In addition to geography, another mistake many Latter-day
Saints make is that the people described in the Book of Mormon were the only people living in all of North and
South America. This is not true. There were many other groups of people
indigenous to the area before Lehi’s family ever arrived. There are indications within the book that
Laman’s and Lemuel’s families intermarried with some of these people, which could
explain the changes in their appearance noted in 2 Nephi 5:21. It could also
explain why the Lamanites outnumbered the Nephites within the space of a
generation or two.
Where did these other people come from? No one knows for sure. I was always told in school that some of
them migrated across the Bering Straits following the herds during the ice age. That may have been the case for the Inuit and the Athabaskan-speaking people. It is not necessarily true of them all.
Today, most Native American
groups find that theory unacceptable in light of their own traditions. The native peoples' origin stories vary and should be respected. The
point of my discussion here is not where
they came from but that they were here. The Book
of Mormon is not the story of the
entire hemisphere, but of a small geographical area and of, essentially, one
family.
Text copyright July 2013 Gebara Education
Pictures from:
Lehi's Famkily www.lds.org
Clovis people www.cristolinks.com
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