4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble

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A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble

A Witness of Cumorah

by Edwin Goble

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all those who helped me in any way or form on this subject. Some helped by taking time to answer my emails or meeting with me and talking to me. Others gave substantive feedback and helped in other ways over the years in my research on the subject of Book of Mormon Geography and Archaeology on the various projects I have worked on. Some collaborated with me. The following is a partial list:

Wayne May (Ancient American Magazine/Ancient American Archaeological Foundation), Rodney Meldrum (LDS Researcher/FIRM Foundation), Brant Gardner (FAIR/Interpreter), Dr. John Sorenson (BYU), Dr. John Clark (BYU), John Tvedtnes (BYU), Joshua Mariano (Independent Researcher), Joe Andersen (BMAF), Douglas K. Christensen (BMAF), Steven L. Carr (BMAF), Tyler Livingston (FAIR/BMAF), Jeff Holt (Hopewell/Adena Archaeologist) and J. Sherman Feher (Book Reviewer).

I can be contacted at [email protected] [1] Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One ­ The Hopewell Sphere of Influence and Mesoamerican Influence in Hopewell Territory

Chapter Two ­ Mormon and Moroni as Hopewellian Nephites And Cumorah's Internal Geography http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 1/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble Chapter Three ­ Criteria for the Ancient Cumorah of the Nephite Destruction

Chapter Four ­ The New York Hill and Archaeology

Introduction

I will start with some basic definitions. “Mesoamerica,” (meso meaning middle) is a technical term in archaeology that refers to an area somewhat synonymous with “Central America.” It is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre­Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Above is a general map of Mesoamerica so the reader can visualize it.

A popular theory today in the Church is the “Limited” Mesoamerican theory that places Cumorah within this limited area. That is not what I believe. The Hemispherical theory places Book of Mormon territory covering all of North and South America, with a Narrow Neck of Land at the Isthmus of Panama. This is not what I believe either. The following map represents the hemispherical theory: http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 2/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble

As you can see on this map for the Hemispherical theory, we have (1) Cumorah in New York, (2) Panama as the Narrow Neck of Land, and (3) Colombia as Zarahemla, and (4) somewhere along the coast of Chile as Lehi's landing­place. The only thing correct in this theory is that Cumorah was actually in New York. Next we have the “Heartland” theory:

http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 3/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble

In this case, we have (1) Cumorah in New York, with (2) Zarahemla in the Midwestern US. I used to believe in this theory, but I have changed my mind.2 The purpose of this book is to promote a Mesoamerican setting of the Book of Mormon as the Land of Zarahemla. But I am placing Cumorah in New York still. The following is a map of my proposal:

http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 4/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble

So now, in my proposal, we have (1) Cumorah in New York, (2) the Northern Nephite domain in the Midwestern US. This is not Zarahemla, but is an area that was inhabited by Nephites later in their history. And then we have (3) the Narrow Neck of Land and Zarahemla in Mesoamerica. This is not hemispherical, because it doesn't take up the whole hemisphere. It isn't so limited as to place everything in Mesoamerica. But the Northern Nephite domain extends into the Midwest, all the way to New York. I believe that most of the Book of Mormon story takes place in the area marked as number three here, in Mesoamerica. It was only later in their history that the people of the Book of Mormon extended outward into these northern areas. The Midwestern US that is the archaeological heartland of what is called the “Hopewell­Adena” culture. This was the central population center of the Nephite Culture in the Land Northward, in Illinois and Ohio, with New York being the “fringe” of their territory.

The New York Cumorah is the place not only where Moroni ultimately buried the plates of the Book of Mormon, but also the place of the Nephite and Jaredite destructions. I do not believe that there are two separate hills with the name Cumorah.

Andrew Hedges, one of the scholars on the Joseph Smith Papers project, and a former editor of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, wrote several articles on the subject of Book of Mormon geography. In one of Hedges’ articles, he examines eleven http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 5/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble documents directly tied to the prophet Joseph Smith that seem to show the geographical setting that the Prophet may have had in mind. Hedges writes:

[N]one of [the documents] . . . suggest the fully hemispheric view of the book’s geography that Sorenson suggests most Church members held . . . Nor can any of them . . . be interpreted to support the idea . . . [of] a limited Mesoamerican geography . . . as John Clark has recently suggested . . . [T]he view . . . is one that has Book of Mormon peoples, during at least part of their histories, inhabiting parts . . . of the eastern United States; the final battles of the Nephites and Jaredites taking place in upstate New York; and the centers for both . . . civilizations being located . . . in Central America . . .

The documents . . . suggest an understanding . . . lying somewhere between a fully hemispheric model . . . and a limited model . . . which we might dub a “limited hemispheric” or “northern hemispheric” view . . . 3

So, as you can see, Hedges' analysis seems to suggest that the very type of geography I am suggesting here (i.e. a “limited hemispheric” one so to speak) may have been the one the early saints, including Joseph Smith, had in mind, rather than the traditional hemispheric model.

My concern, therefore, is about Adena and Hopewell period artifacts and sites, dating to the Book of Mormon time period. Some of the things presented in other writings by other New York theorists may date to the wrong time period. Indeed, as some have noted, the critical question is, what do they date to?4 The bottom line is that each fort and site and artifact found in the Cumorah area must be dated archaeologically by real archaeologists to ascertain the truth of the situation.

So I invite you to enter into a journey with me in rediscovering the Land Northward of the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon describes an exceedingly great distance from Mesoamerica to Cumorah, assuming Mesoamerica was the Land of Zarahemla. The land of Cumorah was an exceedingly great distance from Mesoamerica, a place with large bodies of water, and Cumorah is just barely to the south of one of these large bodies of water, according to the text.The Great Lakes region fits perfectly. Cumorah in New York is a perfect fit. And the idea that Coriantumr couldn't have walked from New York to Mesoamerica is just not really a problem, just as it wasn't a problem for Moroni to go in the other direction for the Mesoamericanist theory. Just like any other situation where the Book of Mormon says that the people went into the Land Northward. Archaeology shows much Mesoamerican influence in the Great Lakes Region, and for those people to have come is no different from Coriantumr, or the people of Limhi (that is, if they went that far, which the text does not say), or even the Nephites to Cumorah. Archaeology shows the plausibility for hundreds of thousands of Mesoamericans to be pushed from Tehuantepec to New York. Other people did it as recorded in the archaeological record, and there is no reasonable reason why they could not have done it. Many armies did that type of thing in http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 6/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble antiquity, and the Lamanites gave the Nephites four years to gather together.

In the United States, as far as sites that date to the Book of Mormon time period go, I am not looking for cities with the same degree of urbanization as those found in Mesoamerica, because a rural hinterland simply is not an urban area. Some advocates of a Great Lakes Setting for the Book of Mormon make arguments that the large cities have disappeared or something, and that much of the evidence has disappeared. I, on the other hand, am saying that the archaeology of the Great Lakes region is sufficient.

Large cultural centers with lots of population were located primarily in Illinois and Ohio. This was their heartland in the area. So this is why I call this the “Two Heartland” theory, to contrast it from the US Heartland theory. Because there were two heartlands of the Book of Mormon lands, one in the Land Southward, and one in the Land Northward. New York fits nicely and comfortably within the sphere of influence of those cultural centers in Ohio and Illinois. Furthermore, the fact that Mesoamerican influence in these centers was indeed present to a large degree is sufficient to establish that the Mesoamericans had extended their influence into the Cumorah region, and that the inhabitants were definitely kin to the Mesoamericans. My point is that Hopewellians of the Eastern United States represent many of the inhabitants of the Book of Mormon Land Northward. As John Clark, a BYU scholar, points out: "For this area, the Adena and Hopewell cultures are particularly attractive candidates for Book of Mormon peoples because they represented the most sophisticated cultures on their time horizon in the United States."5

These were a mixture of Nephite and Lamanite Mesoamericans that migrated northward, along with already­present inhabitants of the region who were left­overs from the Jaredite civilization (along with whoever else the Lord led to America during that time period), perhaps from other migrations from Asia and the Pacific. When I am talking about “Nephites” or “Lamanites,” I am talking about groups of people who had allegiance to political factions in the areas where they lived, regardless of lineage. The people of Ammon are people who were not Nephite by birth, but by political affiliation. Over time, they became more illiterate than Mesoamericans were6 since they were a culture on the fringes of Mesoamerican influence, with the exception of record­ keepers that were of priestly lines, such as Mormon. Nevertheless, a strong kindred tie was felt between these people and their mother civilization to the south. Since the literacy of their priesthood was brought with them from the south, it is only fitting that the Book of Mormon plates were in the form of a Mesoamerican codex, as John Sorenson has pointed out.

Migrations continued from Mesoamerica over the centuries into the Great Lakes region, but it seems that the amount of trade over those vast distances was limited. The Hopewell/Adena established their own trade networks, but primarily, those networks were concentrated in the north. Finally, the remnants of the Nephite civilization from Mesoamerica were cut off at the Narrow Neck of Land by the Lamanites towards the end. They held out in Mesoamerica as long as possible. But then, the time came that the Nephites started to flee, and Mormon had to go ahead get the plates from the Hill Shim as he was commanded to do, because the land was about to be overthrown. http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 7/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble The Hopewellian civilization did not last for very long after the era of the Nephite destruction. Those who they had looked upon for the enlightenment in their culture had been destroyed, and anyone else that belonged to that culture had lost their light and knowledge of the gospel, and they were heading for a dark age. For example, as we read in the archaeological literature:

The Fort Ancient people had not constructed the hilltop rampart from which their name was derived; that was a Hopewell enterprise. 7 The "forts" not only look like defensive structures, they were defensive structures, and probably marked the opening of the final phase of Hopewell life. Fort Ancient is the most impressive of these structures . . ." 8 Several small settlements have been discovered at the base of Fort Hill, suggesting that the Hopewells did not remain continuously immured in their forts, but took refuge in them only at times of severe crisis. What this crisis was, we cannot suggest; but Prufer notes that about this same time the Indian population in more northerly areas began to protect its villages with stockades: “Unrest of some kind appears to have been afoot throughout eastern North America. This unrest may have triggered an irreversible collapse of the Hopewell, because it cut off the supplies of imported raw materials that were so important in the religious scheme.

Indeed, at that point the Hopewell trade was definitely affected, and everything was in chaos. We go on:

“Could the scheme itself be kept alive when the goods were no longer available?” Prufer asks. “. . . Whether or not this caused the collapse of the Hopewell cult, there isno question that it did collapse . . .” The cult evaporated; its practitioners no longer were distinguishable in North American Indian Culture. Succeeding developments in the Ohio Valley are cloudy. Possibly there was an actual emigration from the region; certainly there was a sharp decline in population. 9

As we see, to some experts, there seems to have been a decline in population. To others, they explain this in other ways, saying that the Hopewell way of life ended for reasons which are not well understood:

. . . [T]he Hopewell people did not vanish, or even emigrate to parts unknown; they simply changed their way of life in response to profound changes in their world. Archaeologists give different names to subsequent cultures as one way of calling attention to these changes, but this does not mean they were not the descendants of the Hopewell and the inheritors of their legacy. 10

Whatever the case, it was chaotic.

In a recent letter written by F. Michael Watson, Secretary to the First Presidency at the time, dated October 16, 1990, Elder Watson wrote: "The Church has long maintained, as attested to by references in the writings of General Authorities, that the Hill Cumorah in western New York state is the same as referenced in the Book of Mormon."11 Later, in 1993, Elder Watson responded to some scholars by fax: "The http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 8/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble Church emphasizes the doctrinal and historical value of the Book of Mormon, not its geography. While some Latter­day Saints have looked for possible locations and explanations [for Book of Mormon geography] because the New York Hill Cumorah does not readily fit the Book of Mormon description of Cumorah, there are no conclusive connections between the Book of Mormon text and any specific site."12

So, it has only been a recent development that the Church has de­ emphasized the old teaching that the Cumorah of the Nephite Destruction was in New York. This wording that is italicized in the quote above from Elder Watson clearly has dependence on and is derived from an article in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, entitled “Cumorah.” In that article, the late David A. Palmer wrote: "Because the New York site does not readily fit the Book of Mormon description of Book of Mormon Geography, some Latter­day Saints have looked for other possible explanations and locations [for the Ancient Cumorah], including Mesoamerica."13

Elder Dallin H. Oaks has spoken favorably of the Limited Geography Theory for the Book of Mormon, and his words demonstrate that he is speaking as if Cumorah is within that limited setting:

Here [at BYU] I was introduced to the idea that the Book of Mormon is not a history of all the people who have lived on the continents of North and South America in all ages of the earth . . . [I]f the Book of Mormon only purports to be an account of a few peoples who inhabited a portion of the Americas during a few millennia in the past, the burden of argument changes drastically.14

Historical Statements of Cumorah Here I will speak of some of the the historical statements regarding Cumorah, and what they can and cannot establish. Oliver Cowdery says of the Hill Cumorah the following:,

