six feet; the oth­er part was cor­rod­ed or bro­ken. The father of the man who found it was a black­smith, and worked up this curi­ous arti­cle, I sup­pose, with as lit­tle remorse as he would an old gun-bar­rel. Mounds are very fre­quent in that neigh­bour­hood, and many curi­ous arti­cles of Antiq­ui­ty have been found there.”
(Atwa­ter 1833, pg. 176)

A few years ago, near Blacks­burg in Vir­ginia, 8 (5 miles from Mari­et­ta, was found about the half of a steel bow, which when entire would have mea­sured five or six feet.”
(Hay­wood 1823, pg. 349)

Coins

Arche­ol­o­gist have not found coins yet but I believe that set­tlers went through the mounds and areas and picked up items of val­ue as did John Hay­wood and oth­ers. For the most part, I believe that any unknown or strange coins found by set­tlers or his­to­ri­ans would not have been attrib­uted to Native Amer­i­can manufacture.

Hay­wood and Atwa­ter found coins in Hopewell Indi­an mounds. Hay­wood believed the mound builders trad­ed their swords and met­al work with Romans dur­ing ancient times receiv­ing in their place Roman coins.

(Con­cern­ing Hopewell Indi­an artifacts)

Rea­son­able to con­clude that a civ­i­lized race of men once lived on Elk and Duck rivers, who car­ried on com­merce, used coined mon­ey, and forged iron into tools. And, more­over, had inter­course with nations who had at least com­mer­cial con­nex­ions, medi­ate­ly or imme­di­ate­ly, with the Roman Empire.”
(Hay­wood 1823, pg. 177)

Where the mak­ers of bricks, swords and entrench­ments lived, and could not fail to have some sur­plus com­modi­ties to exchange for those for­eign coins.”
(Hay­wood 1823, pg. 177)

Of all the Roman coins that have been found in Ten­nessee and Ken­tucky, the ear­li­est bears date in the time of Anton­i­nus, the next in the time of Commodus.”
(Hay­wood 1823, pg. 183)

First. On the farm of Mr. Edward Payne, near Lex­ing­ton, were found two ancient coins; one was of gold, and sold for 13 dol­lars: the oth­er was of brass. Each had a head reversed, and both were inscribed with char­ac­ters not under­stood, but said to resem­ble Hebrew. The date of the gold coin was prob­a­bly 1214, and the date of the brass piece 1009.”
(Hay­wood 1823, pg. 343)

Sev­er­al Roman coins, said to have been found in. a cave near Nashville, in Ten­nessee, bear­ing date not many cen­turies after the Chris­t­ian era, have excit­ed some inter­est among Antiquarians.”
(Atwa­ter 1833, pg. 119)

In Har­ri­son Coun­ty, I have been cred­i­bly informed, that sev­er­al coins were found, near an ancient work.”
(Atwa­ter 1833, pg. 118)

When to these are added the con­sid­er­a­tions insep­a­ra­ble from oth­er like instances, in the neigh­bour­hood of Ten­nessee, where strange coins have been found, some with super­scrip­tions in unknown characters.”
(Hay­wood 1823, pg. 178)

Mr. Spear found under the roots of a beech tree which had been blown up, two pieces of cop­per coin, of the size of our old cop­per pence. On one side was rep­re­sent­ed an eagle, with three heads unit­ed to one neck.”
(Hay­wood 1823, pg. 179)

At Cir­cleville a cop­per coin was tak­en from the cen­tral mound, from beneath the roots of a hick­o­ry grow­ing on the mound, sev­en or eight inch­es in cir­cum­fer­ence. It has no resem­blance in its devices to any British or oth­er coins to which it hath been compared.”
(Hay­wood 1823, pg. 342)

Above Hills­bor­ough in North Car­oli­na, and near the remains of a town which had been desert­ed in very remote times, was picked up, about the year 1805 or 1804, a round piece of cop­per about the size of an Amer­i­can eagle. On both sides was a short line of let­ters, with par­al­lel lines increas­ing in length till past the cen­ter, whence they decreased in length to the bot­tom, accom­mo­dat­ing them­selves to the round­ed shape of the cop­per. It was neat­ly exe­cut­ed. The let­ters were of some unknown alpha­bet. This cop­per was dropped again on the same plan­ta­tion, where prob­a­bly it now is.”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 343)

Mound Fortifications

Hopewell/Nephite Indi­ans built mound for­ti­fi­ca­tions as a defense against invad­ing Indi­an tribes. The Hopewell civ­i­liza­tions match­es the Book of Mor­mon not only because of the time­line, but because of earth­en mounds around all their cities, as stat­ed in Alma 50:1.

Alma 50:1

1 And now it came to pass that Moroni did not stop mak­ing prepa­ra­tions for war, or to defend his peo­ple against the Laman­ites; for he caused that his armies should com­mence in the com­mence­ment of the twen­ti­eth year of the reign of the judges, that they should com­mence in dig­ging up heaps of earth round about all the cities, through­out all the land which was pos­sessed by the Nephites.

Alma 49:4

4 But behold, how great was their dis­ap­point­ment; for behold, the Nephites had dug up a ridge of earth round about them, which was so high that the Laman­ites could not cast their stones and their arrows at them that they might take effect, nei­ther could they come upon them save it was by their place of entrance.

Alma 50:2–4

2 And upon the top of these ridges of earth he caused that there should be tim­bers, yea, works of tim­bers built up to the height of a man, round about the cities.

3 And he caused that upon those works of tim­bers there should be a frame of pick­ets built upon the tim­bers round about; and they were strong and high.

