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Circa early to mid-1830s

Where did the events depicted in the Book of Mormon take place? This question has long fascinated Latter-day Saints.[1] In 1840, apostle Orson Pratt formulated the first attempt in print to situate the geography of the Book of Mormon in the Americas. Based on his reading of the text, Pratt envisioned the geography of the Book of Mormon spanning across both the North and South American continents.[2] The Prophet Joseph Smith himself at times commented on the geography and peoples of the Book of Mormon, although there is no evidence that he ever ascribed his own understanding of such to revelation.[3] In 1834, for instance, while marching with Zion’s Camp, Joseph wrote to his wife Emma of “wandering over the plains of the Nephites, recounting occasionally the history of the Book of Mormon, roving over the mounds of that once beloved people of the Lord, picking up their skulls and their bones, as a proof of its divine authenticity.”[4] In Nauvoo, articles appeared in the Times and Seasons under his editorial supervision that correlated Book of Mormon civilizations to remains discovered in Central America.[5] Rather than pinning down a precise geography for the Book of Mormon, the Prophet appears to have been more interested in attempting to correlate artifacts in various parts of the Americas with Book of Mormon peoples. “Joseph Smith never showed any interest in creating a geographic model for the Book of Mormon,” writes one scholar. “Any and all artifacts from virtually anywhere in the Americas were treated equally as evidence for the book’s divine authenticity.”[6]

Decades after his death, a revelation was attributed to Joseph locating the precise landing site of Lehi and his party after they sailed to the New World. According to this source, which appeared in print in 1884 in Elder Franklin D. Richards’s popular A Compendium of the Doctrines of the Gospel, Joseph had a revelation that Lehi and his family landed in South America on the coast of what is modern Chile.[7] This was not the first time Latter-day Saints had located Lehi’s landing spot in Chile. Oliver Cowdery and Orson Pratt, among others, were reportedly teaching this since the early 1830s,[8] and in his influential 1879 edition of the Book of Mormon Pratt included a footnote to 1 Nephi 18:23 identifying the coast of Chile as the likely landing spot.[9]

Although some have accepted the attribution of this revelation to Joseph at face value,[10] there are serious problems with doing so. The first and simplest issue is the lack of any evidence that can corroborate this attribution. There is as of yet no known documentary source among the Prophet’s papers that confirms he believed Lehi landed in Chile, much less that he gained this knowledge by revelation. On the contrary, an article in the Times and Seasons that appeared in September 1842 while the Prophet was still editor of the paper placed Lehi’s landing at “a little south of the Isthmus of Darien” in Panama, not Chile.[11] The fact that the Prophet spoke about Book of Mormon geography and events on multiple occasions but never produced any known revelation about either is another compounding problem for those who see the 1884 statement on Lehi’s landing in America as a Joseph Smith revelation.

The currently available evidence would seem to point to Frederick G. Williams, not the Prophet, as the originator of this understanding of where Lehi landed. Sometime in the early to mid-1830s, Williams recorded a near-verbatim version of what would later appear in Elder Richards’s Compendium:

Although Frederick G. Williams was the Prophet’s scribe and counselor in the First Presidency, nothing in the available historical record can conclusively demonstrate that Williams obtained this understanding from Joseph rather than his own speculative musings or some other source.[13] So then how might have this understanding of where Lehi landed been attributed to the Prophet? It may have arisen due to Williams’s close relationship with Joseph, as well as due to the fact that John M. Bernhisel recorded a version of this same statement in 1845 in his manuscript copy of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible.[14] These facts may have naturally led some Latter-day Saints to understandably assume this statement came from Joseph Smith. Nevertheless, “the source of the statement about Lehi’s travels . . . remains uncertain,” and “none of the original documents give any evidence that the statement is anything more than an interesting attempt to plot out Lehi’s journey.”[15]

For these and other reasons, we include this statement in our appendix as a revelation attributed to Joseph Smith, but which is of uncertain origin. To be sure, the Church today remains neutral on the question of Book of Mormon geography, and no revelation from Joseph Smith or any other prophet has been sustained as canonically binding on the Latter-day Saints.[16] As interesting as this document and other statements from or attributed to Joseph Smith or other early Church leaders on the geography of the Book of Mormon may be, they are not authoritative revelation, and any attempt to make them such runs contrary to the Church’s current teaching.