You are acquainted with the mail road from Palmyra, Wayne Co. to Canandaigua, Ontario Co. N.Y. and also, as you pass from the former to the latter place, before arriving at the little village of Manchester, say from three to four, or about four miles from Palmyra, you pass a large hill on the east side of the road. Why I say large, is, because it is as large perhaps, as any in that country. To a person acquainted with this road, a description would be unnecessary, as it is the largest and rises the highest of any on that route. The north end rises quite sudden until it assumes a level with the more southerly extremity, and I think I may say an elevation higher than at the south a short distance, say half or three­fourths of a mile. As you pass toward Canandaigua it lessens gradually until the surface assumes its common level, or is broken by other smaller hills or ridges, water courses and ravines. I think I am justified in saying that this is the highest hill for some distance round. . . .At about one mile west rises another ridge of less height, running parallel with the former, leaving a beautiful vale between. The soil is of the first quality for the country, and under a state of cultivation, which gives a prospect at once imposing, http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 9/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble when one reflects on the fact, that here, between these hills, the entire power and national strength of both the Jaredites and Nephites were destroyed. 15

I believe the following statement also relays correct information:

It has been stated that there is no evidence near Cumorah of fierce battles in the past. That statement is completely answered in the following letter from Sister Susa Young Gates to the author: “In 1901 Elder Claude Taylor and myself visited the Hill Cumorah and had an interview with Mr. and Mrs. Samson who then owned the Hill and the farm adjoining. Mr. Samson was the brother of Admiral Samson, but he was very prejudiced against the Mormon people. However, we spent some time talking with him. Outside the farmhouse Elder Taylor and myself noted several bushel baskets filled with arrow heads and I asked Mrs. Samson what they were. She said they had just begun to plow up the hill Cumorah and around the hill, to plant some crops, and they turned up these arrow heads by the basket full.I asked her what she did with them. She replied that she sold them to tourists who passed by. I inquired the price of them, and she replied, 'Twenty­five cents.' I purchased two and when I returned home I gave one to President Joseph F. Smith. The other one I have kept and it is still in my possession. “This seems good evidence of the wars which have been fought around this historical hill.”16

The same type of report was made by Elder George Albert Smith:

We visited the Hill Cumorah and were accorded the courtesy of going thereon by the wife of Mr. George Sampson, a brother of Admiral Wm. Sampson, who before his death owned the property. When we went up there and looked around, we felt that we were standing on holy ground. The brethren located, as near as they thought was possible, the place from which the plates of the Book of Mormon were taken by the Prophet. We were delighted to be there. Looking over the surrounding country we remembered that two great races of people had wound up their existence in the vicinity, had fought their last fight, and that hundreds of thousands had been slain within sight of that hill. Evidence of the great battles that have been fought there in days gone by are manifest in the numerous spear and arrow­heads that have been found by farmers while plowing in that neighborhood. We were fortunate enough to obtain a few of the arrowheads. 17

It would be good to have some follow­up on the arrowheads, and track them down for archaeological testing to see if they are of Hopewellian or Mayan manufacture, dating to the Book of Mormon time period. Perhaps it would help for someone to talk to the families of the people who used to own the hill before the Church purchased it. David Whitmer said:

The Prophet, & I were riding in a wagon, & an aged man about 5 feet 10 heavey Set & on his back an old fashioned Armey knapsack Straped over his Shoulders & Something Square in it, & he walked

alongside of the Wagon and Wiped the Sweat off his face, Smileing very Pleasant David asked him to ride and he replied I am going across to the hill Cumorah.18

http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 10/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble And another, from an interview that Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith had with David Whitmer:

Whitmer: “Soon after this, Joseph sent for me to come to Harmony to get him and Oliver and bring them to my father's house [in Fayette, NY]. I did not know what to do, I was pressed with my work. I had some 20 acres to plow, so I concluded I would finish plowing and then go. I got up one morning to go to work as usual and, on going to the field, found between five and seven acres of my ground had been plowed during the night. I don't know who did it; but it was done just as I would have done it myself, and the plow was left standing in the furrow. This enabled me to start sooner. “When I arrived at Harmony, Joseph and Oliver were coming toward me, and met me some distance from the house. Oliver told me that Joseph had informed him when I started from home, where I had stopped the first night, how I read the sign at the tavern, where I stopped the next night, etc., and that I would be there that day before dinner, and this was why they had come out to meet me; all of which was exactly as Joseph had told Oliver, at which I was greatly astonished. “When I was returning to Fayette, with Joseph and Oliver, all of us riding in the wagon, Oliver and I on an old­fashioned, wooden, spring seat and Joseph behind us; while traveling along in a clear open place, a very pleasant, nice­looking man suddenly appeared by the side of our wagon and saluted us with, 'Good morning, it is very warm,' at the same time wiping his face or forehead with his hand. We returned the salutation, and, by a sign from Joseph, I invited him to ride if he was going our way. But he said very pleasantly, 'No, I am going to Cumorah.' This name was something new to me, I did not know what Cumorah meant. We all gazed at him, and at each other, and as I looked around inquiringly of Joseph, the old man instantly disappeared, so that I did not see him again."

JFSmith: “Did you notice his appearance?” Whitmer: “I should think I did. He was, I should think, about 5 feet 8 or 9 inches tall and heavy set, about such a man as James Vancleave there, but heavier; his face was as large, he was dressed in a suit of brown woolen clothes, his hair and beard were white, like Brother Pratt's, but his beard was not so heavy. I also remember that he had on his back a sort of knapsack with something in, shaped like a book. It was the messenger who had the plates, who had taken them from Joseph just prior to our starting from Harmony. Soon after our arrival home, I saw something which led me to the belief that the plates were placed or concealed in my father's barn. I frankly asked Joseph if my supposition was right, and he told me it was.

“Some time after this, my mother was going to milk the cows, when she was met out near the yard by the same old man (judging by her description of him) who said to her: 'You have been very faithful and diligent in your labors, but you are tired because of the increase in your toil; it is proper therefore that you should receive a witness that your faith may be strengthened.' Therefore, he showed her the plates. My father and mother had a large family of their own; the addition to it, therefore, of Joseph, his wife Emma, and Oliver very greatly increased the toil and anxiety of my mother. And although she had never complained, she had sometimes felt that her labor was too much, or at least she was perhaps beginning to feel so. This circumstance, however, completely removed all such feelings and nerved her up for her increased responsibilities."19

And from another source (Joseph F. Smith's journal entry for April 25, 1918):

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When they started for New York, Joseph and Emma were on the hind seat (of the wagon) and Oliver and David on the front seat. In the middle of the prairie, all of the sudden, there appeared a man walking along the road, and David said he raised his hat and rubbed his brow as if he were a little warm, and said good morning to them and they said good morning. Oliver and David looked at each other and began to marvel and wonder: Where did he come from, and what does this mean? And Joseph said, 'Ask him to ride.' So David, who was teamster, asked him if he would get in and ride with them. He said, 'No, I'm just going over to Cumorah.' David said, 'Cumorah? Cumorah? What does that mean?' He had never heard of Cumorah, and he said, 'I thought I knew this country all

around here, but I never heard of Cumorah,' and he inquired about it. While he was looking around and trying to ascertain what the mystery was, the man was gone, and when he looked back he did not see him anymore. Then he demanded, 'What does it mean?' Joseph informed him that the man was Moroni, and that the bundle on his back contained plates which Joseph had delivered to him before they departed from Harmony, Susquehanna County, and that he was taking them for safety, and would return them when he (Joseph) reached father Whitmer's home. There was a long talk about this.20

So, to recap, these are just some of the accounts of Cumorah. If there is something to them, people need to approach the Lord on their own, or await further revelation from the Lord’s prophet to know.

Chapter One ­ The Hopewell Sphere of Influence and Mesoamerican Influence in Hopewell Territory

David Palmer, a Book of Mormon scholar, observed interestingly that Joseph Smith “prophetically made an accurate assessment of the scope of the territorial connections of a people now known as the Hopewellians.”21 In making this statement, he is referring to what is called the Zelph Incident.22The Zelph Incident took place in Illinois, where Joseph Smith identified some bones they dug up from a mound as an Ancient American named Zelph who had something to do with wars fought for freedom under a Hopewellian King named Onandagus.

Joseph Smith's other statement in a letter to his wife in 1834 shows that Joseph Smith himself was absolutely assigning Book of Mormon provenance to those very mounds and artifacts of the Hopewell. This statement is from June 3, 1834:

The whole of our journey, in the midst of so large a company of social honest and sincere men, 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, and gazing upon a country the fertility, the http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 12/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble splendour and the goodness so indescribable, all serves to pass away time unnoticed. 23

However, some have questioned the authenticity of the letter. Whatever the case, it is neither here nor there, but it is interesting. Whether it was based on revelation or not it is clear at least if this quote is genuine, that Joseph Smith regarded both the Maya and the Hopewell as Nephite.

The Hopewell had far­reaching and complex trade interactions in peace time, sometimes called the “Hopewell Interaction Sphere” and sometimes the “Hopewell Exchange System.” As we read from the following:

The Hopewell tradition (also incorrectly called the "Hopewell culture") is the term used to describe common aspects of the Native Americans in the United States from 200 BC to 400 A.D. The Hopewell tradition was not a single culture or society, but a widely dispersed set of related populations, which were connected by a common network of trade routes, known as the Hopewell Exchange System . . . At its greatest extent, Hopewell culture stretched from western New York to Missouri and from Wisconsin to Mississippi, and included both the American and Canadian shores of Lake Ontario.24

These cultures making up this common tradition archaeologically called Hopewell that Joseph Smith collectively called “Nephite” shared trade and culture and other significant ties during peace time. It is therefore plausible that they had significant ties during war time as well.

However, Mesoamericans such as the Olmec had gone into the United States and into the Great Lakes region, even from the earliest of times. This is not a notion confined to my own mind, but actually finds support in the minds of non­LDS scholars, such as Dr. Cyclone Covey of Wake Forest University:

Dr. Covey traces the evidence of the La Venta Olmec incursions north to establish Poverty Point [Louisiana] and some 100 surrounding sites, then moved up theMississippi and the Ohio to become the “Adena.” . . .

Poverty Point carbon dates range from 1115 B.C. ±95 . . . A custom of dropping baked­ clay briquettes into porridge and banking them red hot around raw meat . . . began on Carolina shores and . . . Poverty Point seized on it. Ford found 20 million briquettes there by the end of his 1955 season. They have turned up as far afield as falls of the Ohio at north­bank Kelley Site near Clarksville, Ind[iana]. and Tick Island on St. Johns River, NE Florida. Along the front terrace of the same Maçon Ridge, Poverty Point settlements dotted, overlooking the now relic Arkansas . . .

Having no rocks within 30 miles, Poverty Point imported 40% from more than 100 mi. and procured raw materials from a 682­mile radius for grinding beads, figurines (of which some of the female have Shang/Olmec cleft foreheads), pendants, rocker stamps to perforate­decorate orange pottery, atlatl weights, bola plummets, pipes, etc. . . . The orange pottery was that of La Venta’s subcenter Chalcatzingo, and St. Johns River, NE Florida, intermediary between Chalcatzingo and Poverty Point.

By frontier alliances and subcenters like La Venta’s Chalcatzingo, Poverty Point formalized an http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 13/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble informal network, in the terminology of David C. Grove, co­excavator of Chalcatzingo beginning 1972, published 1984, whose observations on that site . . . could just as well have been referring to Poverty Point’s long­distance acquisition network for status goods. Contemporary with La Venta, Poverty Point lorded over a Shang/Olmec­ style network of over 100 known sites . .

As La Venta lost control of long­distance river routes to competition higher up, that disintegrated the Olmec feudal domain into old and new hamlets by 500 B.C., so developing interlopers upriver stifled Poverty Point with the same result at the same time . . . We call this transplanted Poverty Point Adena . . .25

And others have noted the same northern migrations and trade patterns from Mesoamerica into the United States in these extremely early periods:

North American archaeologists often find themselves in a situation where they are expected to acknowledge the primacy of Mesoamerica . . . as the source of cultural and technological “breakthroughs.” These would include such things as . . . cultigens such as maize, beans, and squash [and] cults (the iconography and temple forms of the later “Southeastern Ceremonial Complex”–the Southern Death Cult” often seen as originating in Mesoamerica, etc. Poverty Point, in particular, has been represented as possibly having been stimulated by the Olmec of the Mesoamerican Formative period. Both Poverty Point and the Olmec existed at roughly the same time. Both cultures produced monumental earthworks . . . While as yet there are no archaeological indicators of urbanism associated with this site [i.e. Poverty Point], the presence of such geometrically well­coordinated, large­scale, “public works” such as are found at Poverty Point have often been used to suggest the presence of cultural complexity.26

Far­flung networks are known to have existed from Mesoamerica far into North America long before the Hopewell Sphere of Interaction, or at least that is the interpretation of certain scholars. Other people disagree. And more and more evidence of this keeps surfacing:

The habitation terraces in the main Poverty Point complex were broken by straight line walkways, which were used for astronomical or solar alignments. The rising and setting of the sun on the equinoxes is seen from the paths of the walkways. The amount of earth used to construct Poverty Point is estimated at 20 million basket loads. The site is so large that visitors can go on a motor­ driven tram that snakes through the site as a guide explains aspects of the site.

