Voree plates
Purportedly the final testament of an ancient American ruler named "Rajah Manchou of Vorito", Strang asserted that this discovery vindicated his claims to be the true successor of Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement—as opposed to Brigham Young, whom most Latter Day Saints accepted as Smith's successor in 1844.
The plates also lent credence to Strang's claim that Voree, not the Salt Lake Valley, was to be the new "gathering place" of the Latter Day Saints.
Strang was accused of having fabricated the plates from a brass tea kettle, a claim which he and his partisans vigorously denied.
Joseph Smith, the movement's founding prophet, claimed that he translated the Book of Mormon from a set of golden plates which he was shown the location of by an angel named Moroni.
As a recent convert to Mormonism, Strang did not possess the name recognition among rank-and-file Latter Day Saints enjoyed by Brigham Young and Sidney Rigdon, the two principal contenders for church leadership.
So, while Young and Rigdon never offered their followers any newly revealed ancient records, Strang announced on January 17, 1845, that God had promised to lead him to a hitherto-undiscovered chronicle of a long-lost American people.
Strang next testified that on September 1, 1845, an angel of God appeared to him and showed him the location of "the record of my people in whose possession thou dwellest.
Strang led four witnesses to a large oak on the hillside, inviting them to examine the ground around the tree carefully before digging for the plates.
After removing the tree, Strang's companions dug down approximately three feet, where they discovered three small brass plates in a case of baked clay.
Strang subsequently claimed to have deciphered this record, which he said was authored by an ancient Native American named "Rajah Manchou of Vorito.
In Voree the name of the Mighty One shall be heard, and the nations shall obey my law, and hear the words of my servant, whom I shall raise up unto them in the latter days.
[13] According to Scott, Barnes and Strang "made the 'plates' out of Ben [Perce]'s old kettle and engraved them with an old saw file, and ... when completed they put acid on them to corrode them and give them an ancient appearance; and that to deposit them under the tree, where they were found, they took a large auger ... which Ben [Perce] owned, put a fork handle on the auger and with it bored a long slanting hole under a tree on 'The Hill of Promise,' as they called it, laying the earth in a trail on a cloth as taken out, then put the 'plates' in, tamping in all the earth again, leaving no trace of their work visible.”[13] Wingfield W. Watson, a high priest in the Strangite sect who knew Strang, vigorously challenged these allegations in an 1889 publication entitled The Prophetic Controversy #3.
[14] Among other things, Watson points out that the theory advanced fails to explain how the 12"x12"x3" stone covering block was placed above the case containing the plates.
Strang authored a personal diary during his youth, parts of which were written in a secret code which was not deciphered until over one hundred years later by his grandson.
[16] According to a Strangite website, Derek J. Masson, a non-Mormon scholar, reportedly argued in an unpublished 1977 paper that Strang's translation was sound.