The text below is reproduced as it appeared in the 1884 edition of A Compendium of the Doctrines of the Gospel.

❋ ❋ ❋

Lehi’s Travels.—Revelation to Joseph the Seer. The course that Lehi and his company traveled from Jerusalem to the place of their destination:

They traveled nearly a south, southeast direction until they came to the nineteenth degree of north latitude; then, nearly east to the Sea of Arabia, then sailed in a southeast direction, and landed on the continent of South America, in Chili, thirty degrees south latitude.

Notes

[1] For a good but now dated examination of the various Book of Mormon geography theories that have been proposed by Latter-day Saints since the nineteenth century, consult John L. Sorenson, The Geography of Book of Mormon Events: A Source Book (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992).

[2] Orson Pratt, A[n] Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions (Edinburgh: Ballantyne and Hughes, 1840), 15–22.

[3] See generally Matthew Roper, “Joseph Smith, Revelation, and Book of Mormon Geography,” FARMS Review 22, no. 2 (2010): 15–85; Mark Alan Wright, “Joseph Smith and Native American Artifacts,” in Approaching Antiquity: Joseph and the Ancient World, ed. Lincoln H. Blumell, Matthew J. Grey, and Andrew H. Hedges (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015), 119–40; Roper, “Joseph Smith, Central American Ruins, and the Book of Mormon,” in Approaching Antiquity, 141–62. Joseph’s mother, Lucy Mack Smith, recalled in her family history and memoir how at the time of his discovery of the Book of Mormon plates, Joseph was instructed by the angel about “the ancient inhabitants of this continent,” including “their dress, mode of travelling, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, and their buildings, with every particular; he would describe their <mode of> warfare, as also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life with them.” See Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845, 87, www.josephsmithpapers.org. In his 1842 “Church History” editorial known today as the “Wentworth Letter,” Joseph reported how the angel informed him “concerning the aboriginal inhabitants of this country,” and how he was “shown who they were, and from whence they came.” He was also given “a brief sketch of their origin, progress, civilization, laws, governments, of their righteousness and iniquity, and [how] the blessings of God [were] finally withdrawn from them as a people.” Joseph Smith, “Church History,” Times and Seasons 3, no. 9 (March 1, 1842): 707. In neither of these instances, however, did Joseph provide any concrete details about what he learned from the messenger, and certainly nothing from these angelic interviews was ever produced or canonized as a revelatory pronouncement.

[4] JSP, D4:57, spelling standardized. On the related Zelph incident, see generally Kenneth W. Godfrey, “The Zelph Story,” BYU Studies 29, no. 2 (1989): 31–56; Donald Q. Cannon, “Zelph Revisited,” in Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History: Illinois, ed. H. Dean Garrett (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1995), 97–111; Kenneth W. Godfrey, “What Is the Significance of Zelph in the Study of Book of Mormon Geography?” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 8, no. 2 (1999): 70–79, 88.

[5] “A Catacomb of Mummies Found in Kentucky,” Times and Seasons 3, no. 13 (May 2, 1842): 781–82; “From Priest’s American Antiquities,” Times and Seasons 3, no. 15 (June 1, 1842): 813–14; “Traits of Mosaic History,” Times and Seasons 3, no. 16 (June 15, 1842): 818–20; “American Antiquities,” Times and Seasons 3, no. 18 (July 15, 1842): 858–60; “‘Extract from Stephens’ ‘Incidents of Travel in Central America,’” Times and Seasons 3, no. 15 (September 15, 1842): 911–15; “Facts Are Stubborn Things,” Times and Seasons 3, no. 22 (September 15, 1842): 921–22; “Zarahemla,” Times and Seasons 3, no. 23 (October 1, 1842): 927–28. On Joseph Smith’s and other Latter-day Saints’ excited reception of these discoveries, see Roper, “Joseph Smith, Central American Ruins, and the Book of Mormon,” in Approaching Antiquity, 141–62; Stephen O. Smoot, “Apologetics and Antiquity: Book of Mormon Reception, 1830–1844,” Journal of Mormon History 48, no. 4 (2022): 14–25.