Archaeologists suspect an Olmec influence at Poverty Point. Some of the unique artifacts found at Poverty Point are similar to artifacts found at Olmec sites along the Gulf of Mexico in Mexico. It is also known that the people of Poverty Point engaged in extensive trading. Materials from Ohio, Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, and North Carolina have been excavated from the site. Poverty Point . . . [has] unique structures, massive size, and [is] the oldest known mound site in America.27

Significant influence from Mesoamerica was felt in North America from the earliest times, regardless of the extent of the trade networks. Douglas K. Christensen has written: http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 14/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble I do not totally discount the existence of Book of Mormon cultural evidences found in other parts of the North American continent. Places as diverse and far apart as Peru, Panama, Central America, the United States southwest, Rocky Mountains and northeast not only show evidence of being influenced by people from Mesoamerica, but often have legends that are uncannily similar to those of Book of Mormon peoples. This influence may be particularly true of the Jaredites . . . Jaredite cultural evidence can be found from the ancient Chavin of Peru to the Adena and Hopewell of the United States Great Lakes region.28

The very ancient trade routes across the whole of North America and Mesoamerica are well documented, and maps are available of these routes.29 There is no difference between a route for trade and a route for travel. Most often, Mesoamericanists pick trade routes along the Arabian Peninsula for the preferred theoretical routes for Lehi's party to have traveled there.

John Sorenson, a prominent Book of Mormon Geography Scholar at BYU is of the paradigm that there were significant Mesoamerican influences, perhaps by way of migration. He detailed major Mesoamerican influence in North America.30 For example, Sorenson writes that many specialists now recognize and have documented a “long sequence of cultural transmissions and migrations moved northward from southern Mexico.” And that the evidence from “the southwestern United States is impressive.” For example, they just found evidence of chocolate in the Southwest, that was imported from Mexico.31 Furthermore, in the critical area of the Eastern US in Hopewell country, “evidence for cultural and linguistic intrusions from Mexico is also strong.” Sorenson notes that “corn grown by the Hopewell people in the centuries just before Christ was a Guatemalan type.” And the evidence goes on and on. And he finally observes that “we can see that the kind of migrations northward mentioned in the Book of Mormon are substantiated in general,” and that “their descendants, or aspects of their culture, could easily have spread out, here a little and there a little, over the North American continent.” Tyler Livingston on the FAIR blog on April 17th, 2010, notes that:

Since the discovery among the Hohokam archaeological sites in Arizona in 1983, it has been discovered that little barley (Hordeum pussilum) is native to the Americas . . . Archaeologists are now finding barley in several sites all over North America. Barley has now been discovered in archaeological sites in the following places: Arkansas, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Mexico. Since most scholars place Book of Mormon events in Central America, many of these sites and cultures would show that barley was native to the Americas, but outside of Book of Mormon parameters. However, since it is now being found in Mexico and the Southwest, it is becoming more likely that Book of Mormon cultures were in contact with cultures from the North, and may have possessed barley. The Hohokam who lived in Arizona, where domesticated barley was first found in 1983, are thought to have been in trade with those in “middle America”.32

Another obvious indicator for Mesoamerican influence on the Hopewell is Hopewellian http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 15/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble astronomy:

Hively and Horn (1982) added a significant dimension to our appreciation of the Hopewellian achievement when they determined that the major rising and setting points of the moon, encompassing an 18.6 year cycle, are incorporated into the architecture of the Newark Earthworks. They speculate that this astronomical information is not just symbolically encoded into the site plan, but that the substantial earthen walls, with their long sight lines and a height that corresponds, more or less, to eye level, are massive (and therefore long­ lived and tamper proof) fixed instruments for making astronomical observations."33

This is just one of many examples. And then, there is the Great Hopewell Road, which is a Mesoamerican sacbe, or White Road, found in Ohio, of all places, which archaeo­ astronomically links several sites in Ohio. This road definitely dates to Book of Mormon times. This is just the tip of the iceberg where Mesoamerican ties to the Hopewell are concerned. Incidentally, this actually also reflects on the cultural achievements of the cultures that revered the New York Cumorah site as well, showing just what kind of an archaeo­astronomical site it was. Sacbes are things that Mesoamerican advocates are always touting in favor of a Mesoamerican placement for the Book of Mormon, being the “Highways” of the Book of Mormon. The irony is that the Great Hopewell Road actually pre­dates most of the Mesoamerican sacbes. But there can be no doubt where the Hopewell got their ideas from.

Chapter Two ­ Mormon and Moroni as Hopewellian Nephites And Cumorah's Internal Geography

According to the Book of Mormon, after the great destruction of the Nephites at Cumorah, some Nephites went southward and were destroyed and only Moroni remained to tell the tale.34 They were already southward when that happened, and then Moroni ends up in the Land Northward again.35 But why? We know that he ultimately buried the plates in the New York Hill Cumorah. That much is beyond dispute. It is clear enough that he was wandering. But why did he go there? Was it only because he was to bury the plates there? Was it only because Cumorah was there? Or was it because it was home? Indeed, it was home.

Mormon himself indicates that he and his father lived in the Land Northward originally. They were natives to the Land Northward, and it was there that he was approached by Ammaron who hid up the records in the hill Shim, and told him what he must do. So, these people were living in the Land Northward to begin with. Ammaron, Mormon and Moroni were ethnically Hopewell Indian. Mormon likely spent his early childhood in the land Northward, and it was later on after his conversation with Ammaron that http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 16/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble he was taken by his father into the land Southward.36 John Sorenson writes:

By the time Mormon opens the curtain of history on events in his own lifetime, after A.D. 300, the official Nephite records had long since been moved to the land northward, and he was a native of that area.37

Ammaron was in the Land Northward telling Mormon about the Hill Shim, which according to most internal geographies, is supposedly not far from Cumorah in the Land of Desolation. But it is clear that this belief is flawed. Mormon clearly extracted the records from the Hill Shim going ahead of the rest of the Nephites, after the time that the Nephites had left Mesoamerica. This is reasonable because Omer travelled an exceedingly great distance to get to the Shim/Cumorah area in the Land Northward, which was many days' travel from the Narrow Neck of Land. Mormon notes the fact that there was a large contrast between the sparseness of the population in the Land Northward that he was used to as a boy, to the large population centers in the Land Southward. "And it came to pass that I, being eleven years old, was carried by my father into the land southward, even to the land of Zarahemla. The whole face of the land had become covered with buildings, and the people were as numerous almost, as it were the sand of the sea".38 Mormon was astounded at the contrast of how Mesoamerica was covered with buildings and the population was so immense compared to where he had come from. Therefore, from the text of the Book of Mormon, it is seen that the place Mormon spent his childhood was sparsely populated and sparsely settled, according to his own description. A similar comparison can be seen from the archaeology of New York State and the rest of the land of the Hopewell. Why would Mormon not have picked a place that he was familiar with from his childhood to bring all the Nephite armies to perish, especially since it was a religious temple mount, as will be seen?

There is evidence from other parts of the Book of Mormon about this journey. See later on in this chapter for a more detailed treatment.

Cumorah's Internal Geography

Andrew Hedges of the Joseph Smith Papers Project writes:

In some places, in fact, the text appears to suggest a very different scenario—that is, that the battles took place far from the centers of their civilizations, in some sort ofnorthern backcountry with which the Jaredites and Nephites were familiar, but that, with a few exceptions, generally lay outside the scope of their records. Other events and descriptions from elsewhere in the Book of Mormon similarly hint at a far­flung Nephite hinterland to the north of their center of civilization as well. 39

The Book of Mormon states:

. . . I caused that forty and three of my people should take a journey into the wilderness, that thereby they might find the land of Zarahemla . . .And they were lost in the wilderness for the space of many days, yet they were diligent, and found not the land of Zarahemla but returned to this land, having traveled in a land among many waters, having discovered a land which was covered with bones of men, and of beasts, and was also covered with ruins of buildings of every kind, having discovered a land which had been peopled with a people who were as numerous as the hosts of Israel.40 http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 17/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble The eastern United States is a Land of Many Waters. Throughout the Book of Mormon, the Land Northward is described in very general terms. And the most ancient sites pre­dating the Hopewell are to the South, such as Poverty Point, which dates to the Jaredite time period. There is nothing in this scripture that demands that Cumorah must be attached to this picture. The Limhi expedition definitely went to some part of Desolation (i.e. extending from Tehuantepec to New York), at some undefined point in­between New York and Southern Mexico, but there is no need to assume it was New York. Whatever the case, they were indeed lost in the wilderness for many days.

The Jaredites inhabited primarily the area near the Narrow Neck of Land and extended their influence Northward from there. The primary description that has to do with the Great Lakes in the description of the land Northward is specifically the large bodies of water near Cumorah, and the fact that Ripliancum was one of those large bodies of water. It is not so much the Land of Many Waters concept.

Once trails were blazed, and travel on waterways was mastered, it wouldn't have taken many years for transient people to travel into the Land Northward. Later wars that extended into the Great Lakes region were fought by people who already knew their way around, and who had followed trade routes both on land and by water.

Waterway travel by canoe has been suggested by a Book of Mormon scholar as a way that a Mesoamerican could have gotten to New York. Those in the Book of Mormon such as Hagoth who became shipping merchants used waterways to get into the Land Northward: "And in the thirty and eighth year, this man built other ships. And the first ship did also return, and many more people did enter into it; and they also took much provisions, and set out again to the land northward."41

Here is a scripture that references King Omer's expedition to the North:

And the Lord warned Omer in a dream that he should depart out of the land; wherefore Omer departed out of the land with his family, and traveled many days, and came over and passed by the hill of Shim, and came over by the place where the Nephites were destroyed, and from thence eastward, and came to a place which was called Ablom, by the seashore, and there he pitched his tent, and also his sons and his daughters, and all his household, save it were Jared and his family.42

The "many days" concept is invoked here again. The place that Omer departed out of was the Land of Moron.43 Of Moron, we read: “Now the land of Moron, where the king dwelt, was near the land which is called Desolation by the Nephites.” It is clear from the Book of Mormon text that the southern border of the Land of Desolation was at the Narrow Neck of Land. Also, the southern border of Jaredite territory was at the Narrow Neck of Land,44 and Desolation was the place where the Jaredites lived, because that is what the Nephites called it.45 Therefore, the place where king Omer started out from was near the Narrow Neck of Land on the southern border of the Land of Desolation, precisely the area where Hagoth set off from in his ships. It says http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 18/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble that he “departed out of the land with his family, and traveled many days, and came over and passed by the hill of Shim, and came over by the place where the Nephites were destroyed . . .” So, in summary, he left the land near the narrow neck, traveled many days, and then he finally got to Cumorah. In the Book of Mosiah, the Nephites traveled many days, and were diligent to get to the Land Northward, whether or not they got to Cumorah as well, meaning that it took lots of effort.

Coriantumr returned from New York after the Jaredite destruction to Mesoamerica to find the Mulekites. Ether prophesied to him that he would live to see them, and that they would bury him. And he sought out to find them:

Otherwise they should be destroyed, and all his household save it were himself. And he should only live to see the fulfilling of the prophecies which had been spoken concerning another people receiving the land for their inheritance; and Coriantumr should receive a burial by them; and every soul should be destroyed save it were Coriantumr.46

And so he took the time that he needed in the Great Lakes region to sufficiently recover from his wounds to where he could travel. And then he went to Mesoamerica.

Again, we read: “Therefore, Morianton put it into their hearts that they should flee to the land which was northward,

which was covered with large bodies of water, and take possession of the land which was northward.”47 North America in the Great Lakes region fits that description perfectly.

Joseph Fielding Smith writes:

It is known that the Hill Cumorah where the Nephites were destroyed is the hill where the Jaredites were also destroyed. This hill was known to the Jaredites as Rama. It was approximately near to the waters of Ripliancum, which the Book of Ether says, “by interpretation, is large, or to exceed all.” Mormon adds: “And it came to pass that we did march forth to the land of Cumorah, and we did pitch our tents round about the hill Cumorah; and it was in a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains; and here we had hope to gain advantage over the Lamanites. It must be conceded that this description fits perfectly the land of Cumorah in New York, as it has been known since the visitation of Moroni to the Prophet Joseph Smith, for the hill is in the proximity of the Great Lakes and also in the land of many rivers and fountains.48

This is good logic. It is precisely what the Book of Mormon is saying clearly. Again, we read:

. . . [T]here were an exceedingly great many who departed out of the land of Zarahemla, and went forth unto the land northward . . . And they did travel to anexceedingly great distance, insomuch that they came to large bodies of water and many rivers. Yea, and even they did spread forth into all parts of the land, into whatever parts it had not been rendered desolate and without timber, because of the many inhabitants who had before inherited the land. And now no part of the land was desolate, save it were for timber; but because of the greatness of the destruction of the people who had before inhabited the land it was called desolate. And there being but little timber upon the face of the land, nevertheless the people who went forth became exceedingly expert in the working of cement; therefore they did build houses of cement, in the which they did dwell. And it came to http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 19/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble pass that they did multiply and spread, and did go forth from the land southward to the land northward, and did spread insomuch that they began to cover the face of the whole earth . . . And the people . . . did dwell in tents, and in houses of cement, and they did suffer whatsoever tree should spring up upon the face of the land that it should grow up, that in time they might have timber to build their . . . buildings. And it came to pass as timber was exceedingly scarce in the land northward, they did send forth much by the way of shipping. And thus they did enable the people in the land northward that they might build many cities, both of wood and of cement. 49

This was Desolation. This was the previous abode of the Jaredites, because of the previous destruction. The places where cement is found most abundantly, archaeologically speaking, is in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. If one looks at a model where the Land Northward extends into the Great Lakes region, and where a narrow neck is in Mesoamerica, then cement cities do exist in the southern part of desolation above the Tehuantepec neck. In the Book of Mormon, there is only a general description of the whole land northward in the Book of Mormon stating that some of it has cement, and some of it is in an area of large bodies of water very far northward from the neck of land.