4 And he caused tow­ers to be erect­ed that over­looked those works of pick­ets, and he caused places of secu­ri­ty to be built upon those tow­ers, that the stones and the arrows of the Laman­ites could not hurt them.

Description of the Hopewell Pollock Stockade

It con­sists of a series of earth­en embank­ments rang­ing from three to ten feet in height that par­tial­ly enclose a large, 120-acre, plateau locat­ed along Massie Creek.

Robert Rior­dan, an archae­ol­o­gist with Wright State Uni­ver­si­ty, has direct­ed many sea­sons of exca­va­tions at the Pol­lock Works reveal­ing a com­pli­cat­ed site his­to­ry. The works appear to have been con­struct­ed in five major stages begin­ning as ear­ly as AD 50. One of these stages involved the erec­tion of a large, tim­ber stock­ade along the top of the earth­en embankments.”

When Squier described this site he said with a sim­ple stock­ade this site would be impreg­nable. He did not know but archae­o­log­i­cal exca­va­tion showed that at one time the Pol­lock Works did have a tim­ber stockade.

I could not find a recon­struc­tion of Hopewell Indi­an stock­ade but did find a recon­struct­ed stock­ade at Angel Mounds. The stock­ade show below dates past the Book of Mor­mon and Hopewell time­line to 1100AD-1450AD. I can only assume the build­ing of defen­sive struc­tures con­tin­ued to be built by the Laman­ites until the prac­tice of build­ing fortress­es even­tu­al­ly died out altogether:

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Angel Mound

Archae­o­log­i­cal exca­va­tion revealed that the town was sur­round­ed by a stock­ade, with the Ohio Riv­er act­ing as a bar­ri­er on the south side. A gate­way was placed to the east, about a fourth of the way around from where the east­ern flank of the stock­ade meets the riv­er. A sec­ond bar­ri­er, a type of pick­et fence, was set 14 feet (4.3 m) out­side the stock­ade. It was designed to slow the attack­ers as they came into range.

In 1972 the park recon­struct­ed part of the stock­ade, based on archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence. It stands 12′ high and is made of wood­en posts set 4 feet deep into a nar­row trench. The posts are cov­ered with wat­tle and daub, a loose weav­ing of sticks cov­ered with a mud-and-grass plas­ter. The defen­sive bas­tions were also recon­struct­ed, which had been built every 10 to 11 feet (3.4 m) and pro­ject­ed 11 to 12 feet (3.7 m) from the wall. The orig­i­nal peo­ple planned the bas­tions at dis­tances which defend­ers could cov­er with arrows or lances, thus pro­tect­ing the walls from a direct attack.”

From one of these to anoth­er is about two arrow­shot; so that the archers in the tow­ers would be able to defend the whole dis­tance of the wall between them; while those in front could ward off the assailants at the passage”
(Thad­deus Mason Har­ris, The Jour­nal of a tour into the Ter­ri­to­ry North­west of the Alleghany Moun­tain; 1805)

Col. M. asked him if he could not tell who made those old forts, which dis­played so much skill in for­ti­fy­ing. He answered that he did not know, but that a sto­ry had been hand­ed down from a very long ago peo­ple, that there had been a nation of white peo­ple inhab­it­ing the coun­try who made the graves and forts.”
(M.H. Frost 1819; On the abo­rig­ines of the West­ern Countries)

John Cushen, an Indi­an of truth and respectabil­i­ty, hav­ing point­ed to the large mound in the town of Chill­i­cothe, observed to a gen­tle­man that it was a great curios­i­ty. To this the gen­tle­man accord­ed, and said, The Indi­ans built that. No, said he, it was made by white folks, for Indi­ans nev­er make forts or mounds — this coun­try was inhab­it­ed by white peo­ple once.”
(M.H. Frost 1819; On the abo­rig­ines of the West­ern Countries)

Concerning Hopewell Indian Mounds

In one of the plates of Lapiteau’s work, there is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of an attack on an Indi­an fort, which is evi­dent­ly con­struct­ed upon one of the mounds: its form is cir­cu­lar, the enclo­sure of large pick­ets and heavy beams on the out­side, extend­ing to the ground on which the mound stands. Those inside defend them­selves with stones, arrows, &c. while the assailants are either aim­ing their arrows at such as appear above the wall.”
(Brack­en­ridge 1811 pg. 185)

The care which is every­where vis­i­ble, about these ruins, to pro­tect every part from a foe with­out; the high plain on which they are sit­u­at­ed, which is gen­er­al­ly forty feet above the coun­try around it; …they speak vol­umes in favour of the sagac­i­ty of their authors”
(Atwa­ter 1833 pg. 130)

Imlay, in his fan­ci­ful descrip­tion of Ken­tucky, asserts that the Indi­ans were not acquaint­ed with the use of fortifications.”
(Brack­en­ridge 1811 pg. 183)

Alma 48:8

8 Yea, he had been strength­en­ing the armies of the Nephites, and erect­ing small forts, or places of resort; throw­ing up banks of earth round about to enclose his armies, and also build­ing walls of stone to encir­cle them about, round about their cities and the bor­ders of their lands; yea, all round about the land.

Could bricks be of any use to the ancient inhab­i­tants, with­out the trow­el and the mason­ic art, not to men­tion the build­ing of stone walls?”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 189)

Mass Burial Pits and Battlegrounds

Two thirds of the Book of Mor­mon is about wars between the Laman­ites and Nephites. Large bone pits and piles were found in the state of New York and oth­er states. These large bone pits are sup­port­ive evi­dence of the bat­tles that took place between Nephites and Lamanites.