[6] Wright, “Joseph Smith and Native American Artifacts,” 130–31.

[7] Franklin D. Richards and James A. Little, A Compendium of the Doctrines of the Gospel, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1884), 289.

[8] See for instance “The Orators of Mormon,” Catholic Telegraph, April 14, 1832, 204; “Mormonism,” Fredonia Censor, March 7, 1832, reprinted in Franklin Democrat, ca. March 1832; “The Golden Bible, or, Campbellism Improved,” Observer and Telegraph, November 18, 1830, cited and discussed in Smoot, “Apologetics and Antiquity,” 13–14; compare these and other examples given in Matthew Roper, “The Treason of the Geographers: Mythical ‘Mesoamerican’ Conspiracy and the Book of Mormon,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 16 (2015): 190–94.

[9] The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon, Upon Plates Take from the Plates of Nephi (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1879), 47.

[10] See for instance George Reynolds, “The Lands of the Nephites,” Juvenile Instructor 15, no. 23 (December 1, 1880): 274, who wrote, “The exact place where Lehi and his little colony first landed on this continent is not stated in the Book of Mormon; but it is generally believed among the Latter-day Saints to have been on the coast of Chili. In fact it is widely understood that the Lord so informed the Prophet Joseph Smith.” See also “Are They of Israel!” Millennial Star 49, no. 3 (January 17, 1887): 34; Abraham H. Cannon, Questions and Answers on the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1886), 26; George Q. Cannon, The Life of Nephi, the Son of Lehi (Salt Lake City: The Contributor Company, 1888), 94; George Reynolds, A Dictionary of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Joseph Hyrum Parry, 1891), 216–17. More recently, Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004), 629n18, uncritically attributes the revelation to Joseph Smith for polemical purposes.

[11] “‘Facts Are Stubborn Things,’” 922.

[12] JSP, D1:363.

[13] See the thorough analysis of this document and the problems with attributing its contents to Joseph Smith in Frederick G. Williams III, “Did Lehi Land in Chile? An Assessment of the Frederick G. Williams Statement,” FARMS Report (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1988); Williams, “Did Lehi Land in Chile?” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon: The FARMS Updates, ed. John W. Welch (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992), 57–61; Williams, The Life of Dr. Frederick G. Williams: Counselor to the Prophet Joseph Smith (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2012), 437–52. See also Robert J. Matthews, “Notes on ‘Lehi’s Travels’,” BYU Studies 12, no. 3 (1972): 312–14.

[14] John M. Bernhisel, Joseph Smith’s New Translation, ca. 1845 May–June, [132] MS 21927, CHL.

[15] Williams, The Life of Dr. Frederick G. Williams, 445. This conclusion was also reached by B. H. Roberts over a century ago. See B. H. Roberts, New Witnesses for God, II. The Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1909), 3:501–3. Curiously, however, Roberts, New Witnesses for God, II. The Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1909), 2:157, appears to accept at face value that the location of Lehi’s landing preserved in Richards’s Compendium is “the word of the Lord to the Prophet Joseph Smith.”

[16] A recent statement by the Church affirms, “The Church does not take a position on the specific geographic locations of Book of Mormon events in the ancient Americas. . . . Individuals may have their own opinions regarding Book of Mormon geography and other such matters about which the Lord has not spoken. However, the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles urge leaders and members not to advocate those personal theories in any setting or manner that would imply either prophetic or Church support for those theories. All parties should strive to avoid contention on these matters.” See “Book of Mormon Geography,” Topics and Questions, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/book-of-mormon-geography.