The place where the large bodies of water and many rivers are found is the Great Lakes region. Minnesota, for example, is known as the land of 10,000 lakes. This fits the description perfectly. It is all north of Mesoamerica. It is the same area as was described in the other scriptures quoted previously. Similarly, Mormon says, “And it came to pass that we did march forth to the land of Cumorah, and we did pitch our tents around about the hill Cumorah; and it was in a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains . . .”50

It took them four years to gather all of their people together for the last destruction. How far was Cumorah from these “large bodies of water” which were an exceedingly great distance from the Land of Zarahemla? It was right by them. Cumorah is intimately tied to Ripliancum, which is one of the large bodies of water: "And it came to pass that he came to the waters of Ripliancum, which, by interpretation, is large, or to exceed all . . .And it came to pass that the army of Coriantumr did pitch their tents by the hill Ramah; and it was that same hill where my father Mormon did hide up the records unto the Lord, which were sacred".51

This Ripliancum was right by Cumorah. It was in the area of the Land of Many Waters, an exceedingly great distance (many days travel) from the Narrow Neck of Land. "And it came to pass that when we had gathered in all our people in one to the land of Cumorah, behold I, Mormon . . . made this record . . ., and hid up in the hill Cumorah all the records which had been entrusted to me by the hand of the Lord, save it were these few plates which I gave unto my son Moroni."52

Therefore, the identity of this hill Ramah is the Ancient Cumorah of the Nephites. The text in that verse states that Mormon buried almost all the plates in Cumorah and gave one set of plates to Moroni. This verse doesn't comment on where Moroni buried that other set of plates decades later. It is therefore plausible that the Book of Mormon plates were later buried in the same hill. It doesn’t comment on the burial of http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 20/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble the plates by Moroni, which happened decades later. There is no positive evidence one way or the other that the Book of Mormon plates were or were not buried in the same Hill Cumorah on the basis of Mormon 6:6. This is why I say, the internal geography of Cumorah based on anchors in the text in conjunction with other verses in the Book of Mormon is what makes the last battle happen an exceedingly great distance from the Narrow Neck of Land. But this conclusion is not based on Moroni 6:6.

In the case of Limhi's party, there is no evidence how far northward they went. In that case, the phrase “exceedingly great distance” may not apply to Limhi's party. In the case of other parties that traveled into the Land Northward, they came to large bodies of water that I equate to the Great Lakes. In those cases, they definitely did travel an exceedingly great distance.

In summary, Cumorah was just southward of one of these large bodies of water called the Great Lakes. The large bodies of water were an exceedingly great distance from Zarahemla in a land of many waters, according to the text of the Book of Mormon. Everything in the Book of Mormon that refers to this Land of Many Waters speaks of a land entirely distant and separate from the land near the Narrow Neck of Land, many days travel from it, an exceedingly great distance from it.

The Internal Geography of the Nephite Destruction, from the Narrow Neck of Land at Tehuantepec all the way to Cumorah in New York

First I will establish clearly once again the Geography between the Narrow Neck of Land and Shim/Cumorah area. The hill Shim is the key landmark to this geography. Shim in the Book of Mormon is mentioned in three places. The first is in relation to when Ammaron was telling Mormon about where to go get the records:

And about the time that Ammaron hid up the records unto the Lord, he came unto me, (I being about ten years of age, and I began to be learned somewhat after the manner of the learning of my people) and Ammaron said unto me: I perceive that thou art a sober child, and art quick to observe; Therefore, when ye are about twenty and four years old I would that ye should remember the things that ye have observed concerning this people; and when ye are of that age go to the land Antum, unto a hill which shall be called Shim; and there have I deposited unto the Lord all the sacred engravings concerning this people.53

The next one is in relation to the Nephite flight into the land Northward: "And now I, Mormon, seeing that the Lamanites were about to overthrow the land, therefore I did go to the hill Shim, and did take up all the records which Ammaron had hid up unto the Lord."54

And the next one shows us the relation of Shim to the Narrow Neck of Land http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 21/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble (Tehuantepec):

And the Lord warned Omer in a dream that he should depart out of the land; wherefore Omer departed out of the land with his family, and traveled many days, and came over and passed by the hill of Shim, and came over by the place where the Nephites were destroyed, and from thence eastward, and came to a place which was called Ablom, by the seashore, and there he pitched his tent, and also his sons and his daughters, and all his household, save it were Jared and his family.55

So here we see that Omer started at the Narrow Neck of Land area where the Jaredite heartland was. And he departed OUT of that land, and then traveled MANY days until he came to Shim. And we see in this verse, that Cumorah is near Shim, being the place where the Nephites were destroyed.

Next, I have previously established that the hill Cumorah is intimately tied to Ripliancum, being just southward of it, and Ripliancum, being one of the large bodies of water in the Land Northward, as we see from Ether 15:8­11, and I quote the verses here again for clarity:

And it came to pass that he [Coriantumr] came to the waters of Ripliancum, which, by interpretation, is large, or to exceed all; wherefore, when they came to these waters they pitched their tents; and Shiz also pitched his tents near unto them; and therefore on the morrow they did come to battle. And it came to pass that they fought an exceedingly sore battle, in which Coriantumr was wounded again, and he fainted with the loss of blood. And it came to pass that the armies of

Coriantumr did press upon the armies of Shiz that they beat them, that they caused them to flee before them; and they did flee southward, and did pitch their tents in a place which was called Ogath. And it came to pass that the army of Coriantumr did pitch their tents by the hill Ramah; and it was that same hill where my father Mormon did hide up the records unto the Lord, which were sacred.

Now I will review all the verses in Mormon with regard to the last battles from the Narrow Neck of Land all the way to Cumorah, but only the verses that have to do with geography. In Mormon Chapter 2, the war begins, and the Nephites begin to be driven towards the Great Lakes region, as the first three verses show. Here is verse 1:

"And it came to pass in that same year there began to be a war again between the Nephites and the Lamanites. And notwithstanding I being young, was large in stature; therefore the people of Nephi appointed me that I should be their leader, or the leader of their armies."

In verse 2,(this was AD 326):

"Therefore it came to pass that in my sixteenth year I did go forth at the head of an army of the Nephites, against the Lamanites; therefore three hundred and twenty and six years had passed away."

In verse 3, it specifically shows they were going towards the north countries:

"And it came to pass that in the three hundred and twenty and seventh year the Lamanites did come upon us with exceedingly great power, insomuch that they did frighten my armies; therefore they http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 22/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble would not fight, and they began to retreat towards the north countries."

Verse 4:

"And it came to pass that we did come to the city of Angola, and we did take possession of the city, and make preparations to defend ourselves against the Lamanites. And it came to pass that we did fortify the city with our might; but notwithstanding all our fortifications the Lamanites did come upon us and did drive us out of the city."

Verse 5:

And they did also drive us forth out of the land of David.

Verse 6:

And we marched forth and came to the land of Joshua, which was in the borders west by the seashore.

So, in verse 7, it shows that early on, it was Mormon's strategy to try to get all the people together in one:

And it came to pass that we did gather in our people as fast as it were possible, that we might get them together in one body.

Verse 8:

But behold, the land was filled with robbers and with Lamanites; and notwithstanding the great destruction which hung over my people, they did not repent of their evil doings; therefore there was blood and carnage spread throughout all the face of the land, both on the part of the Nephites and also on the part of the Lamanites; and it was one complete revolution throughout all the face of the land.

Verse 9 indicates that it was AD 330:

And now, the Lamanites had a king, and his name was Aaron; and he came against us with an army of forty and four thousand. And behold, I withstood him with forty and two thousand. And it came to pass that I beat him with my army that he fled before me. And behold, all this was done, and three hundred and thirty years had passed away.

Now I skip some verses that don't have to do with geography, but the next geographical verse indicates that a whole decade and a half had passed in the war before the Nephites had been driven to the area of Shim, or near the land of Antum in the Hopewellian Cultural Region, as we see in verse 16. In this verse, the date is AD 345:

And it came to pass that in the three hundred and forty and fifth year the Nephites did begin to flee before the Lamanites; and they were pursued until they came even to the land of Jashon, before it was possible to stop them in their retreat.

Now in verse 17, Mormon went to the hill Shim for the first time in the Hopewellian region during this first stage of the war:

And now, the city of Jashon was near the land where Ammaron had deposited the records unto the http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 23/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble Lord, that they might not be destroyed. And behold I had gone according to the word of Ammaron, and taken the plates of Nephi, and did make a record according to the words of Ammaron.

As I had shown previously, referring back to the other scripture about the hill Shim, it says that Omer went OUT OF THE LAND and took MANY DAYS to get to Shim from the Narrow Neck of Land. This indicates that Mormon and the rest of the Nephite Nation made this same journey during this first part of the war, just as Omer and his family did. Now I skip to verse 20, which is the next verse with geography, and it shows they still went further northward:

And it came to pass that in this year the people of Nephi again were hunted and driven. And it came to pass that we were driven forth until we had come northward to the land which was called Shem.

Verse 21 again shows Mormon was trying to get everyone gathered in:

And it came to pass that we did fortify the city of Shem, and we did gather in our people as much as it were possible, that perhaps we might save them from destruction.

Verse 22 shows it was AD 346:

And it came to pass in the three hundred and forty and sixth year they began to come upon us again.

Now in verses 23­28, Mormon is urging his people to fight more boldly, and they took back their lands, starting with verse 23:

And it came to pass that I did speak unto my people, and did urge them with great energy, that they would stand boldly before the Lamanites and fight for their wives, and their children, and their houses, and their homes.

Verse 24:

And my words did arouse them somewhat to vigor, insomuch that they did not flee from before the Lamanites, but did stand with boldness against them.

Verse 25:

And it came to pass that we did contend with an army of thirty thousand against an army of fifty thousand. And it came to pass that we did stand before them with such firmness that they did flee from before us.

Verse 26:

And it came to pass that when they had fled we did pursue them with our armies, and did meet them again, and did beat them; nevertheless the strength of the Lord was not with us; yea, we were left to ourselves, that the Spirit of the Lord did not abide in us; therefore we had become weak like unto our brethren.

Verse 27:

And my heart did sorrow because of this the great calamity of my people, because of their wickedness and their abominations. But behold, we did go forth against the Lamanites and the robbers of http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 24/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble Gadianton, until we had again taken possession of the lands of our inheritance.

Verse 28 shows it was now AD 349, and they had been fighting for three years and had finally triumphed to the point that they had driven the Lamanites out of the Hopewellian lands and all the way down again to the Narrow Neck of Land:

And the three hundred and forty and ninth year had passed away. And in the three hundred and fiftieth year we made a treaty with the Lamanites and the robbers of Gadianton, in which we did get the lands of our inheritance divided.

Verse 29:

And the Lamanites did give unto us the land northward, yea, even to the narrow passage which led into the land southward. And we did give unto the Lamanites all the land southward.

So the significance of this review of Mormon Chapter 2 is to show that this first war of retreat took the Nephites all the way to their Hopewellian strongholds. But it also took them back down again to the Narrow Neck of Land, in Mesoamerica. So the mistake usually made in interpretation is that the Nephites were driven all the way back to Cumorah for decades. This comes from lack of a careful reading of the text, so it is not true. They had already been fighting a war in the Hopewellian area, and then pushed the Lamanites back down. Now we go forward with Mormon Chapter 3. In this chapter, the Nephites begin in Mesoamerica again. In verse 4, it was AD 360:

And it came to pass that after this tenth year had passed away, making, in the whole, three hundred and sixty years from the coming of Christ, the king of the Lamanites sent an epistle unto me, which gave unto me to know that they were preparing to come again to battle against us.

Verse 5:

And it came to pass that I did cause my people that they should gather themselves together at the land Desolation, to a city which was in the borders, by the narrow pass which led into the land southward.

Verse 6:

And there we did place our armies, that we might stop the armies of the Lamanites, that they might not get possession of any of our lands; therefore we did fortify against them with all our force.

In verse 7, it was AD 361, and they were still in Mesoamerica:

And it came to pass that in the three hundred and sixty and first year the Lamanites did come down to the city of Desolation to battle against us; and it came to pass that in that year we did beat them, insomuch that they did return to their own lands again.

In verse 8, they were still in Mesoamerica, it was AD 362, and they were close enough to the sea to cast their dead into it:

And in the three hundred and sixty and second year they did come down again to battle. And we did beat them again, and did slay a great number of them, and their dead were cast into the sea. http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 25/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble In Mormon Chapter 4, in verse 1 it was AD 363, and they were still in Mesoamerica:

And now it came to pass that in the three hundred and sixty and third year the Nephites did go up with their armies to battle against the Lamanites, out of the land Desolation.