In the last bat­tles Mor­mon states that bod­ies of the Nephites were heaped into piles (Mor­mon 2:15).

New York State:

It was called the “Bone Fort,” from the cir­cum­stance that the ear­ly set­tlers found with­in it a mound, six feet in height by thir­ty at the base, which was entire­ly made up of human bones slight­ly cov­ered with earth… The pop­u­lar opin­ion con­cern­ing this accu­mu­la­tion is, that it con­tained the bones of the slain, thus heaped togeth­er after some severe battle.”
(Squier 1849)

Ken­tucky:

Half a mile from this place, at the foot of the moun­tain, in a large cave full of human bones, per­haps sev­er­al wag­on loads; some of which are small, and oth­ers very large”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 153)

New York State:

The bones were of indi­vid­u­als of both sex­es and of all ages. Among them were a few fetal bones. Many of the skulls bore marks of vio­lence, lead­ing to the belief that they were bro­ken before burial.”
(Squier 1849)

Illi­nois:

Mr. Ramey, the own­er of the mound, speaks about dig­ging in one part of the field and find­ing heaps of bones eight feet deep, and says that the bones are every­where present.”
(Peet 1892 pg. 163)

New York State:

Human bones have been dis­cov­ered beneath the leaves; and in near­ly every part of the trench skele­tons of adults of both sex­es, of chil­dren, and infants, have been found, cov­ered only by the veg­etable accu­mu­la­tions. They seem to have been thrown togeth­er promiscuously.”
(Squier 1849)

New York State:

Among them may be men­tioned the “bone-pits,” or deposits of human bones. One is found near the vil­lage of Brownsville, on Black Riv­er. It is described as a pit, ten or twelve feet square, by per­haps four feet deep, in which are promis­cu­ous­ly heaped togeth­er a large num­ber of human skeletons.”
(Squier 1849)

Cloth and Fine Twined Linen

Anthro­pol­o­gist arche­o­log­i­cal digs have shown that Hopewell Indi­ans made their own woven cloth.

Hela­man 6:13

13 Behold their women did toil and spin, and did make all man­ner of cloth, of fine-twined linen and cloth of every kind, to clothe their nakedness.

The relics which are most numer­ous are spear-heads, arrow-heads, … nee­dles, and occa­sion­al­ly spec­i­mens of woven fiber, which might have formed the cloth­ing for a rude peo­ple, and a few spec­i­mens of the high­er works of art”
(Peet 1892 pg. 25)

Below is an arti­fact of Hopewell/Nephite cloth:

image029.jpg

More Hopewell Cloth Artifacts:

image030.jpg

http://​apps​.ohio​his​to​ry​.org/​o​h​i​o​a​r​c​h​a​e​o​l​o​g​y​/​t​o​p​-​t​e​n​-​m​a​s​t​e​r​p​i​e​c​e​s​-​o​f​-​t​h​e​-​h​o​p​e​w​e​l​l​-​c​u​l​t​u​r​e​-​r​e​v​ealed/

Item (A) Hopewell Neck­lace and (B) Hopewell Buttons:

image031.jpg

Woven Cloth Worn as Clothing

Hopewell Indi­an use of woven cloth match­es the Book of Mor­mon descrip­tion of Nephites wear­ing woven cloth­ing and in some instances it being described as a sta­tus symbol.

4 Nephi 1:24

24 And now, in this two hun­dred and first year there began to be among them those who were lift­ed up in pride, such as the wear­ing of cost­ly appar­el, and all man­ner of fine pearls, and of the fine things of the world.

Skele­ton 248 had been dressed in a skirt of fine­ly woven cloth extend­ing from the waist to the knees, to which had been sewn pearls, bears-teeth, and oth­er ornaments.”
(Moore­head 1922 pg. 169)

Unar­guable Mis­sis­sip­pi­an peri­od rep­re­sen­ta­tions of gar­ments do exist, and these make cred­i­ble the inter­pre­ta­tion of the bur­ial 103 fab­ric as a pos­si­ble gar­ment. For exam­ple, Phillips and Brown (1978: Plate 20) illus­trate frag­ments of a Spiro engraved shell cup that depicts male human fig­ures wear­ing tunics that cov­er one shoul­der and a por­tion of the chest. One of a group of six human fig­ures engraved on the Rocky Creek lime­stone slab (Park­er 1949:Figure 2) is shown wear­ing a cloak-like gar­ment that cov­ers the shoul­ders, one arm, all but the low­er part of the oth­er arm, and the entire torso.”
(A Most Indis­pens­able Art: Native Fiber Indus­tries from East­ern North Amer­i­ca, by James B. Petersen)

Equiv­o­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tions of gar­ments over the upper body include two almost iden­ti­cal shell gor­gets from Mound C at Etowah, one of which came from the 1884 BAE exca­va­tions (Thomas 1894:Figure 190), and the oth­er (unpub­lished) from bur­ial 19 exca­vat­ed in 1954 by Lar­son. The dual human fig­ures have the upper body and arms cov­ered with par­al­lel lines that may rep­re­sent a garment…”
(A Most Indis­pens­able Art: Native Fiber Indus­tries from East­ern North Amer­i­ca, by James B. Petersen)

The elite nature of the fab­ric evi­dence and the bur­ial con­text war­rants such in infer­ence here. Mound C appar­ent­ly sup­port­ed a mor­tu­ary tem­ple which, in turn served as the focus of an elab­o­rate com­plex of funer­ary rit­u­als asso­ci­at­ed with a high sta­tus social group at Etowah.”
(Lar­son 1971)

Extensive Trade System and Zelph

In May and June 1834 Joseph Smith led a Mor­mon group (a para­mil­i­tary expe­di­tion known as Zion’s Camp) on a march from Kirt­land, Ohio to Jack­son Coun­ty, Mis­souri. On June 3, while pass­ing through west-cen­tral Illi­nois near Grig­gsville, some bones were unearthed from a mound. These bones were iden­ti­fied by Smith as belong­ing to a Laman­ite chief­tain-war­rior named Zelph. The mound in ques­tion is now known as Naples-Rus­sell Mound 8.

