Tag: Colonization

  • Buy up the Children

    Buy up the Children

    Excerpt from the journal of Wilford Woodruff: 1

    May 12, 1851: At Cedar City, President Young then addressed them and said he would express his feelings upon the subject to those who wished to go home. If you were now on a mission to France, England or any other part of the earth preaching the gospel, you would not sit down and counsel together about going to get your families or go home until your mission was ended. This is of quite as much importance as preaching the gospel. for the time has now come when it is required of us to make the wilderness blossom as the rose. Our mission now is building up stakes of Zion and filling these mountains with cities and when your mission is ended, you are at liberty to go and be free and only do right. When I go on a mission, I leave my affairs in the hands of God. If my house, fields, flocks, wife or children die in my absence, I say Amen to it. If they live and prosper, I feel to say Amen to it and thank the Lord. He wished the brethren to finish the fort and secure their grain and wished the land to be surveyed so that the brethren who laid the foundation could have their choice of farms. He counselled the brethren to buy up the Lamanite children as fast as they could and educate them and teach them the gospel so that not many generations they would be a white and delightsome people for the Lord could not have devised a better plan than to have put us where we are in order to accomplish this thing. 

    References

    References
    1 Journal of Wilford Woodruff – https://archive.org/details/WoodruffWilfordJournalSelections
  • New World Horses

    New World Horses

    Excerpt from the Oxford Journal of Heredity, ‘Iberian Origins of New World Horse Breeds’: 1

    “Fossil records, archaeological proofs, and historical documents report that horses persisted continuously in the Iberian Peninsula since the Pleistocene and were taken to the American continent (New World) in the 15th century….The genus Equus evolved in North America, and during the first major glaciations of the late Pliocene (2–3 million years ago), some species crossed to Eurasia. North American and South American Equus species became extinct about 10,000 years ago from causes that are not fully understood, probably due to a combination of overhunting by humans and environmental causes, such as climatic changes…Horses only returned to the American continent (the New World) in 1493, with the navigator Christopher Columbus and during the subsequent Spanish colonization period. Those stallions and mares were bought in Seville’s province, mainly from the peasant stock bred in the islands and salt marshes of the Guadalquivir River.”

    Various references to horses in the Book of Mormon: 2

    Alma 18:9 – “And they said unto him: Behold, he is feeding thy horses. Now the king had commanded his servants, previous to the time of the watering of their flocks, that they should prepare his horses and chariots…”

     

    1 Nephi 18:25 “And it came to pass that we did find upon the land of promise, as we journeyed in the wilderness, that there were beasts in the forests of every kind, both the cow and the ox, and the ass and the horse, and the goat and the wild goat, and all manner of wild animals…”

     

    Enos 1:21 “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.”

     

    3 Nephi 4:4 “Therefore, there was no chance for the robbers to plunder and to obtain food, save it were to come up in open battle against the Nephites; and the Nephites being in one body, and having so great a number, and having reserved for themselves provisions, and horses and cattle, and flocks of every kind…”

     

    3 Nephi 21:14 “Yea, wo be unto the Gentiles except they repent; for it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Father, that I will cut off thy horses out of the midst of thee, and I will destroy thy chariots;”

     

    3 Nephi 3:22 “And it came to pass in the seventeenth year, in the latter end of the year, the proclamation of Lachoneus had gone forth throughout all the face of the land, and they had taken their horses, and their chariots, and their cattle…”

     

    Alma 20:6 “Now when Lamoni had heard this he caused that his servants should make ready his horses and his chariots.”

     

    Ether 9:19 “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.”

     

    3 Nephi 6:1 “And now it came to pass that the people of the Nephites did all return to their own lands in the twenty and sixth year, every man, with his family, his flocks and his herds, his horses and his cattle, and all things whatsoever did belong unto them.”

     

    References

    References
    1 Iberian Origins of New World Horse Breeds, Oxford – https://academic.oup.com/jhered/article/97/2/107/2187641
    2 The Book of Mormon (search:horse) – https://www.lds.org/scriptures/search?lang=eng&start=11&end=20&query=horse&testament=bofm
  • Book of Mormon and DNA

    Book of Mormon and DNA

    Excerpt from the ‘Book of Mormon and DNA Studies’, LDS Gospel Topic Essay: 1

    The evidence assembled to date suggests that the majority of Native Americans carry largely Asian DNA. Scientists theorize that in an era that predated Book of Mormon accounts, a relatively small group of people migrated from northeast Asia to the Americas by way of a land bridge that connected Siberia to Alaska. These people, scientists say, spread rapidly to fill North and South America and were likely the primary ancestors of modern American Indians.

     

    Spencer W. Kimball
    The Lamanite: Their Burden, Our Burden
    Feb. 9, 1967 2

    (0:00)
    My beloved brothers and sisters. My fellow Indian students. It’s a joy to be with you and I appreciate this privilege of being with you, especially this week, during the Indian week.