Verse 2:

And it came to pass that the armies of the Nephites were driven back again to the land of Desolation. And while they were yet weary, a fresh army of the Lamanites did come upon them; and they had a sore battle, insomuch that the Lamanites did take possession of the city Desolation, and did slay many of the Nephites, and did take many prisoners.

Verse 3:

And the remainder did flee and join the inhabitants of the city Teancum. Now the city Teancum lay in the borders by the seashore; and it was also near the city Desolation.

The city Desolation and Teancum were both right by the Narrow Neck of Land at the southern border of Desolation. Now verse 6:

And it came to pass that the Lamanites did make preparations to come against the city Teancum.

In verse 7 it was AD 364 and they were still in Mesoamerica:

And it came to pass in the three hundred and sixty and fourth year the Lamanites did come against the city Teancum, that they might take possession of the city Teancum also.

Verse 8:

And it came to pass that they were repulsed and driven back by the Nephites. And when the Nephites saw that they had driven the Lamanites they did again boast of their own strength; and they went forth in their own might, and took possession again of the city Desolation.

Verse 9:

And now all these things had been done, and there had been thousands slain on both sides, both the Nephites and the Lamanites.

In verse 10, it was AD 366, and they were still in Mesoamerica:

And it came to pass that the three hundred and sixty and sixth year had passed away, and the Lamanites came again upon the Nephites to battle; and yet the Nephites repented not of the evil they had done, but persisted in their wickedness continually.

Verse 13:

And it came to pass that the Lamanites did take possession of the city Desolation, and this because their number did exceed the number of the Nephites.

In verse 15, it was AD 367, and they were still in Mesoamerica:

http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 26/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble And it came to pass that in the three hundred and sixty and seventh year, the Nephites being angry because the Lamanites had sacrificed their women and their children, that they did go against the Lamanites with exceedingly great anger, insomuch that they did beat again the Lamanites, and drive them out of their lands.

In verse 16, there was a break for 8 years while the Lamanites were regrouping to get all of their forces together, and it was AD 375, and they were still in Mesoamerica:

And the Lamanites did not come again against the Nephites until the three hundred and seventy and fifth year.

Verse 17:

And in this year they did come down against the Nephites with all their powers; and they were not numbered because of the greatness of their number.

In verse 18, the Nephites began to be driven:

And from this time forth did the Nephites gain no power over the Lamanites, but began to be swept off by them even as a dew before the sun.

In verse 19, it describes how the Nephites lost the city Desolation, and so at this point they started a northward retreat in this last part of the war:

And it came to pass that the Lamanites did come down against the city Desolation; and there was an exceedingly sore battle fought in the land Desolation, in the which they did beat the Nephites.

In verse 20, the Nephites fled to Boaz, still in Mesoamerica, yet they were headed northward:

And they fled again from before them, and they came to the city Boaz; and there they did stand against the Lamanites with exceeding boldness, insomuch that the Lamanites did not beat them until they had come again the second time.

In verse 21, the Nephites continued to be driven:

And when they had come the second time, the Nephites were driven and slaughtered with an exceedingly great slaughter; their women and their children were again sacrificed unto idols.

Verse 22 is a key verse because it marks the beginning of the actual flight to the Great Lakes because the Lamanites came at them with such power (see verse 18). The Nephites now began to abandon all of their towns and villages between Mesoamerica and the Great Lakes:

And it came to pass that the Nephites did again flee from before them, taking all the inhabitants with them, both in towns and villages.

In verse 23 Mormon goes ahead of the rest of the Nephites to fulfill the commandment to take up the records from the Hill Shim, as Ammaron told him to do. http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 27/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble Again, I repeat for clarity, referring back to the hill Shim, it says that Omer went OUT OF THE LAND and took MANY DAYS to get to Shim from the Narrow Neck of Land. This indicates that Mormon and the rest of the Nephite Nation made this same journey, just as Omer and his family did, this very last time. Here is verse 23:

And now I, Mormon, seeing that the Lamanites were about to overthrow the land, therefore I did go to the hill Shim, and did take up all the records which Ammaron had hid up unto the Lord.

Now we move on to Mormon chapter 5. Verses 3 and 4 indicate that the Nephites finally arrived at the Great Lakes Hopewellian strongholds and centers. It shows that the Nephites were indeed making their last stands in the Hopewellian strongholds. The city of Jordan is a Hopewellian city. Here is verse 3:

And it came to pass that the Lamanites did come against us as we had fled to the city of Jordan; but behold, they were driven back that they did not take the city at that time.

Verse 4:

And it came to pass that they came against us again, and we did maintain the city. And there were also other cities which were maintained by the Nephites, which strongholds did cut them off that they could not get into the country which lay before us, to destroy the inhabitants of our land.

Now in verse 5, it shows that they got to the Hopewellian strongholds in AD 379, and it gives the detail that they had passed by many lands to get there:

But it came to pass that whatsoever lands we had passed by, and the inhabitants thereof were not gathered in, were destroyed by the Lamanites, and their towns, and villages, and cities were burned with fire; and thus three hundred and seventy and nine years passed away.

In verse 6 it was AD 380 and the Lamanites are attacking Hopewellian centers:

And it came to pass that in the three hundred and eightieth year the Lamanites did come again against us to battle, and we did stand against them boldly; but it was all in vain, for so great were their numbers that they did tread the people of the Nephites under their feet.

Now in verse 7 the Nephites finally gave up trying to maintain the Hopewellian centers.

And it came to pass that we did again take to flight, and those whose flight was swifter than the Lamanites’ did escape, and those whose flight did not exceed the Lamanites’ were swept down and destroyed.

Now we come to Mormon Chapter 6, verse 1:

And now I finish my record concerning the destruction of my people, the Nephites. And it came to pass that we did march forth before the Lamanites.

In verses 2 and 3 Mormon secured a temporary treaty with the Lamanite king to gather in all the Nephites: http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 28/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble And I, Mormon, wrote an epistle unto the king of the Lamanites, and desired of him that he would grant unto us that we might gather together our people unto the land of Cumorah, by a hill which was called Cumorah, and there we could give them battle.

Verse 3:

And it came to pass that the king of the Lamanites did grant unto me the thing which I desired.

In verse 4, they all traveled to Cumorah:

And it came to pass that we did march forth to the land of Cumorah, and we did pitch our tents round about the hill Cumorah; and it was in a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains; and here we had hope to gain advantage over the Lamanites.

Now, in verse 5 and 6, it indicates that it had been four years since AD 380 when the Nephites started to lose control of the Hopewellian centers. They all gather at Cumorah:

And when three hundred and eighty and four years had passed away, we had gathered in all the remainder of our people unto the land of Cumorah.

Next, in verse 6, all the people were finally gathered in and ready for the battle and Mormon buries the records in the hill Cumorah, and gives the Book of Mormon plates to Moroni:

And it came to pass that when we had gathered in all our people in one to the land of Cumorah, behold I, Mormon, began to be old; and knowing it to be the last struggle of my people, and having been commanded of the Lord that I should not suffer the records which had been handed down by our fathers, which were sacred, to fall into the hands of the Lamanites, (for the Lamanites would destroy them) therefore I made this record out of the plates of Nephi, and hid up in the hill Cumorah all the records which had been entrusted to me by the hand of the Lord, save it were these few plates which I gave unto my son Moroni.

And of course, the rest is history, the Nephites were destroyed. This analysis shows that the Nephite destruction in the Great Lakes region is perfectly plausible and that many Nephites occupied the Hopewellian centers. It doesn't claim that all Hopewellians were Nephites, or that all cultures in the Great Lakes region or in other parts of the area that is now the US were Nephites. But it shows that the traditional interpretations are plausible, but with some tweaks on the details and nuances and assumptions that have traditionally been made.

Mormon's father took him to the Land of Zarahemla from the place in the Land Northward where they resided in the space of only part of one year. Mormon was 10 years old in Mormon 1:2 (about AD 322), and in Mormon 1:3, when he is carried into the Land of Zarahemla by his father, he is 11 years old. Mormon, in chapter 1, verse 2, notes that it was about the time that Ammaron hid up the records. In 4 Nephi 1:48, it shows when he hid them up. And in Mormon 1:3, it shows that it was at the hill Shim where Ammaron hid the plates. Therefore, it is clear that wherever the hill Shim http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 29/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble is, Mormon lived nearby, as it was “about” the time that Ammaron had hid up the records (Mormon 1:2).

The implication is that the journey taken by Mormon and his father was from the area of the Hill Shim to the Land of Zarahemla. And this journey took something within less than the space of a year's time for them. The journeys of Hagoth's ships into the Land Northward show that travel in the Land Northward was many times by water. William Hamblin states:

An examination of a map of North America shows that it is possible to sail along the coast of Mexico, up the Mississippi River, and then up the Ohio River to within less than one hundred miles of the New York hill where the plates were buried. Trails and waterways along these major rivers have existed for several thousand years. Sorenson provides a sixteenth­century example of someone walking a similar route

in less than a year; Moroni had thirty­five years between the final battles of the Nephites and when he buried the plates. Thus, the plates could have been transported by canoe to New York, along well­used waterways of the Hopewell Indians (who flourished c. 200 B.C. to A.D. 400).56

In Mormon 2:20, for example, it says that the Nephites were hunted and driven, so the people were fleeing. The people doing that to the Nephites came from all over, from Mesoamerica, and from wherever else anyone had allegiance to those factions. Perhaps there were Lamanite loyalists in the Hopewell areas. So, for example, our country started in New England and the eastern portion of our country in the 1600's where the greatest population density is. And then our Manifest Destiny took us to California and Oregon. And then hypothetically, in 2013, Russia invades Oregon, in some alternate timeline. Then what? Do we just stand around and say, well thank goodness they didn't invade New York where most of our people are. Whew! Thank goodness it is only Oregon where those people that don't matter are. Who needs to defend them? Of course not. We are talking about people who are family to people in Mesoamerica, who hold allegiance to the capital of their country in Mesoamerica, even though they live out in the sticks. Of course they would defend their country.

Chapter Three ­ Criteria for the Ancient Cumorah of the Nephite Destruction

Those who do not believe in Cumorah in New York as the place of the Nephite destruction have lists of criteria for determining what a candidate for Cumorah must show. This reviews some of these criteria.

http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 30/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble (1) near eastern seacoast

New York State is right on the East Coast.

(2) near narrow neck of land

This is actually not a criteria for Cumorah. Our analysis above shows that Cumorah is in a land far off from the Narrow Neck of Land.

(3) on a coastal plain and near other mountains and valleys

This is actually a criterion for the land southward below the neck of land. It has nothing to do with Cumorah that is a great distance away.

(4) one day’s journey south of a large body of water

The New York Cumorah does meet this criterion.

(5) an area of many rivers and waters

The Hill Cumorah in New York meets this criterion too. 54

The following two criteria deal with water sources:

(6) presence of fountains

(7) water gives military advantage

First of all, let's look at the location of the New York Cumorah in the context of water giving a military advantage: Mormon picked an area where they strategically had their backs next to a large lake. Mormon knew that his enemy would be coming against him from all sides if he didn't have some kind of natural barrier, so he chose to be up against a lake. Secondly, we do not need to assume that the whole Nephite Nation was confined to the locale of the Hill Cumorah until the day actually came to fight. Remember how close the hill is to the lake. They no doubt spread themselves about the general area of the hill, and were using the lake as a major water source. And then came the time for the war, and when there were time of retreats during the war, THEN they all gathered together in one around the hill. So there are two advantages already. A barrier so you only have to deal with your enemy on all other sides of you except your back. And Lake Ontario, or Ripliancum, was a major water source not far at all from the hill in the Palmyra area.

There are plenty of water sources near the Palmyra Hill in its immediate vicinity, such as Ganargua Creek, a water source tapped in modern times from the Erie Canal. Then there is Red Creek, etc, and the list goes on and on. There are plenty of things that meet the description of “fountains” in the Great Lakes area. For example, Hathaway Brook: http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 31/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble Hathaway Brook plays quiet a supporting role in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter­day Saints. The brook runs through Manchester and Palmyra townships in New York State. Like many northwest communities, farms were cut out of the thick forests, with the low areas, namely the creeks and brooks, were left uncleared. Hathaway Brook follows a curving path around the Hill Cumorah and then north along the west side of the Smith family farm. When the Smiths cleared the land, they left an area around the brook uncleared. This area was where Joseph Smith would go to pray and receive revelation, and would subsequently be called the Sacred Grove. The brook is also noted as a place where many prominent early members of the Church were baptized.57

Scot Facer Proctor writes:

This little creek runs right through the middle of the Smith farm in Manchester, New York. It has three names extant, Hathaway Brook, Crooked Creek or Stafford Creek. Which one is right depends on who you talk to. I have documented that this stream has never run dry in 94 years (which can be projected backwards to Joseph's time and one could figure it was just as trustworthy then). I was curious where this creek comes from. Its source is right out of the back side of the Hill Cumorah. I think it's significant that the water that fed the Smith farm was from that place. 58

There are plenty of water sources in western New York and right near Cumorah in the Palmyra and Manchester areas and swamp lands north of that area.