At about one foot deep we dis­cov­ered the skele­ton of a man, almost entire; and between two of his ribs we found an Indi­an arrow, which had evi­dent­ly been the cause of his death. Sub­se­quent­ly the visions of the past being opened to my under­stand­ing by the Spir­it of the Almighty, I dis­cov­ered that the per­son whose skele­ton was before us was a white Laman­ite, a large, thick­set man, and a man of God. His name was Zelph. He was a war­rior and chief­tain under the great prophet Onanda­gus, who was known from the Hill Cumorah, or east­ern sea to the Rocky Moun­tains.” The Hopewell Indi­ans made high­ways and had an advanced trade sys­tem that extend­ed to the Rocky Moun­tains. Joseph Smith vision of Zelph match­es the exten­sive trade of the Hopewell Indians.

The Prophet Onanda­gus is not men­tioned in the Book of Mor­mon, but he could have ties to the Ononda­ga Tribe whose tra­di­tion­al lands are in the state of New York.

Animals

Horses, Chariots, Highways, and Trade

The Book of Mor­mon men­tions hors­es and char­i­ots. Anthro­pol­o­gist state that North Amer­i­can hors­es went extinct around 11000 BC. Horse bones dat­ing to 7000 BC were found lat­er. To know exact­ly when each horse, ele­phant, and cow went extinct has to be an unsure sci­ence. Inter­est­ing­ly, once again it is believed that the Clo­vis peo­ple (who I believe are the same Nephite/Lamanite peo­ples men­tioned in the Book of Mor­mon) who caused this extinction.

The Hopewell/Nephites had advanced high­way trade. The Great Hopewell Road a road made by the Hopewell is 60 miles long from Newark to Chill­i­cothe. Hopewell trade stretched to the Rocky Moun­tains to the Gulf of Mex­i­co. This is known because obsid­i­an Hopewell arti­facts in plen­ti­ful sup­ply are from the Rocky Moun­tains from New Mex­i­co to Mon­tana. It might have also stretched to Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca. Jaguar teeth and slant­ed eye fig­urines more com­mon to cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca by the Mayans were found at the Mann Hopewell site in Indiana.

The ques­tions becomes: did the Hopewell trav­el thou­sands miles to the Gulf Coast and to the Rocky Moun­tains and beyond car­ry­ing sup­plies and com­modi­ties by hand and foot? I would con­tend it was by horse and char­i­ot. It seems implau­si­ble that their exten­sive and advanced trade sys­tem could be main­tained with­out horse and chariot.

Just like Nephi brought over met­al­lur­gy, breast­plates, swords, coins, and cloth tech­nol­o­gy, why not also the use of hors­es and chariots?

It is a known fact that man had inter­ac­tion with hors­es. Pre-Columbian Clo­vis spear points were found in Col­orado that had horse pro­tein on the spear point.
http://​www​.aca​d​e​mi​c​room​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​i​d​e​n​t​i​f​i​c​a​t​i​o​n​-​h​o​r​s​e​-​e​x​p​l​o​i​t​a​t​i​o​n​-​c​l​o​v​i​s​-​h​u​n​t​e​r​s​-​b​a​s​e​d​-​p​r​o​t​e​i​n​-​a​n​alysis
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_spear_points

(In ref­er­ence to a pet­ro­glyph found in Massachusetts)

In anoth­er scene, there is a ves­sel, with its masts, flags, and long rud­der, as in the ori­en­tal ves­sels at this day. There is the fig­ure of a horse, which is the well-known sym­bol of Carthage.”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 329)

Elephants/Mammoths

The Book of Mor­mon men­tions ele­phants. There is both arche­o­log­i­cal evi­dence of human inter­ac­tions of Mam­moths and Indi­an leg­end of Mam­moths. When Hay­wood was going through the mounds in his area he assumed that the Indi­ans were rais­ing mam­moths because mam­moth bones were found among human bones. They also found Indi­an pipes in the shape of elephants.

In one Iro­quois leg­end about a large beast that caused hav­oc in a vil­lage. David Cusick attrib­ut­es this beast to being a mastodon.

Man hunt­ing mam­moths has been con­firmed by arche­ol­o­gist. It is believed by some sci­en­tist that human hunt­ing caused the Mam­moth to become extinct.