    The Indian is the Lamanite. They are South Americans, Central Americans, Mexican, Polynesian and other Lamanites running into millions who are not specifically called Indians though they are related Lamanites.

    The Lamanites are a mixture of many. Undoubtably there is in their veins the blood of Nephi, Joseph and Jacob as well as that of Laman, Lemuel and Sam. Also of the Mulekites of Judah. They are not Orientals. They are from the Near East. The twelve apostles who were associated with the prophet Joseph proclaimed this to the world. Quoting “He, the Lord, has revealed the origin and the records of the aboriginal tribes of America and their future destiny, and we know it.”

    We also bear testimony that the Indians, so-called, of North and South America are a remnant of the tribes of Israel. Through the centuries, movements, discovery, explorations, settlement and colonization of the people of this land—it is not impossible that there could have seeped across the Bering Strait a little oriental blood as claimed by some people. And possibly a little Norse blood may have crossed the North Atlantic. But basically these Lamanites, including the Indian, are the descendants of Lehi, who left Jerusalem 600 years BC. In the general sense, we are the Gentiles having come from Gentile nations. The name ‘Indians’, given to the early possessors of the Americas by Columbus, as they intermarried with the invading European conquerers and nations were formed, they became Mexicans, Peruvians, Bolivians, Guatemalans and others. But the correct name for all the descendants of Lehi and Ishmael is Lamanite.

    This is an honorable name. It was the Lord who so designated it. Every descendant of Lehi should proudly say “I am a Lamanite, and I am proud of my heritage.” The Book of Mormon was written to the laminates who are a remnant of Israel, for the express purpose of convincing the Jew and the Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the eternal God. And that the Lamanites might know their ancestors and the spectacular promises of the Lord to them.

    (4:25)
    Wilford Woodruff, president of the Lords church, identified many of the larger tribes as Lamanites. President Joseph Smith and John Taylor called them lamanites as have all the presidents and leaders of the church since. And so we look upon the name as proper and dignified and fully acceptable. The Lord consistently called his people the Lamanites.

    (4:58)
    He [Moroni] probably saw with rather clear vision the deterioration, becoming savages without a written language, ignorant, superstitious and without God in their lives.

    (5:29)
    Undoubtably, he [Moroni] saw the inspired Columbus bridge the mighty deep and bring two worlds together. The explorers, the discoverers, the conquerers, the colonists, peopled the land. He would have seen the growing gentile nation throw off the thralldom of it’s mother country in the great revolutionary war. There, developing a constitution, and freedom, and all of this was in preparation for the restoration of the gospel with the Book of Mormon.

    (15:18)
    Whereas the Lamanites had been as numerous as the sands of the sea, through disease and warfare these numbers had dwindled by the time Columbus came. Likely there were fewer in the whole land left, than were killed in the one battle of Cumorah.

     

    References

    References
    1 Book of Mormon and DNA Studies, LDS Gospel Topic Essay – https://www.lds.org/topics/book-of-mormon-and-dna-studies?lang=eng
    2 The Lamanite: Their Burden, Our Burden, BYU Speeches (audio) – https://teknik.byu.edu/talks/spencer-w-kimball_lamanite-burden-burden/
  • Becoming White

    Becoming White

    Lesson 19, A white and Blessed People:[footnote]Manual for the Priests’ Quorum, Nephi Jensen – Deseret News Press, 1927 [/footnote]

    LESSON NINETEEN

    A WHITE AND BLESSED PEOPLE

    (a) Activity Period: (About 15 minutes.) Prayer.—Roll Call—Consider ways of getting attendance of absent members.—Report of assignments performed.—Assignments for ensuing week.—Social and fraternal activities.—Instructions by Bishop.

    (b) Lesson Period: (15 to 30 minutes.) Report of number who have read lesson.

    Statement of Facts.

    1. The Lamanites, because of the iniquity of their fathers, were cursed with a skin of darkness.
    2. They became an idle and a loathsome people, shut off largely from the blessings of the Lord.
    3. Prayers have been offered by servants of the Lord for their restoration.
    4. It has been prophesied that they shall one day become a white and delightsome and blessed people.
    5. Whenever they have obeyed the Gospel in the past, their dark skin has been removed, and they have become fair and beautiful and civilized.

    Argument.

    When the Indians or Lamanites receive and obey the Gospel in our day and from henceforth, they shall become as white and blessed a people as any in the Church today. This will take place before many generations have passed.

    A WHITE AND BLESSED PEOPLE

    For their rebellion and iniquity in hardening their hearts against the Lord and his chosen spokesmen, the Lord caused a curse to come upon the Lamanites, and those who intermarried with them. Before thy had…

     

     



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