Native American people and Mormonism
Over the past two centuries, the relationship between Native American people and Mormonism has included friendly ties, displacement, violence, enslavement, education placement programs, and official and unofficial discrimination.
[2]: 196 [3] There is no support from genetic studies and archaeology for the historicity of the Book of Mormon or Middle Eastern origins for any Native American peoples.
[4][5][6] The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, formed proselyting efforts among Native American tribes within six month of organizing his church in 1830 in upstate New York.
Smith stated in the 1842 Wentworth Letter to a Chicago newspaper editor that the book was "the history of ancient America ... from its first settlement by a colony that came from the Tower of Babel ... to the beginning of [400 CE] ...
"[25][26][27] Throughout the 1800's, adherents cited the common belief of White Christians at the time that Native Americans were "red sons of Israel" descended from the lost tribes as evidence of the authenticity of The Book of Mormon account.
[30] Outreach to Native Americans became the first mission of Smith's newly organized Church of Christ, as the purpose of The Book of Mormon was to recover the lost remnant of the ancient children of Israel (e.g.
[34] Smith sent prominent members Oliver Cowdery, Parley Pratt, Peter Whitmer, Jr., and Ziba Peterson to a "Lamanite Mission" only six months after organizing the church.
Additionally, representatives from the Sauk (Asakiwaki) and Fox (Meskwaki) people met with Smith at the Latter Day Saint headquarters in Nauvoo, Illinois.
[41] Federal law made it a crime to alienate Indians from the United States government, and the president had the power to use military force to stop anyone attempting to do so.
[41] As Brigham Young cut off emigration routes between the Eastern states and California (blaming Native American violence for the closures) President Buchanan ordered the US army to escort a new governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs to the Utah territory.
[2]: 205–206 Young sent Jacob Hamblin as a leader for several missionary efforts among Great Basin Native Americans resulting in important Hopi conversion of Chief Tuba.
[54] In the 1890s, James Mooney of the Smithsonian Institution of the Bureau of American Ethnology, and Missouri military commander Nelson Miles, placed some blame on Mormon settlers for the events that precipitated the Wounded Knee Massacre.
[56]: xiv During the century between 1835 and 1947 the official LDS hymnbook had lyrics discussing Native Americans which included the following statements: "And so our race has dwindled/ To idle Indian hearts ... And all your captive brothers/ From every clime shall come/ And quit their savage customs", "Great spirit listen to the Red Man's wail!
[61]: 237 [62] Twentieth century teachings connecting modern Native Americans and Lamanites reached their height under the presidency of Spencer W. Kimball (1973 –1985),[63]: 159 then declined, but did not disappear.
[63]: 159 No evidence of the large civilizations or battles described in The Book of Mormon have been found by anthropologists and archaeologists, and DNA studies of Native Americans show that they came from Asia during the latest ice age, and not from the Middle East.
[72] While considering appropriations for Utah Territory, Representative Justin Smith Morrill criticized the LDS Church for its laws on Indian slavery.
[81]: 711 [48]: 76 In 1857 LDS militiamen dressed up as Native Americans and recruited a smaller party of Southern Paiutes for a five-day siege on a wagon train of White pioneers travelling from Arkansas to California through Utah.
Eventually, fear spread among the militia's leaders that some emigrants had caught sight of the White men, likely discerning the actual identity of a majority of the attackers.
Refugees from this massacre moved into Box Elder County where they converted to Mormonism and eventually settled on church-owned property at Washakie, Utah.
[21] Many of the students and families praised the program; others criticized it and the LDS Church for assimilationist policies weakening the Native Americans' ties to their own cultures.
[98][2]: 205, 207 Not far into the narrative of The Book of Mormon God marks Lamanites (the presumed ancestors of Native Americans) with dark skin because of their iniquity, an act similar to the Bible's Curse of Cain which later some Protestants interpreted as the beginning of the Black race.
"[14][99] During the century between 1835 and 1947 the official LDS hymnbook had lyrics discussing a lightening of Native American skin color stating, "Great spirit listen to the Red Man's wail!
[106] In 1953, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles Joseph Fielding Smith stated, "After the people again forgot the Lord ... the dark skin returned.
"[107][108] Additionally, in a 1960 LDS Church General Conference, apostle Spencer Kimball suggested that the skin of Latter-day Saint Native American was gradually turning lighter.
[14] Kimball, however, suggested that the skin lightening was a result of the care, feeding, and education given to Native American children in the home placement program.
[57]: 71 [111] Thirty-five years later in 2016, the LDS Church made changes to its online version of The Book of Mormon in which phrases on the Lamanite's "skin of blackness" and them being a "dark, loathsome, and filthy" people were altered.
[12]: 106 On July 17, 1831, Smith said that he received a revelation in which God wanted several early elders of the church to eventually marry Native American women in a polygamous relationship so that their posterity may become "white, delightsome, and just".
[115][116] Though Smith's successor Young believed that Native American peoples were "degraded", and "fallen in every respect, in habits, custom, flesh, spirit, blood, desire",[49]: 213 he also allowed Mormon men to marry Native American women as part of a process that would make their people White and delightsome and restore them to their "pristine beauty" within a few generations.
[31]: 188 Though few in number, another notable example of a Native American man marrying an LDS woman at the time was the 1890 marriage of Ute violinist David Lemmon and Josephine Neilson in the St. George Utah Temple.
[121] More common, however, was the experience of Tony Tillohash in the early 1900s who was rejected by the parents of a White LDS woman he proposed to, and was told to marry among his people.