The Naco Mam­moth Kill Site is an archae­o­log­i­cal site in south­east Ari­zona, near Naco, Ari­zona. The site was report­ed to the Ari­zona State Muse­um in Sep­tem­ber 1951 by Marc Navar­rete, a local res­i­dent, after his father found two Clo­vis points in Green­bush Draw, while dig­ging out the fos­sil bones of a mam­moth. Emil Hau­ry exca­vat­ed the Naco mam­moth site in April 1952. In only five days, Hau­ry recov­ered the remains of a Columbian Mam­moth that had been killed by the use of at least 8 Clo­vis points…“

(Con­cern­ing items found in a Hopewell mound)

The fourth dis­cov­ery con­sist­ed of a carved stone pipe, also in the shape of an ele­phant or mastodon.”
(Peet 1892 pg. 163)

Ele­phant pipe depic­tions are from The Mound Builders Their Work and Relics by Stephen D Peet PhD.

elephant

elephant

The lat­ter (neck­lace) may have been pro­duced in Amer­i­ca, but the ivory beads most prob­a­bly came from India; or the coun­try in its vicin­i­ty, where the ele­phant is raised, and the ivory worked.”
(Hay­wood 1823, pg. 82)

At the time they found the grave above men­tioned, they also found oth­er graves, and small pieces of decayed human bones, and bones of ani­mals, amongst which was the jaw bone with the tusk attached to it, of some unknown ani­mal. The jaw bone is about a foot long, hav­ing at the extrem­i­ty a tusk one inch and a half in length. The tusk is in the same form as that of Cuvier’s mastodon, but has more curvature.”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 126)

Cattle

Book of Mor­mon men­tions cat­tle which is a crit­i­cism for the Book of Mor­mon say­ing there is no proof. It’s a known fact that three species of cat­tle (Bison lat­ifrons, Ovi­bos cav­ifrons, Bison antiqu­us,) roamed what is now Hopewell Indi­an lands. It’s believed that the Clo­vis peo­ple once again caused the extinc­tion of these ani­mals. Any ani­mals that became extinct by the Clo­vis peo­ple will be attrib­uted to the Nephites in this essay. The gen­er­al­ly accept­ed the­o­ry of the Clo­vis spear point does not match up with the Book of Mor­mon ‚but as I stat­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, the cur­rent the­o­ries of the Clo­vis peo­ple are put into ques­tion with the giv­en arche­o­log­i­cal, lin­guis­tic, cul­tur­al and DNA evidence.

But spec­i­mens (Ovi­bos cav­ifrons) of this species have been exca­vat­ed in Louisiana, Mis­sis­sip­pi, Ten­nessee, and Vir­ginia; sug­gest­ing the south­ern lim­its of its range prob­a­bly extend­ed into the Geor­gia piedmont.”

https://​markgel​bart​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​0​/​0​6​/​1​1​/​w​e​r​e​-​t​h​e​r​e​-​t​h​r​e​e​-​s​p​e​c​i​e​s​-​o​f​-​b​o​v​i​n​e​-​r​o​a​m​i​n​g​-​s​o​u​t​h​e​a​s​t​e​r​n​-​n​o​r​t​h​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​-​d​u​r​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​l​a​t​e​-​p​l​e​i​s​t​ocene/

Goats

An indige­nous species of goat the Har­ing­ton goat lived on the Amer­i­can con­ti­nent but went extinct with the oth­er 25 ani­mals. I believe that the Clo­vis peo­ple (Nephites and Laman­ites) caused its extinction.

Below is a Hopewell goat horn cop­per artifact.
hopewell-goat-horn-copper

Sheep

Sheep are men­tioned by the Jared­ites but the Nephites only men­tion sheep in para­ble. I believe the Jared­ites brought over sheep but dur­ing times of famine as stat­ed in the Book of Ether there sheep became extinct (Ether 10:1, Ether 11:7). In the book of Enos chap­ter 2:21 it men­tions types of ani­mal the Nephites raised and flocks that they had. It men­tions that they had flocks of all man­ner of cat­tle but sheep is not mentioned.

21 And it came to pass that the peo­ple of Nephi did till the land, and raise all man­ner of grain, and of fruit, and flocks of herds, and flocks of all man­ner of cat­tle of every kind, and goats, and wild goats, and also many horses.

The only time the Nephites men­tion sheep is in para­ble. Because of this I’m going to assume that the men­tion of flocks by the Nephites is in ref­er­ence only to cat­tle, goats and horses.

Bees

Book of Mor­mon men­tions bees but bees as of this point are not found in Amer­i­ca pre-Colum­bus. The Book of Mor­mon states that the Jared­ites col­lect­ed bees then brought them on their ship and sailed to Amer­i­ca. Since bees and hon­ey are nev­er men­tioned by the Jared­ites or Nephites while in the land of promise I’m assum­ing the bees did not sur­vive the voyage.

Cureloms and Cumoms

Cureloms and Cumoms are two types of ani­mals men­tioned in the Book of Mor­mon by the Jared­ites that they con­sid­ered use­ful. It’s believed the Clo­vis peo­ple caused 25 dif­fer­ent ani­mals to go extinct one can pick and choose from this list which ani­mal best fits this descrip­tion. It could be a camel indige­nous to North Amer­i­ca or a ground sloth the size of a bear. Both of these ani­mal went extinct at the same time as the cat­tle and Har­ing­ton goat and cameloid pro­tein has been found Clo­vis spear points. Once again I believe the dat­ing of when every sin­gle ani­mal of a par­tic­u­lar species went extinct and is incorrect.

https://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​L​i​s​t​_​o​f​_​N​o​r​t​h​_​A​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​_​a​n​i​m​a​l​s​_​e​x​t​i​n​c​t​_​i​n​_​t​h​e​_​H​o​locene

Ether 9:19

19 And they also had hors­es, and ass­es, and there were ele­phants and cureloms and cumoms; all of which were use­ful unto man, and more espe­cial­ly the ele­phants and cureloms and cumoms.

