On page 9 of An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton, edited by George D. Smith, we read:
Presented as a New World companion to the Bible, the Book of Mormon identified Native Americans as a newly-discovered remnant of Old Testament families. Similar explanations of where the Indians came from had been popular since Columbus in an effort to integrate the Indians into a biblical world view and answer skeptics who dismissed Genesis as a parochial Old World myth.[2]
During the fervor of the “Second Great Awakening” when nineteenth-century religious sects contested their authority to speak for God, Smith’s claim was unique. He declared that the Mormon church was the “only true church” restored from ancient times in “these latter days.” His dramatic visions and his translations of mysterious hieroglyphics captured the imagination and allegiance of 20,0003 followers drawn from the “burnt-over district”[4] of the American frontier as well as from foreign countries.
We can thus see that Smith was claiming religious authority over his religious competition by forming a false history of Native Americans (or the Indians). He was more able to easily convince people of the time of his "Indian stories" due to the religious fervor of the day he was able to take advantage of.
Smith was essentially selling a lie from the beginning. Now maybe he sincerely believed God was directing him during the formation of the Book of Mormon, but his "stories of the Indians" were still a lie nonetheless. There were also harmful consequences to this lie in how LDS programs taught Native Americans a false narrative of over a century (only beginning to end the lie around 2013).
Smith was also utilizing the Christian belief in biblical revelation and miracles to gain the upper hand against his sectarian rivals. Smith was basically saying, "The Ministers say miracles have ended, I say they continue. They say we think Indians are Jews, I know they are because an angel appeared to me and told me where to find and translate gold plates." Even if Smith was deluded into truly believing that God was guiding and directing him to compose the Book of Mormon -- and he had actual night visions about an angel Moroni (he thought were real) -- the Mormon defender, thinking along these lines, still cannot get around the fact that there was at least some form of deception Smith had to engage in for him to convincingly sale the claim of a real Moroni and actual gold plates; which obviously never existed (at least not as he claimed). For if Smith formed some tin plates as Dan Vogel believes, he still had to lie when he said the angel Moroni took the gold plates up to heaven. If he only sold the idea of imagined gold plates seen only with one's "spiritual eyes," he was still lying by saying there were actual gold plates in the box. So no matter how you slice it, Vogel is right that Smith was a fraud even if he was genuinely pious at the same time.
After he produced the Book of Mormon, historian Dan Vogel argues that Joseph Smith's narcissistic personality traits led him to believe that he would be a conduit of God's powers to create a utopian community before the end of days. According to Vogel, Smith was a pious fraud, meaning that he was sincere at first in his Christian convictions, being basically arrogant enough to think that he was channeling God's will; but also arrogant enough to believe that he was justified in any deception or fraudulent means necessary to generate faith and belief in order to accomplish his goal of basically "saving the world" from sin and destruction.
Joseph Smith's early agenda was to form a communistic community before the end of days (based on the social model of the New Testament), which was a sincere effort to form communal unity. Unfortunately, because he was narcissistic and I think suffered delusions of grandeur, he sought greater and greater control over his people more and more, in his attempt to form a communal Zion. So like many cult leaders, from Jim Jones to David Koresh, believing narcissistically that they had been chosen to save the world and bring order, I think Smith really believed (in the beginning especially, or up to around 1838) that he needed to manipulate people into joining his united utopia.
The first step in his vision of a utopian society was gaining authority to speak for God. By pretending to unearth gold plates, Joseph Smith publishing the Book of Mormon in 1830, which Smith claimed was a history of Native Americans who the books says are Jews. Even the LDS Church agrees today that this is false. The LDS Church admits Joseph Smith was wrong about Native Americans being Jews, but the LDS Church defends their scripture by arguing that the characters in the Book of Mormon were among the Native Americans (but have since disappeared from scientific detection). The first Mormons however had no idea that Joseph Smith's claim, that the Book of Mormon is about Jewish Native Americans, was a false claim. At that time in the 1830s, Joseph Smith's holy book had resolved a question at that time as to the identity of Native Americans. Thus, Smith had proven his status as a seer and revelator like the apostle Paul.
After Smith published the Book of Mormon and started a church in 1830, new members saw him as an authoritative seer and revelator, so from there Smith began to claim more and more revelations revealing the will of God. In Smith’s mind, he alone was chosen to be the mouthpiece of God and so he claimed to channel the voice of Jesus like a spirit-possessed shaman, just like the apostle Paul. This was a natural progression from Smith's earlier career as a deceptive seer stone money digger with his father, who I think had led him to believe he had real powers of seer stone scrying abilities as a teenager. Based on the historical record, it's clear to me that Smith and his father likely truly believed in scrying and the powers of a seer stone, but that some degree of trickery was justified in this process of earning a living through money digging for lost treasures. For many years as a teenager, Smith honed his craft of using the seer stone and attempting to locate lost treasure by claiming to "see" where it is found through the seer stone which acted like a crystal ball. Then he transformed this skill set into a new career by using the seer stone prop to induce faith in an actual alleged gold book treasure he claimed to unearth in the form of gold plates which became the Book of Mormon.