William W. Warren, an Ojibway Indian, who wrote a history of his people in 1858 stated that: "One tradition, however, is deemed full worth of notice, and while offering it as an historical fact, it will at the same time answer as a specimen of the mythological character of their tales . . ."

During their residence in the East, the Ojibways have a distinct tradition of having annihilated a tribe whom they denominate Mun­dua . . . I will proceed to give, verbatim, the version of Kah­non­dum­a­win­so, the old chief of Sandy Lake:

There was at one time living on the shores of a great lake, a numerous and powerful tribe of people; they lived congregated in one single town, which was so large that a person standing on a hill which stood in its centre, could not see the limits of it. This tribe, whose name was Mun­dua, were fierce and warlike; their hand was against every other tribe, and the captives whom they took in war were burned with fire as offerings to their spirits. All the surrounding tribes lived in great fear of them, till their Ojibway brothers called them to council, and sent the wampum and warclub, to collect the warriors of all the tribes with whom they were related. A war party was thus raised, whose line http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 32/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble of warriors reached, as they marched in single file, as far as the eye could see. They proceeded against the great town of their common enemy, to put out their fire forever. They surrounded and attacked them from all quarters where their town was not bounded by the lake shore ...... There is nothing in their traditionary accounts to equal the fierceness of the struggle described in this battle . . . At this juncture their aged chief, who had witnessed the unavailing defense of his people, and who saw the ground covered with the bodies of his greatest warriors, called with a loud voice on the ‘Great Spirit’ for help (for besides being chief of the Mun­duas, he was also a great medicine man . . .). Being a wicked people, the Great Spirit did not listen to the prayer of their chief for deliverance . . . 59

The resemblance of this account to the account of the Nephite destruction is uncanny, even down to the facts that:

­It was on the shore of a Great Lake. ­The people were very wicked. ­All the tribes of the area were against them. ­Their chief was also a religious leader. ­There was a “hill” in the center of this place, which was used for viewing the entire area, all around. ­And most importantly, this was the Chippewa/Ojibway tribe in the Great Lakes region.

Apparently, if this account is taken seriously, some tribe perished in a great destruction on the shores of a Great Lake at the hands of tribes that at least Great Lakes theorists would agree can be called “Lamanites.” And somehow the leader of that tribe was a religious leader that was righteous enough to call upon the “Great Spirit” for help when the rest of his tribe was wicked.

(8) an escape route southward

The Great Lakes region is plenty good enough. Pick a bush. Pick a hill. Pick a cave anywhere.

The following two criteria assume that the New York Hill is not high enough:

(9) hill large enough to view hundreds of thousands of bodies

(10) hill must be a significant landmark

Once again, remember the traditional account from the Ojibway tribe about the hill in the middle of the area where that tribe was situated on the edge of a lake. One could view the entire thing all around. The Hill Cumorah in fact does meet this requirement. Joseph Smith called it a “hill of considerable size” (JSH 1:51). Mormon saw all the http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 33/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble hundreds of thousands with his own two eyes from a lookout point on the hill. If you get on top of the New York hill on the summit you can see the whole landscape all around. For example:

Hill Cumorah has an elevation of 117 feet above ground level, making it one of the tallest points in the region. 60

Oliver Cowdery said: “I think I am justified in saying that this is the highest hill for some distance round, and I am certain that its appearance, as it rises so suddenly from a plain on the north, must attract the notice of the traveler as he passes by.”61

Heber C. Kimball said, “The Hill Cumorah is a high hill for that country . . .” Clearly, this is true in relation to how big other hills are in the surrounding area. Use logic for a moment, and consider the fact that if you are going to go to a lookout place in a certain area, you would go to one of the highest places in the area, to see the landscape.

Mormon writes:

And when they had gone through and hewn down all my people save it were twenty and four of us, (among whom was my son Moroni) and we having survived the dead of our people, did behold on

the morrow, when the Lamanites had returned unto their camps, from the top of the hill Cumorah, the ten thousand of my people who were hewn down, being led in the front by me. (Mormon 6:11)

Then Mormon goes on to detail all of the hundreds of thousands that had fallen. It only has to be a lookout point in relation to the rest of the surrounding area.

Levi Edgar Young of the First Council of the Seventy observed that . . .

"Many French Jesuit priests wrote extensively of their travels in the western wilderness, which meant lower eastern Canada and the Great Lakes district. One of the Jesuits describes a sacred mound where the Indians met for sacred worship of the Great Spirit. This, a student of the subject might consider, was the Hill Cumorah. 62

While it is true that this is once again secondary evidence, the fact of the matter is that there is some good evidence that this is the case, because of other corroborations. For example, the Seneca Indians, one of the tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy, is actually named Onondawaga, meaning People of the Great Hill (once again, clearly derived from the name Onandagus, the character from the Zelph Incident), like the name of the Onandaga tribe. Years ago, Wayne May had made the claim that this refers to Cumorah. However, it does not. It refers to South Hill, which is near the shore of Canandaigua Lake about TWENTY OR SO MILES from Palmyra. And the significance of that hill to the Seneca is its sacredness. It is central to the creation story of the Seneca, being the place from whence they emerged as a people in their mythos.63 It is not surprising that there would be two or more sacred hills to Native Americans in one area, given that the Hill Shim was sacred to the Nephites, as was Cumorah, and they were both in the same general area. http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 34/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble The major significance of the Hill Cumorah to the inhabitants of the Book of Mormon Land Northward was it's role as an archaeo­astronomical outdoor temple where ancient rituals were performed, as we shall observe. From one side, looking up at its highest prominence, it looks like a pyramid. It was an important religious landmark primarily for these religious reasons, a real significance to the ancient American religious cults, rather than being just some old hill that Mormon picked at random for the Nephite destruction, or that Moroni randomly picked to bury his records. The Mesoamericans, including the Nephites, had many hills they considered holy or cosmic. As we read from the Book of Mormon, often prophets and missionaries would meet people to preach to them on various hills.

Now, if we examine statements from the Book of Mormon about Cumorah in light of archaeo­astronomy, a lot jumps out. In archaeo­astronomy, the sky in many cultures was North­Star centric, where the whole heaven would rotate around the North Star. The North Star was an omphalos, or umbilical, the center around which all things turn. Temples in these ancient cultures were considered like an omphalos. Sacred mountains were considered temples.64

The Book of Mormon tells about people pitching their tents around the Hill Cumorah.65 Note that many water sources were in the area, just like we have water sources around or near temples. On the east side of the Jordan River Temple is its fountain, just as the fountain and pools on the east side of Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Now, compare the gathering of people around the Hill with the fact that when King Benjamin called his people to gather, they all gathered round about the temple. It says that they were going to “go up to the temple” to hear the words of the king.66 Thus, both groups of Nephites I am comparing here were in imitation of a circumambulation of stars around a Grand Center. So I discern that Cumorah was treated as a temple around which the people gathered.

The destruction of the Nephites was referred to as a Great and Dreadful Day by Alma the Younger, showing its direct parallel to the Second Coming of the Savior.67 Both the destruction of the Nephites and the destruction of the Jaredites are types of the Second Coming. Mormon, being concerned about the temple repository of records, made sure that everything was put in proper order before the destruction that was approaching.68 Just as Mormon prepared his records before that great day, we are preparing our records and doing our ordinances before the Second Coming.

The morning after, or “on the morrow,” they went up to the summit of the hill Cumorah to view the horrible scene, from the summit, which was their holy solar observatory.69 The ritual significance here is clear. It was when the sun came up, on the morrow after the destruction that the remaining Nephites ascended in ritual http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 35/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble fashion to meet the sun at its rising. This is not unlike a Mesoamerican priest inspecting the heavenly bodies from the top of his sacred mountain, or going to the top of a mountain­ like structure to perform his ritual sacrifice. Jacob when he “wrestled” with the angel, the “the sun rose upon him”70 at the ritual climax in the sacred place. Just as the remaining Nephites ascended the mount to meet the Sun after that great destruction, when the Second Coming comes, it will be the Son rising, and those who are taken will ascend to meet him. They too will view the destruction of the wicked from above.

From the top of his tower, or sacred mountain­like structure near the temple, King Benjamin gave his last address to his people.71 Similarly, from the summit of his natural tower, the Cosmic Mountain of Cumorah, Mormon, another Native American Priest, gave his people his last address in his anguish, following the same ritual pattern, though his people had been cut off from the land of the living, saying O ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord! O ye fair ones, how could ye have rejected that Jesus, who stood with open arms to receive you!72 Indeed, Jesus would have received them in ritual embrace at the end of days, if they had been faithful. And it was proper for Mormon to invoke that metaphor in his ritual from the top of the Cosmic Mountain. It is in the temple at the veil where we meet in ritual embrace. Cumorah was the solar observatory, where history repeats itself over and over again, in the repeating of Great and Dreadful Days, over and over again, just as rituals are performed over and over again, each one an incarnation of the former, following the same pattern. What kind of Cosmic Mountain should a rural Hopewellian Nephite pick in the Palmyra area anyway? Should he not pick one of the highest peaks for the given area for his religious landmark as well as for a lookout point?

(11) hill must be free­standing so people can camp around it The New York Hill does meet this criterion.

The next criteria assume again that it must be in the same general area as the Land Southward, an idea that has been refuted above. Mesoamerica is already our candidate for the Land Southward. So these Land Southward criteria have nothing to do with Cumorah.

Here are the Land Southward criteria that do not apply to Cumorah:

(12) in temperate climate with no cold or snow (13) in a volcanic zone susceptible to earthquakes (14) cities (15) towers (16) agriculture (17) metallurgy (18) formal political states http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 36/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble (19) organized religion (20) idolatry (21) crafts (22) trade (23) writing (24) weaponry (25) astronomy (26) calendar systems (27) cement (28) wheels

The more sophisticated cultures of the Great Lakes region are simply transplants from Mesoamerica. These populations do show some of these cultural criteria though not to the high degree we find in Mesoamerica. And this we would rationally expect, as they were transplants:

(1) cities(i.e. cultural centers, not urban centers like in Mesoamerica) (2) towers (i.e. mound works that are like hills) (3) agriculture (4) metallurgy (5) idolatry (6) crafts (7) trade (8) weaponry (9) astronomy

New York is on the outskirts of these cultural centers in the Land Northward.

Then, of course, there is the objection that Cumorah is a glacial moraine made of sedimentary deposits, and there could be no natural cave in the hill. Fair enough. But, the Adena mounds are man­made and are composed of sediments as well, and in them we find chambers which were made by a wooden enclosure and buried within the mound. For example, speaking of Grave Creek Mound in Moundsville, West Virginia, it says:

The first person of European descent to discover the mound was early settler Joseph Tomlinson, who literally stumbled off the top while hunting in 1770. In 1838, descendants Jesse and Abelard Tomlinson, and Thomas Briggs gutted the mound, destroying much of the archaeological evidence provided by the scientific study of other mounds. Tunneling from the side and top, the two men discovered a burial chamber in the center containing two skeletons and large amount of jewelry and another room with one skeleton and jewelry. Tomlinson opened the center chamber as a museum, charging 25 cents admission.73

http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 37/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble Another source says that the Adena mounds contained “large burial chambers or enclosures that contained one or more bodies.” The “chambers were surrounded by circular structures with thatched walls and wooden post frames that were burned down, followed by mound construction.” Then it says, “sometimes canopies were erected over the grave and surrounded by a log platform . . .” Also, “sometimes the burial pit was lined with logs, then roofed over.”74 It is no stretch to suggest that the same people of that same culture and time period that built those types of structures within mounds simply dug out a part of the hill Cumorah and created a man­made structure in the inside and buried it back up. But remember, there are many things that cannot be explained by science, and are simply left to belief and those that choose to believe. Those that do not believe will never be convinced anyway. So it’s best not to correspond with them or try to have any interaction with them, because it just results in contention. For example, we read about the cave in the recent movie 17 Miracles: which is clearly reminiscent of the cave in Cumorah:

June Monson, soon to be 93, said she grew up hearing stories about her grandmother, aunt and uncle.

Now, due to the recent release of the movie, "17 Miracles," many people also know about Monson's grandmother. The beginning of the movie shows Elizabeth Panting quietly leaving her drunken husband and boarding a train with her two small children . . .

Another of the stories the movie tells of Panting was when she walked away from the camp, looking for buffalo chips to burn so they could have fires. As she walked along, a man came to her and asked her how the company was faring. She said there was little food left. He then had her follow him into a cave and had her fill her apron front with dried meat. As she turned to thank him, she was unable to find him or the cave.

This story was briefly challenged in the years after the trek. However, it was confirmed by eyewitnesses in the company who saw her return with the dried meat. They said it saved many lives.75

The Adena date to the Book of Mormon time period, and Hopewell Archaeologists assure us that culturally, there is no real difference between the people called Hopewell and those called Adena. They really were the same culture.

How can all these people go to Cumorah to be destroyed in New York? The Book of Mormon says they had four years to gather there from all over, and they were simply not far distant from their cultural population centers in the Land Desolation anyway.