Barley and Wheat in Hopewell Agriculture

Hopewell Indi­ans were agri­cul­tur­al­ist and grew lit­tle bar­ley and may grass in my opin­ion accept­able sub­sti­tu­tions for the men­tion of bar­ley and wheat grown by the Nephites – May grass and wheat are both types of grass seed

Unknown Characters and Language

Mor­mon 9:34 – But the Lord knoweth the things which we have writ­ten, and also that none oth­er peo­ple knoweth our lan­guage; and because that none oth­er peo­ple knoweth our language…

I believe that hap­logroup X or the Nephites brought over a dis­tinct lan­guage and cul­ture. There is evi­dence that the Great Lake Indi­ans have a unique and dif­fer­ent lan­guage from sur­round­ing tribes.

(Gaspesian/Micmac Indi­ans Pro­posed Nephite/ Hopewell survivors)

The Gaspe­sian lan­guage has noth­ing at all in com­mon, in its expres­sions, any more than in the mean­ing of its words, with the lan­guages of our Europe ….because, amidst an infin­i­ty of dif­fer­ent tongues which pre­vail among all these peo­ples, our Gaspe­sians are dis­tin­guished from the Mon­tag­niez, Soquo­qui, Aben­naqui, Hurons, Algo­mquins, Iro­quois, and oth­er nations of this new world, by a lan­guage which is pecu­liar to them.”
(Cler­cq 1680 pg. 141)

(The area men­tioned in the quote cor­re­sponds with the Gaspesian/Micmac Indi­ans lands the pro­posed Hopewell/ Nephites survivors)

A very respectable Amer­i­can author has imag­ined, that the Indi­an tribes to the north­ward of the riv­er Saco spake a lan­guage very dif­fer­ent from that of the tribes to the south­ward of the famed riv­er. He informs us, that ”there was not one word” of the lan­guage of the tribes of Penob­scot and St. John’s, who dwell to the north­ward of the Saco.”
(Bar­ton pg. LVIII)

Let­ters of an unknown alpha­bet are inscribed upon a rock in the west­ern parts of New-York. There is a rock, called the Dighton rock, on Taunton Riv­er, near Dighton, in Mass­a­chu­setts. It is a large rock in the mar­gin of the sea, and upon it are inscrip­tions in strange char­ac­ters, part­ly alpha­bet­i­cal and part­ly hieroglyphic.”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 329)

There are cer­tain enchant­ed beads, thin plates of cop­per, of which extra­or­di­nary fig­ures are engraved, with inex­plic­a­ble words and unknown characters.”

(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 346)

A Lost Book/Gospel

(Con­cern­ing Hat­tera Indi­ans of North Carolina)

These (Hat­tera Indi­ans) tell us, that sev­er­al of their Ances­tors were white Peo­ple, and could talk in a Book, as we do; the Truth of which is con­firmed by gray eyes being found fre­quent­ly amongst these Indi­ans, and no others”
(John Law­son 1709 pg. 62)

(About Gaspesian/Micmac Indians)

They hold, fur­ther, that it could well have been a fact that these indi­vid­u­als were instruct­ed in the sacred mys­ter­ies of our holy Reli­gion, and that they had even a knowl­edge and the use of let­ters, since, in the estab­lish­ment of colonies, it is cus­tom­ary to send there men who are alike learned and pious, in order that they may teach to the peo­ples, along with pure­ly human knowl­edge, the most sol­id max­ims of Chris­t­ian wis­dom and piety. Nobody, how­ev­er, hav­ing fol­lowed them in these glo­ri­ous employ­ments, the knowl­edge which they had of the true God, of let­ters, and of their ori­gin, was thus grad­u­al­ly lost and effaced from the minds of their unfor­tu­nate pos­ter­i­ty by the lapse of time.”
(Cler­cq 1680 pg. 86)

(Gaspesian/Micmac Indi­ans)

These peo­ple had received in times past a knowl­edge of the Gospel and of Chris­tian­i­ty, which they have final­ly lost through the neg­li­gence and the licen­tious­ness of their ancestors.”
(Cler­cq 1680 pg. 86)

(In ref­er­ence to the North Amer­i­can Indians)

It is said among their prin­ci­pal or beloved men, that they have it hand­ed down from their ances­tors, that the book which the white peo­ple have was once theirs. That while they say that their fore­fa­thers were pos­sessed of an extra­or­di­nary divine spir­it, by which they fore­told future events, and con­trolled the com­mon course of nature, and this they trans­mit­ted to their off­spring, on con­di­tion of their obey­ing the sacred laws. That they did by these means bring down show­ers of plen­ty on the beloved peo­ple. But that this pow­er, for a long time past, had entire­ly ceased.”
(Boudinet 1816 pg. 114)

Colonel M. inquired why the Indi­ans had not learned these arts of the white peo­ple. He replied indef­i­nite­ly, relat­ing that the Great Spir­it had once giv­en the Indi­ans a book, which taught them all these arts, but that they had lost it, and had nev­er since regained the knowl­edge of them.”
(M.H. Frost 1819; On the abo­rig­ines of the West­ern Countries)

Accord­ing to an old Chero­kee quot­ed by Buttrick:

God gave the red man a book and a paper and told him to write, but he mere­ly made marks on the paper, and as he could not read or write, the Lord gave him a bow and arrows, and gave the book to the white man.” Boudinot, in “A Star in the West,”‘ quot­ed by the same author, says: “They have it hand­ed down from their ances­tors, that the book which the white peo­ple have was once theirs; that while they had it they pros­pered exceed­ing­ly; but that the white peo­ple bought it of them and learned many things from it, while the Indi­ans lost cred­it, offend­ed the Great Spir­it, and suf­fered exceed­ing­ly from the neigh­bor­ing nations; that the Great Spir­it took pity on them and direct­ed them to this country,”
(Mooney 1902 pg. 483)

