The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-06-09

ton, men, women and children all slain,
until but one sole urvivor. by the name
of Cariantumr. remained.
While this terrible war was in prog
ress. or about 600 years before Christ
in the first year of the reign of Zede-
kiah. king of Judah, the second colony
left Jerusalem. One Lehi, a goodly
man, being warned by God in a dream
of the downfall of Jerusalem, took his
family, consisting Of wife and four
sons -;2..-sn r.emuel, Nephi and Sam
land departed into the : aert of Ara
bia, where they wandered for eight
years. Lamar and Lemuel were of a
rebellious spirit and constantly re-
preached their father for leaving his
home and lands to suffer the hardships
and privations of the wilderness on ac-
count of simple dream. Nephi and
Sam were good, obedient sons, trusting
| all to their father without complaint.
Thus were sown the seeds of discord
| and rebellion which were to be harvest
ed in the New World.
| During their sojourn in the desert,
| Nephi and his brothers returned to Je-
rusalem and persuaded Ishmael an old
| friend of the family, to join them The
Ishmael family of two sons and several
| daughters, and a slave whom they
/
party to about fifteen. After mar
riage or two, they constructed ship
according to the command of God-of
curious workmanship, put to sea, and
| after weathering severe storms for
| many days on the Indian and Pacific
oceans, landed on the now coast of
| Chile, South America. They journeyed
nOrthward, multiplying rapidly, while
| the seeds of rebellion we're fast ripen-
ing, for within twenty-five or thirty
years they divided into two rival fac
| tons, headed by the brothers Lamar
and Nephi, adopting the names of La
nantes and Nephites. But the Lord
was against the Lamanites, for he
cursed them with skin of biackness.
| 1.-THE Lord God did cause q skin of
blackness to come upon them. And
thus saith the Lord God, / will cause
that they shall be loathsome unto my
people save they shall repent of their
lniquities. And cursed shall be the
| seed of him that mixeth with their
seed, for they shall be cursed even with
the same cursing. And the Lord spake
and it was done" And thus we have
the origin of the American Indian, a
problem that has been puzzling the
minds of thinkers for several hundred
years.
| About eleven years after the Lehi i'm
migration from Jerusalem, the third
and last party under the leadership of
one of King Zedekiah's sons also leave
Jerusalem. They reach the west coast
of the isthmus, journey across, and set
tie in land somewhere in the north
!. western corner of Colombia, which they
named Zarahelma. They also found a
city of the same name which some
jealous Mormon students claim was at
one time as large as the city of Lon
don, and that its ruins are now beneath
the waves of the sea, the coast line
having since been submerged. short
time after their arrival, Cariantumr,
the sole survivor of the first nation,
the Jaredites, makes his appearance
: among them. After 400 years of alter
mating peace and war; the people of
Zarahelma are accidentally discovered
by the Nephites, with whom they final
~ amalgamate under the Nephite title
The Nephites spread nOrthward and
eventually cover Central and North
| America, while the Lamanites popu-
lated the southern continent. AS the
centuries roll on the hatred between
the Nephites and Lamanites increased
and, while they had had numerous local
wars and temporary periods of truce,
the cid feud between the brothers was
handed down from generation to gen.
. Grafton, until it eliminated in a general
l war between the two nations about the
year 400. This war, like that of the
Jaredites. was very bloody, neither age
nor sex being spared. The book tells
US that even the women and children
donned breast-plates and went forth to
battle with the men. The Nephites
were totally annihilated. leaving the
Lamanites the victors in sole posses
sion of the two continents, where they
; were found by the Europeans in 1892.
x
The commander of the Nephite army
was named Mormon, who, seeing the
, destruction that was about to befaIl his
: PEOPLE, collected all the plates of former
, writers and turned them over to his
Z son Maroni. After the great battle of
Cumorah, from which Maroni evidently
escaped unhurt, he says: And my
! father was also killed by them and /
even remain alone to write the sad tale
of the destruction of my people. But
behold they are gone and l fulfill the
commandment Of my father and
whether they will kill me I know not.
Therefore, l will write and hide up the
| records in the earth, and whittier l go
/ il mattereth not" So runs the thread
Of the narrative in this strange book
Now, what has all this to do with the
cliff dwellers? Simply this: The Nor
mon people believe and teach that the
prehistoric races of America-the Cliff
dwellers. the mound builders the Nav
as, the Peruvians, etc.-were more other
than the heroes of the Book of Nor
mon; and that the ruins of the Ohio
and Mississippi valleys, southwestern
states, Central America, Peru and
Chile are but the remains of the Jare-
dite and Nephite civilizations No
where does the book mention any
names of the countries inhabited, by
which they can now be recognized.
other than the 'land northward" called
''Desolation," and the "land southwark"
called ountiful'-separated by a mar
row neck of land. This the church au-
thorities interpret to mean North
America, South American and the 18TH
mus of Panama. 1t must be under
stood that after being cursed with a
skin of blackness, the Lamanites be-
came wild and ferocious people ljv-
ing on raw meat" In other words.
they relapsed into savagery. 1t is there
fore assumed that they destroyed many
of the deserted cities of the vanquished
Nephites.
Mr.. Mcbride makes no reference TO a
tradition that prevails among the Nav