So, in summary, the population centers of the Land of Desolation were represented archaeologically as the Hopewell and Adena set of cultures. The Land of Cumorah in New York fits the “Book of Mormon description of Cumorah.” http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 38/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble

Chapter Four ­ The New York Hill and Archaeology

What would it take to find evidence at the Hill in New York of the battles there? John Sorenson states:

We may not need to find “new” specimens or sites as much as we need to reassess old ones, few of which have received more than limited attention by qualified experts . . . “Excavated,” if it is clear, does not mean "studied properly"­in Minnesota or in Mesoamerica.76

John Sorenson also wrote:

For the fourth century A.D., Mormon's and Moroni's day, there is plenty of evidence that conquest and armed violence were commonplace in Mesoamerica. One of the chief evidences is the remains of fortifications. There is less possibility of finding material evidence of actual battles, for their locations could have been on some undistinguished spot of ground that archaeologists might never have reason to examine.77

Multitudes of fortifications dating to the era of the fall of the Nephites litter Hopewell country in the United States, and these are ones that are known to date to the right time period. So, we would be looking for artifacts of the right time period at Cumorah as well. For the Cumorah candidate in Mesoamerica called the Hill Vigia in the Tuxtla Mountains, Sorenson looks forward to the day when excavations can be done there for the right time period:

Archaeological research around the Cumorah area, thought to be in the Tuxtla Mountains of Southern Veracruz state, could shed further light on the end of the Nephites. Unfortunately, very little excavation has been done for the correct time period.78

Similarly, no real archaeological digs have been done at the New York Cumorah. We look forward also to the day that our favored site can also be examined. The only archaeology for Cumorah at this point in time for the hill itself is the archaeology tying its area to the Hopewell Sphere, as I have shown.

John Clark tells us:

. . . [W]e have a plausible expectation of finding evidence of war, whether fortifications, habitations, weapons, or skeletons of victims. This evidence should reasonably date to two different time periods about one thousand years apart . . . Even if defensive trenches, weapons, and bodies were buried, they would still be archaeologically detectable or obvious . . .79 http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 39/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble Follow­up on the old hearsay accounts can be used as a guide to see if more evidence can be found. We're talking about Mesoamericans and their northern transplants that were destroyed there, from all over the Great Lakes Region and Mesoamerica in this theory. I am not talking specifically about New York natives. He neglects the fact that even the New York natives were themselves Hopewell, and by extension, Mesoamericans.

He says that we should expect fortifications. Hopefully, the fortifications mentioned in the old accounts, scattered all around this archaeological scene can be re­examined.

For example, I quote from the Heber Kimball Journal: "The Hill Cumorah is a high hill for that country, and had the appearance of a fortification or entrenchment around it.”80 That's a historical statement from a person of no small stature that needs follow­up research by archaeologists. Also, earlier in the book, we made mention of the testimony of people finding basket loads of arrowheads. Not that these reports are evidence in themselves by any stretch. Nobody should be trying to use the reports as evidence. The point is these accounts have weight in setting proper expectations for what we should be looking for and where. That idea is what actually has merit. For example, archaeologists used old reports from the nineteenth century to be able to find things that they wouldn't be able to find otherwise:

Mrs. Hammond's history by no means gave only folklore information, but also historical data and archaeological data relating to the Oneida, including information leading to the identification of several of their habitation and burial sites.81

One person went around the New York Hill Cumorah area looking for artifacts. His surface survey turned up nothing.

Wherever early American sites are, collectors will find them, plowed fields being the best place to look . . . If battles took place at the hill, and a lot of people took part . . . the area should be covered with all kinds of artifacts . . . [There are] several plowed fields in the area. . .

Arriving at Cumorah, I have asked workers . . . about arrowheads. Their comments were: "Oh yes, people find them around here all the time." I would ask, "Have you found any yourself?" "Well, no." "Do you know anyone who has found some?" "No." "Have you seen any actual pieces found by others?" "No." 82

He goes on: "I have walked to the big meadow east of the hill. I have searched it thoroughly . . . No artifacts—not even flint chips of any kind . . . The Clarks' fields yielded . . . not one single arrowhead and not one single piece of flint chipping. Crisscrossing all those plowed fields . . . I found no evidence of any kind . . . There is an old pond in our area of Vermont which has old sites around it. . . . But when that spot is put up against the history of events at "Cumorah," it should pale into http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 40/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble insignificance.

On this old site in Vermont, even if all of the arrow points were picked up, there are still all of the chipping areas—big or small, they are present . . . "83

Cumorah is a short­term battle site that wasn't a long­term occupation site. Cumorah may not have been a chipping area when it was such a short­term site. Likely the Nephites brought their weapons with them to fight. The other battle sites in the Book of Mormon that didn't take place inside habitation sites would not be treated that way, and neither should Cumorah. The text speaks of people slowly gathering there during a four­year period, and then a large battle. The text, said nothing about long­term occupation by a large group of people.

The following quote details what else could be done besides a surface survey:

The simplest survey technique is surface survey. It involves combing an area, usually on foot but sometimes with the use of mechanized transport, to search for features or artifacts visible on the surface. Surface survey cannot detect sites or features that are completely buried under earth, or overgrown with vegetation. Surface survey may also include mini­excavation techniques such as augers, corers, and shovel test pits.

Aerial survey is conducted using cameras attached to airplanes, balloons, or even kites . . . Aerial imaging can also detect many things not visible from the surface. Plants growing above a buried man­made structure, such as a stone wall, will develop more slowly, while those above other types of features (such as middens) may develop more rapidly. Photographs of ripening grain, which changes colour rapidly at maturation, have revealed buried structures with great precision. Aerial photographs taken at different times of day will help show the outlines of structures by changes in shadows. Aerial survey also employs infrared, ground­penetrating radar wavelengths, and thermography.

Archaeological geophysics can be the most effective way to see beneath the ground. Magnetometers detect minute deviations in the Earth's magnetic field caused by iron artifacts, kilns, some types of stone structures, and even ditches and middens. Devices that measure the electrical resistivity of the soil are also widely used. Archaeological Features whose electrical resistivity contrasts with that of surrounding soils can be detected and mapped. Some archaeological features (such as those composed of stone or brick) have higher resistivity than typical soils , while others (such as organic deposits or unfired clay) tend to have lower resistivity. Although some archaeologists consider the use of metal detectors to be tantamount to treasure hunting, others deem them an effective tool in archaeological surveying . . . 84

While doing his surface survey of the Hill Cumorah described in the article above, this person did not carry out any kind of excavation. We wait for the day that excavation http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 41/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble can be done. The best hope now would be to do some sort of subsurface exploration to find what hasn't already been carried away. Infrared, radar, thermography and other aerial techniques haven't been done either. Magnetometers haven't been used. Metal detectors need to be used, perhaps.

We need a real archaeological dig under controlled conditions under the authority of real archaeologists. This man who did the site survey at Cumorah did so on his own, without anyone else to witness it, without supervision of an archaeologist and others to ensure controlled conditions. His report is helpful as a first step, but his letter is all we have to go on right now. We would need actual archaeological reports of an actual archaeological dig with the some stamp of approval of a real archaeologist in order to document what might be found. So, just like the old reports of arrowheads, at this time, we similarly just have their word to go on. All of this is a good first step toward actual archaeology, having actual corroboration, and controlled conditions. Something without corroboration and carefully controlled conditions is not the way professional archaeologists work, and we look forward to the day when they can step in.

Some say that the people who lived in the area of Cumorah were not advanced enough like the Mesoamericans for it to have been Cumorah. I say once again, it is not about New York Natives so much as it is about Hopewell/Adena and Mesoamericans that came from outside the area to fight around the area of the Hill Cumorah in New York.

And I, Mormon, wrote an epistle unto the king of the Lamanites, and desired of him that he would grant unto us that we might gather together our people unto the land of Cumorah, by a hill which was called Cumorah, and there we could give them battle. And it came to pass that the king of the Lamanites did grant unto me the thing which I desired.

And it came to pass that we did march forth to the land of Cumorah, and we did pitch our tents around about the hill Cumorah; and it was in a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains; and here we had hope to gain advantage over the Lamanites.85

Here we are told that the people came from outside the area to the battle. So again, the archaeology of the locals does not have much to do with them when they came from outside the area.

We read the following from a peer­reviewed science journal that analyzes the effectiveness of surface surveys, and the need for further work to be done with other methods:

Exploring the Reliability of Archaeological Site Survey through the GIS Based Analysis of Surface Artifact Distribution at Körösladány 14 . . .

Archaeological surface survey is a useful, nondestructive tool for understanding the http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 42/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble past. However, within various documents, archaeologists question the accuracy of surface artifacts to reflect the subsurface site. If surface materials mirror the site below ground, the patterns of surface artifact distribution would give archaeologists helpful insights . . . The conclusions of this research were that the surface data does not reflect the site below ground perfectly and that site survey raises many questions which can only be answered through other means...... [T]he accuracy of predictions based on the analysis of site surface survey data has been questioned. Many factors that contribute to the artifacts’ journey to the surface of the site may displace or favor certain artifacts. These factors include but are not limited to the depth of the site, the slant or slope of the site, erosion, and human and animal disturbance . . . In his article on the effects of plowing . . . Ammerman . . . compar[es] the surface material to “the tip of the iceberg” because the constant cycling allows only a small percentage of material to be visible at any time (Ammerman 1985) . . .

These studies about the effects of plowing on surface artifact distribution illustrate that, due to the various factors at work on a site, the surface can only offer a remote picture of the subsurface site . . .

The complexities and problems experienced in the analysis of surface remains of the K­ 14 site demonstrate how difficult interpreting data from site surface surveys can be. Archaeologists need to account for the possible displacement of artifacts over time and for the factors that can skew the results. Usually, a single survey cannot provide significant information on a site by itself. Only basic information can be trusted on this basis. To find more in­depth information, other archaeological methods should be used in conjunction with the site surface survey. Any interpretation based on surface survey has the potential to be off if only due to the complexities of the site and the survey. Archaeologists do not work in controlled environments and uncertainty must be accepted. . . . There is a reason why archaeologists use a variety of methods to reach their conclusions. Different methods present different types of information and when used in combination present a clearer picture. The analysis of the full coverage systematic site surface survey data from K­14 proves this. Using the magnetometry, soil chemistry analysis, and excavations made the analysis and conclusion of the site much stronger than it would have been using survey alone. 86

After a review of these facts, it becomes clear that the Cumorah site survey is a good first step, as are the old reports claiming that large caches of arrowheads were found. The ramifications of historical tampering with artifacts must be taken into account in order to have proper expectations.

Clark writes:

For archaeologists, the ideal site is “pristine,” meaning that it remains “undisturbed” by various natural agents (tree falls, rodents, hurricanes, earth worms, forest fires, etc.) or cultural forces (such as farming, looting, mining, and urban sprawl) until we get a chance to take it apart carefully, layer by layer. If archaeological sites were http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 43/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble eggs, we would prefer them boiled rather than scrambled. For most archaeologists, scrambled sites lose most of their interpretive value, as Aston points out. When a site is plowed, looted by clandestine diggers or “avocational” archaeologists, or cut through by sewer lines or road right­of­ways, the pristine “order” of artifacts and features such as floors, fire hearths, and postmolds is destroyed and scrambled. What is lost in pristine context, however, is partly compensated for by the increased visibility of the site. This is the critical point. LGL [Limited Great Lakes] advocates use the term destroyed to mean “wiped off the face of the earth, obliterated, expunged, or erased.” Archaeologists use destroyed to mean “altered, transformed, messed up, or scrambled.” Even after enormous damage, these sites still exist, and their artifacts still exist, albeit in smaller pieces; however, the spatial relationships which once obtained among the various artifacts and features are obliterated.87

Indeed, it is critical that archaeologists take into account the potential of the site, and give it a thorough examination. When the recent digs were made to find the habitation areas near Stonehenge in Britain, nothing was visible from the surface. They had to dig down and make numerous test holes until they finally found something. At first even after lots of effort, they were finding nothing. But now, they found a whole city! I have the reports of it in National Geographic and other publications. Clark writes the following: "Archaeologically speaking, it is a clean hill. No artifacts, no walls, no trenches, no arrowheads. The area immediately surrounding the hill is similarly clean." 88

Such a conclusion is understandable at this point because of the lack of actual digs at the hill. We look forward to further archaeological digs in the area. A dig must be organized in the area with actual credentialed archaeologists in the appropriate field of Hopewell/Adena archaeology. Then they must dig in it, layer by layer, and systematically test the site. Another example of difficult archaeology is the Temple Mount at Jerusalem:

In October 1999, the Islamic Waqf, and the Islamic Movement conducted an illegal dig which inflicted much irreparable archaeological damage. The earth from this operation, bursting with archeological wealth relevant to Jewish, Christian and Moslem history, was removed by heavy machinery and unceremoniously dumped by trucks into the nearby Kidron Valley. Although the archeological finds in the earth are already not in situ, this soil still contains great archeological potential. No archeological excavation was ever conducted on the Temple Mount, and this soil was the only archeological information that has ever been available to anyone. For this reason Israeli archaeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Zweig established a unique project for sifting all the earth in this dump. Among finds uncovered in rubble removed from the Temple Mount were:

­The imprint of a seal thought to have belonged to a priestly Jewish family mentioned in the Old Testament's Book of Jeremiah. http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 44/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble ­More than 4300 coins from various periods. Many of them are from the Jewish revolt that preceded the destruction of the Second Temple by Roman legions in 70 AD emblazoned with the words "Freedom of Zion"

­Arrowheads shot by Babylonian archers 2,500 years ago, and others launched by Roman siege machinery 500 years later.