Accord­ing to Mor­gan, the Musco­gee prop­er, and per­haps also their incor­po­rat­ed tribes, have 22 clans. Of these the Wind appears to be the lead­ing one, pos­sess­ing priv­i­leges accord­ed to no oth­er clan, includ­ing the hered­i­tary guardian­ship of the ancient met­al tablets which con­sti­tute the pal­la­di­um of the tribe.” (Pal­la­di­um in the 19th and 18th cen­tu­ry means for safe­ty)
(Mooney 1902 pg. 499)

Hieroglyphs

Anthro­pol­o­gist do not rec­og­nize the Amer­i­can Indi­ans as hav­ing a writ­ten lan­guage. The Book of Mor­mon and tra­di­tion­al Native Amer­i­can accounts and exam­ples hiero­glyph­ic char­ac­ters speak dif­fer­ent­ly to this assump­tion. The Book of Mor­mon says they did have a writ­ten lan­guage but this abil­i­ty was lost with the extinc­tion of the Nephites/Hopewell Indi­ans. What was left was hiero­glyphs in its most basic form.

There are four Mic­mac hiero­glyph char­ac­ters found in their Book of Pray that resem­ble Egypt­ian Hieroglyphs.

He pro­pos­es in anoth­er work to present the cus­toms, beliefs, and rites of the Ojib­ways as they are, and to give the secret motives and caus­es there­of, also giv­ing a com­plete expo­si­tion of their grand reli­gious rite, accom­pa­nied with the ancient and sacred hiero­glyph­ics per­tain­ing there­to, with their inter­pre­ta­tion, spec­i­mens of their reli­gious idiom, their com­mon lan­guage, their songs. “
(Williams 1885, pg. 5)

To sup­port their pre­ten­sions, this fam­i­ly hold in their pos­ses­sion a cir­cu­lar plate of vir­gin cop­per, on which is rude­ly marked inden­ta­tions and hiero­glyph­ics denot­ing the num­ber of gen­er­a­tions of the fam­i­ly who have passed away since they first pitched their lodges at Shaug-a-waum-ik-ong and took pos­ses­sion of the adja­cent coun­try, includ­ing the Island of La Pointe or Mo-ningwun-a-kaun-ing.”
(Williams 1885, pg. 63)

”Yet they have cer­tain hiero­glyph­ics, by which they describe facts in so plain a man­ner, that those who are con­ver­sant with those marks can under­stand them with the great­est ease, as eas­i­ly, indeed, as we can under­stand a piece of writ­ing. For instance, on a piece of bark, or on a large tree with the bark tak­en off for the pur­pose, by the side of a path, they can and do give every nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion to those who come by the same way… although they have not all the same marks; yet I have seen the Delawares read with ease the draw­ings of the Chippe­ways, Min­goes, Shaw-anos, and Wyan­dots, on sim­i­lar subjects. “
(Heck­ewelder 1881 pg. 130)

Below is a 1590 depic­tion of a Native Amer­i­can by Theodore Bry. The sym­bols shown on the body are marks worn by men to show their affil­i­a­tion: “where­by it may be known what Prince’s sub­jects they be, or of what place they have their origin.”

image034.jpg

Micmac Characters

Father Chret­ian Le Cler­cq a Roman Catholic mis­sion­ary lived among the Mic­mac Indi­ans for twelve years. After spend­ing this time with the Mic­mac, he then sailed back to France and wrote a book about the cus­toms and reli­gion of the Mic­mac Indians.

He helped the Mic­mac Indi­ans devel­op a writ­ten lan­guage com­posed of Hiero­glyphs. He most like­ly used the char­ac­ters that the Mic­mac Indi­ans were already famil­iar with. If Cler­cq him­self had devel­oped the writ­ten lan­guage he most like­ly would have used the Latin alpha­bet — the lan­guage he grew up read­ing and writ­ing with.

Four Mic­mac char­ac­ters are sim­i­lar to Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs in appear­ance and mean­ing. Oth­er Mic­mac char­ac­ters are sim­i­lar to char­ac­ters found on the Anthon Transcript.

The Anthon Tran­script is the piece of paper on which Joseph Smith tran­scribed char­ac­ters from the gold­en plates so that he could show Dr. Charles Anton. Anton was an Egyp­tol­o­gist that was con­firm the valid­i­ty of the gold­en plates trans­la­tion. Per the his­to­ry, Anton described the char­ac­ters as Egypt­ian, Chaldean and Assyrian.

image035.gif

image036.gif

Chaldean

image037.jpg

In all like­li­hood, a “reformed Egypt­ian” would include Egypt­ian hiero­glyph­ics and Chaldean characters.

Michmash

In the Old Tes­ta­ment there is a city that still exist today known today as Mikhmas and known in the Old Tes­ta­ment as Mich­mash. In the Old Tes­ta­ment the pro­nun­ci­a­tion of Mich­mash is very sim­i­lar to the name of the Mic­mac tribe. Based on their sim­i­lar beliefs and their Book of Prayers char­ac­ters, I believe the Mic­mac tribe are direct descen­dants of the Nephites/Hopewell Indi­ans and sur­vived the Nephite geno­cide by escap­ing to the North. Their geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion above the hill Cumorah and oth­er fac­tors such as a nomadic lifestyle, being dec­i­mat­ed by sick­ness, as well as wars with the Iro­quois, offers more evi­dence to sup­port this con­clu­sion. Based on the Iro­quois beliefs and tra­di­tions, the Iro­quois are the best can­di­date to be pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for the extinc­tion of the Nephites.

