The Indian-Mormon connection

Mormons, Mayans and Mystery

The Book of Mormon's version of history continues to be challenged--and championed--by skeptics and faithfulStephens' efforts came after a lifetime of hearing Mormon leaders and members talk in glowing terms about the link between American Indians and the Book of Mormon's small band of Israelites who sailed from Jerusalem to establish a civilization in the Americas. After centuries of warring among themselves, the book says, the last ones standing were known as "Lamanites."

To the LDS faithful, Lamanites were real people with a real history.

Every Mormon prophet since the church's founding in 1830 has taught that Indians descended from Lamanites. The perceived link explains the church's initial outreach to Indians in the northeast and later in Utah. It is why the church created an Indian Placement Program, urging members in the 1950s to care for those they saw as part of their religious family. Mormon missionaries working in Central and South America have always told potential converts the Book of Mormon is their ancestors' story.Why the Mormons were wrong:The book mentions metals, elephants, horse-drawn chariots, wheat, and barley--all of which had yet to be discovered in Meso or South America during the scripture's time period, 2200 B.C. to 400 A.D. Critics see no sign of Book of Mormon kings, no palaces or tombs, no mention of important names from the scripture, no site of the book's final battle that included thousands, if not millions of soldiers.

Non-Mormon archaeologists take the whole thing "as a complete fantasy, that this is a big waste of time," said Michael Coe, an emeritus professor of Mesoamerican studies at Yale, in last spring's PBS documentary "The Mormons."