­Unique floor slabs of the 'opus sectile' technique that were used to pave the Temple Mount courts. This is also mentioned in Josephus accounts and the Babylonian Talmud.89

A recent major battle site was found in Scandinavia:

The remains of hundreds of warriors who died in a violent battle around 2,000 years ago have been uncovered in a Danish bog. For the last two months, excavators have come across damaged bones, fractured skulls and a thigh bone hacked in half, along with axes, spears and clubs. They will exhume the remains over the next few days in the hope of learning more about the fighters. Evidence suggests more artifacts are buried at the site, located in the peat of an old lake bed in the Alken Enge wetlands near Lake Mossø in East Jutland, Denmark. Researchers also aim to piece together the events that took place there by carrying out more digs across the 99­acre site and reconstructing the ancient landscape, excavation director Ejvind Hertz, field director of the Scanderborg Museum, said. The bodies were deposited in a small basin of the lake, which has seen its water level change several times over the years. 'It's clear that this must have been a quite far­reaching and dramatic event that must have had profound effect on the society of the time,' said Project Manager Mads Kähler Holst, professor of archaeology at Aarhus University. 90

Furthermore, it is interesting to note that “The dig has produced a large quantity of skeletal remains, and we believe that they will give us the answers to some of our questions about what kind of events led up to the army ending up here,” Holst said. While the archaeological investigation of the site is nearing its conclusion for the year, experts predict that the find is much larger than the area excavated thus far. Ejvind Hertz, the field director at Skanderborg Museum, who is directing the dig, believes that the find is so substantial that researchers probably won’t be able to excavate all of it. Instead they will have to focus on performing smaller digs to provide a general outline of the events that took place at the site.91

Yet, the discovery started in this manner:

The excavation has been carried out by Skanderbord Museum, Moesgård Museum and Aarhus University, funded with a grant from the Carlsberg Foundation. It follows work done in 2008 and 2009 when single, scattered bones were discovered lying about 6.6 feet under the peat in the same location.92 http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 45/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble Another factor with regard to why it may be difficult to find archaeological evidence at the Hill Cumorah was described by Andrew Hedges:

Palmer also argues that . . . “it is quite clear that the battle took place on that hill and the plain leading up to it.” This is clearly an assumption on his part, however, as nothing in the text suggests that any part of the battle took place on the actual hill. The Nephites pitched their tents around it, and Mormon climbed it after the battle, but there is no evidence that any fighting took place on it (see Mormon 6:4, 11).93

Thus, it may be more productive to look in surrounding areas.

Notes:

1 See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerica [2] 2 http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700035437/The­fight­over­Book­of­ [3] Mormon­geography.html?pg=all; http://www.bookofmormonevidence.org/feature.php? id=15; [4] http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=22&num=1&id=789 [5] 3 “Book of Mormon Geography in the World of Joseph Smith” http://www.mormonhistoricsitesfoundation.org/publications/studies_2007/5­ [6] MHS_2007_Book­Of­ Mormon­Geography.pdf 4 http://maxwellinstitute.com/publications/review/?vol=6&num=2&id=153 [7] 5 http://mi.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=14&num=1&id=420 [8], “Evaluating the Case for a Limited Great Lakes Setting” 6 Omni 1:14; Mosiah 1:3­5; 1 Nephi 4:13­16 7 Silverberg, Roger, Mound Builders of Ancient America, Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphic Society, 1968, p. 267. 8 ibid. p. 289, emphasis added 9 ibid. pp. 291­292, emphasis added 10 Lepper, Bradley T., People of the Mounds: Ohio's Hopewell Culture, Ohio Historical Society, Hopewell Culture National Historical Park and Eastern Park and Monument Association, p. 20­21 11http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Geography/Statements/Twentiet [9] h_century/First_Presidency_Letter 12 ibid.; “Basic Methodological Problems with the Anti­Mormon Approach to the Geography and Archaeology of the Book of Mormon,” http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=transcripts&id=39;emphasis [10] added 13http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Geography/Statements/Twentiet [9] h_century/First_Presidency_Letter 14 Historicity and the Latter­day Saint Scriptures, p. 239. 15 http://emp.byui.edu/marrottr/341folder/Zelph%20Revisited%20Cannon.html [11] 16 J. M. Sjodahl, Introduction to the Study of the Book of Mormon, pp. 7­8 17 Elder George Albert Smith, Conference Report, April 1906, p. 56 18 Matt Roper, “Limited Geography and the Book of Mormon: Historical Antecedents and Early Interpretations,” FARMS Review, 2004, pp. 225­76 19 Millennial Star, 40 (9 Dec. 1878): 771­77 20 http://www.furtherlightandknowledge.net/Archive/thread2068876.html [12] 21 In Search of Cumorah, p. 87 22 ibid. pp. 74­78 23 Jesse, Dean C., The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, p. 324. A claim was made online where a commenter said that it has been proven that this letter containing this quote is a forgery, but I have no information to substantiate that claim or refute it. Whatever the case, it is neither here nor there for the substance of this argument, and the reader can know that I am at least aware of that claim.

24 http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Hopewell_culture [13]

25 http://www.midwesternepigraphic.org/poverty.html [14] 26http://www.hamline.edu/~./smessenger/MATRIX%20%283320%29/Overvie [15] w_Mod_13A.htm 27 http://www.mysterious­america.net/top10mounds.html [16] 28 http://www.bmaf.org/node/395 [17], emphasis added 29http://www.cradleboard.org/curriculum/powwow/supplements/images/a_tradi [18] ng.gif 30 Chapter 63, entitled “Mesoamericans in Pre­Columbian North America,” in the book Reexploring the Book of Mormon http://farms.byu.edu/publications/books/? bookid=71&chapid=829 [19] 31 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090202­ancient­ [20] chocolate.html http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 46/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble

32 http://www.fairblog.org/2010/04/17/another­look­at­barley­in­the­book­of­ [21] mormon/ 33 Dr. Brad Lepper, as quoted on http://www.copperas.com/octagon/oindex.html [22] 34 Mormon 8:2­3 35 Ether 1:1 36 Mormon 1:1­5 37 Images of Ancient America: Visualizing Book of Mormon Life, p. 202, emphasis added 38 Mormon 1:6­7 39 Cumorah and the Limited Mesoamerican Theory, Religious Educator, Vol 10 No 2, 2009, emphasis added 40 Mosiah 8 :7­11 41 Alma 63:7 42 Ether 9: 3 43 See Ether chapter 7 and chapter 8 44 Ether 10:20 45 Alma 22:30 46 Ether 13:21 47 Alma 50:29 48 Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, Vol.3, Bookcraft, 1956, p.232­43 49 Helaman 3:3­11, emphasis added 50 Mormon 6:4­5 51 Ether 15:8­11 52 Mormon 6:6 53 Mormon 1:2­3 54 Mormon 4:23 55 Ether 9: 3 56 Basic Methodological Problems with the Anti­Mormon Approach to the Geography and Archaeology of the Book of Mormon, http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=39 [23] 57 http://www.mormonwiki.com/Hathaway_Brook [24] 58 http://www.meridianmagazine.com/arts/010116witness2.html [25] 59 Warren, William W., 1885, History of the Ojibway People, St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society, 1885, pp. 91­94, emphasis added 60http://josephsmith.net/josephsmith/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=014968f0374f1010 [26] VgnVCM1000001f5e340aRCRD&vgnextfmt=tab3

61 Oliver Cowdery, letter to W. W. Phelps, The Latter­day Saints Millennial Star, p. 152 62 E. Cecil McGavin and Willard Bean, Book of Mormon Geography, Foreword 63 http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/248171; [27] http://yorkstaters.blogspot.com/2007/03/where­did­that­snake­come­from.html [28] 64 See my book Nail of Heaven for a more in­depth analysis of this subject, but in more general terms. 65 Mormon 6:2, 4 66 Mosiah 2:1, 5 67 Alma 45:14 68 Mormon 6:6 69 Mormon 6:11 70 Genesis 32:31 71 Mosiah 2:7­8 72 Mormon 6:16­21 73 West Virgina Division of Culture and History, http://www.wvculture.org/history/mounds.html [29] 74 Native Peoples of North America, http://www.cabrillo.edu/~crsmith/adena.html [30] 75 http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/pleasant­grove­woman­is­ [31] granddaughter­of­willie­handcart­pioneer/article_97249287­7ea3­5397­9e7b­ c2a54bacc207.html, "Pleasant Grove woman is granddaughter of Willie Handcart pioneer", January 20, 2012, by Mary Burgin 76 http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=6&num=1&id=142 [32], “Viva Zapato! Hurray for the Shoe!” 77 Images of Ancient America: Visualizing Book of Mormon Life by John Sorenson, on page 210, under the section entitled “The Nephite's Fall.” 78 ibid., p. 210 79 “Looking for Artifacts at New York's Hill Cumorah”, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies Volume14 Issue 2 80 Millennial Star, 26 (1864), p.535 81 Pratt, Peter P., A Perspective on Oneida Archaeology, in Current Perspectives In Northeastern Archaeology: Essays in Honor of William A. Ritchie, Researches and Transactions of the New York State Archaeological Association, Volume 17, No. 1, p. 52, emphasis added http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 47/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble

82 http://www.bmaf.org/node/396; [33] “Looking for Artifacts at New York's Hill Cumorah”, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Volume 14 Issue 2 83 ibid. 84 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology [34] 85 Mormon 6:2­4 86 http://www.jyi.org/research/re.php?id=1086, [35]The Journal of Young Investigators, An Undergraduate, Peer­reviewed Science Journal, Heather Horobik, Florida State University, Exploring the Reliability of Archaeological Site Survey through the GIS Based Analysis of Surface Artifact Distribution at Körösladány 14. 87 http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=420 [36], “Evaluating the Case for a Limited Great Lakes Setting” 88 http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=347 [37], “Archaeology and Cumorah Questions”, emphasis added 89 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Mount [38] 90 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article­2188532/Remains­hundreds­ [39] warriors­died­violent­battle­2­000­years­ago­Danish­bog.html 91 http://cphpost.dk/news/national/archaeologists­unearth­ancient­battle­site [40] 92 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article­2188532/Remains­hundreds­ [39] warriors­died­violent­battle­2­000­years­ago­Danish­bog.html 93 “Cumorah and the Limited Mesoamerican Theory,” The Religious Educator, Vol 10 No 2, 2009

Goble, Edwin Topic/Type: Mesoamerica Alternatives [41]

Source URL: http://www.bmaf.org/articles/witness_of_cumorah__goble

Links: [1] mailto:[email protected] [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerica [3] http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700035437/The­fight­over­Book­of­ [4] http://www.bookofmormonevidence.org/feature.php?id=15; [5] http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=22&;num=1&;id=789 [6] http://www.mormonhistoricsitesfoundation.org/publications/studies_2007/5­ [7] http://maxwellinstitute.com/publications/review/?vol=6&;num=2&;id=153 [8] http://mi.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=14&;num=1&;id=420 [9] http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Geography/Statements/Twentiet [10] http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=transcripts&;id=39;emphasis [11] http://emp.byui.edu/marrottr/341folder/Zelph%20Revisited%20Cannon.html [12] http://www.furtherlightandknowledge.net/Archive/thread2068876.html [13] http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Hopewell_culture [14] http://www.midwesternepigraphic.org/poverty.html [15] http://www.hamline.edu/~./smessenger/MATRIX%20%283320%29/Overvie [16] http://www.mysterious­america.net/top10mounds.html [17] http://www.bmaf.org/node/395 [18] http://www.cradleboard.org/curriculum/powwow/supplements/images/a_tradi [19] http://farms.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=71&;chapid=829 [20] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090202­ancient­ [21] http://www.fairblog.org/2010/04/17/another­look­at­barley­in­the­book­of­ [22] http://www.copperas.com/octagon/oindex.html [23] http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=39 [24] http://www.mormonwiki.com/Hathaway_Brook [25] http://www.meridianmagazine.com/arts/010116witness2.html [26] http://josephsmith.net/josephsmith/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=014968f0374f1010 [27] http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/248171; [28] http://yorkstaters.blogspot.com/2007/03/where­did­that­snake­come­from.html [29] http://www.wvculture.org/history/mounds.html [30] http://www.cabrillo.edu/~crsmith/adena.html [31] http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/pleasant­grove­woman­is­ [32] http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=6&;num=1&;id=142 [33] http://www.bmaf.org/node/396; [34] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology [35] http://www.jyi.org/research/re.php?id=1086, [36] http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&;id=420 [37] http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&;id=347 [38] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Mount http://www.bmaf.org/print/325 48/49 4/8/2015 A Witness of Cumorah By Edwin Goble [39] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article­2188532/Remains­hundreds­ [40] http://cphpost.dk/news/national/archaeologists­unearth­ancient­battle­site [41] http://www.bmaf.org/taxonomy/term/8

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