Mich­mash in Hebrew means “some­thing hid­den”. Dur­ing the Nephite geno­cide any sur­viv­ing Nephites would have to join the Laman­ites or hide. The very name of Mic­mac, if relat­ed to Mich­mash, tes­ti­fies of this.

Hebrew and Greek language comparisons

There are exam­ples of Hebrew cus­toms, char­ac­ters, beliefs and lan­guage among Native Amer­i­cans. Accord­ing to Mor­mon, they knew how to write in Hebrew and of course had Hebrew cus­toms and beliefs (Mor­mon 9:33). The Greek lan­guage is also com­pared to the Native Amer­i­can lan­guages of the Indians.

Antipas – name of a gen­er­al in the BoM (Alma 56); name of a moun­tain in the BoM (Alma 47:7, 10); It is a Greek name, an abbre­vi­a­tion for ‘Antipa­ter.’

Archean­tus – Nephite com­man­der (Moroni 9:2); a typ­i­cal Greek for­ma­tion, made using the Greek pre­fix ‘arch-‘ (“great, chief”), as in the Bib­li­cal Greek names Archelaus and Archippus.

Judea – the name of a Nephite city (Alma 56, 57); it is the Greek (i.e., New Tes­ta­ment) form of the Hebrew name ‘Judah,’ refer­ring to the tribe, the South­ern King­dom, and the area of south­ern Pales­tine occu­pied by the tribe of Judah (the Jews).

Ango­la – city name at Mor­mon 2:4 – Greek ‘ange­los’, mean­ing ’angel’”

Mor­mon 9:33 – And if our plates had been suf­fi­cient­ly large we should have writ­ten in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and if we could have writ­ten in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imper­fec­tion in our record.

Creek Indi­ans also had sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Hebrew lan­guage. Con­sid­er­ing that Nephites became Laman­ites and Laman­ites became Nephites this is not surprising:

The name of the Creeks for man, is ish­to, and so it is in Hebrew…The same remark might be made with respect to the word Kenaai, for Canaan. Jeho­vah they call Y‑he-ho-wah. The roof of the house they call toubano­ra; in the Hebrew it is debonaour. The nose they call nichiri in Hebrew, neheri. The great first cause, Yo-hewah; in Hebrew, Jeho­vah. Praise the first cause, in their lan­guage, hal­leluwah; in Hebrew, hal­lelu­jah. Father they call abba; the same in Hebrew. Now they call na; in Hebrew, na. To pray they call pli­ale; in Hebrew, pha­lae. In their lan­guage, abel is manslaugh­ter; the same in Hebrew. Wife, awah; in Hebrew, eve, or eweh. Win­ter, kora in Hebrew, cora. God, Ale; in Hebrew, Ale, or Alo­hi­ni. A high moun­tain, ararat; the same by the Indi­ans of Penobscot.”
(Hay­wood 1823 pg. 282)

Silas T Rand knew sev­er­al lan­guages to include Hebrew con­cern­ing Mic­mac Indians:

There are also some words in the lan­guage which resem­ble Greek. The Mic­mac word Ellenu, an Indi­an, is not very dif­fer­ent from Hel­lene, a Greek. Ellenu esit (“He speaks Mic­mac”) is strik­ing­ly like the Greek, hel­l­enizei (“He speaks Greek”). But in oth­er respects the lan­guage resem­bles the Hebrew, espe­cial­ly in the suf­fix­es by which the pro­nouns are con­nect­ed in the accusative case with the verb.”
(Silas T Rand 1893)

Their lan­guages are very diverse and dif­fers as much from one anoth­er as Dutch, French, Greek and Latin. Declen­sion and con­ju­ga­tion resem­ble those in Greek, for they, like the Greeks, Have duals in their nouns and even aug­ments in their verbs.”
(In Mohawk Coun­try: Ear­ly Nar­ra­tives About a Native People)

Shilu in Indi­an is the same as Shiloh in Hebrew; the Indi­an word for father is Abba; the word for “wait­er of the high priest” is Sagan in both Indi­an and Hebrew; the word for man in Indi­an is Ish or Ishie.”
(Adair 1735)

Gaspesian/Micmac Indi­ans:

Our Indi­ans agree with the Greeks and Latins in this, that they use always the sin­gu­lar, and almost nev­er, or at least very rarely, the plur­al, even when they speak to their mis­sion­ar­ies, or to some oth­er per­son of promi­nence. They express them­selves by the word kir^ which means “thou,” whether it is the child speak­ing to its father, the wife to her hus­band, or the hus­band to his wife.”
(Cler­cq 1680 pg. 141)

Series Nav­i­ga­tion: North Amer­i­can Book of Mor­mon Geog­ra­phy — David McK­ane« Tribe of Man­asseh — Native Amer­i­can DNATribe of Man­asseh — Hebrew and Native Amer­i­can Ties »

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Jamie B
Jamie B
4 years ago

Well writ­ten and stat­ed very well, Dave. I enjoyed read­ing this immense­ly. I believe also that in times of severe famine (and maybe it’s con­nect­ed with ancient vol­canic activ­i­ty in places or weath­er pat­terns like hap­pened with Tamb­o­ra and oth­ers,) that they may have leaned on what was eas­i­est to find and eat and USE for cloth­ing and such. This would be the hors­es and Mam­moths and oth­er domes­ti­cat­ed ani­mals, some of which may have also suc­cumbed to the famine states present at the time.

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