So Joseph Smith's treasure digs as a teenager cannot be ignored, for it shows that he was capable of deception and used his "authority" or authoritative claim to see in the stone (as a way to control and lead a group of treasure diggers to obey his orders), as a springboard for later claiming that as a Christian seer and revelator he had the authority to lead a new group of now Christian disciples.
The fact that Joseph Smith himself claimed that the Book of Mormon is about the Native Americans and even revealed revelations in D&C sections 28, 30, 32, and 52: where he even referred to some Native Americans in Missouri as "Lamanites," is the clearest proof of Smith's pious fraud, for even the LDS Church acknowledges that today's Native Americans are not the Lamanites of the Book of Mormon!
After I realizing Joseph Smith was a pious fraud and the Book of Mormon cannot be a true history of Native Americans, I realized that when Joseph Smith converted one of my great grandmothers who was Native American, it occured to me that Smith had sold her a lie regarding her ancestry, deceiving her and distracting her from her real heritage. For her people had their own religious history which was not based on the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith's teachings at that time in the 1800s (that she was a Jew with cursed dark skin). In my google document I titled The Book of Mormon as both a Product of 19th Century Racism as Pseudepigrapha (a False History of Native Americans) while Simultaneously containing an Anti-Racist Message based on Christian Ideals of "All are One in Christ", I cover how yes the LDS apologists are correct that in the end the Book of Mormon does seek to overcome the Protestant racism of the time by declaring Native Americans (the "Indians" as they were called in the 1800s) are actually Israelites and a remnant of the Chosen People, thus white Protestants should not shun them as alleged "savages" (as they were thought of at that time by many); but should overcome their own racism like Jacob tells the Nephites. So yes there is some redeeming value in the Book of Mormon as an anti-racist text given the racist time period of the 1800s. However, what I cover in my document here is the glaring proof that Smith was selling falsehoods. Now perhaps, through sincere belief and self-delusion, Smith sincerely believed God inspired him to produce a history of Lamanites and Nephites as a pious fraud; or he knowingly made it all up knowing it was an outright religious deception because he was more of a con artist; either way, the fact is Joseph Smith knowingly and/or self-deludedly lied to Native Americans in his day and sought to replace their actual ancestral identity and religious heritage with a fake history that they are instead Israelites from Jerusalem who were once white/pure, and by becoming "Mormon" they could become pure again.
What I show in my document here is that while the current LDS Church is now backing away from Joseph Smith's claim that all Native Americans of his day were Lamanites, and now post 2013 (via the essay Race and the Priesthood) the LDS Church has now officially disavowed their racist past; despite this, the fact is that every LDS Leader who spoke on the "skins" of Native Americans before about 1978 consistently taught that Lamanites (Native Americans) are Israelites with a literal cursed dark skin pigmentation. In other words, the historical record supports the conclusion that Joseph Smith himself more than likely taught that Native Americans were Jews with cursed dark skin and this idea was then taught by every LDS prophet and apostle who spoke on the subject until the LDS Church disavowed this doctrine in 2013. To put this in perspective, this would be like someone like myself who has Scandinavian ancestry being told by a religious guru claiming to unearth a religious history of my Icelandic and Swedish ancestors where our own history and heritage as mighty Vikings is false and actually we were once a pure sun tanned people but were cursed with pale white skin by a deity; and only by joining the cult of the guru can we become pure and holy with a sun tan! Most people of Caucasian ancestry, would consider that insulting and absurd. Well that is by analogy very close to what Joseph Smith was doing to Native Americans with is Book of Mormon.
Even if Smith himself did not believe the "skin of blackness" passages in the Book of Mormon are about skin color, but were meant as metaphors, we are still talking about the idea of God cursing a people! As this person online puts it:
The BOM tells us that the Lamanites were cursed with being "cut off from the presence of the Lord" and to be "loathsome", "idle", and "full of mischief and subtlety" (2 Nephi 5:20, 22, 24). The BOM also makes it clear that this curse would continue through the generations of the Lamanites (2 Nephi 5:23). This seems incredibly wrong for God to do: it's one thing for God to curse and punish sinners, but to punish the children who haven't done anything wrong? Not only does punishing an innocent person seem wrong, but by cutting them off from his presence, isn't God setting up the Lamanites for failure? Doesn't this curse make it more likely for the Lamanites to be unrighteous? None of this feels acceptable to me.
According to the LDS Guide to the Scriptures:
In the scriptures, a curse is the application of divine law that allows or brings judgments and their consequences upon a thing, person, or people primarily because of unrighteousness. Curses are a manifestation of God’s divine love and justice. They may be invoked directly by God or pronounced by His authorized servants. Sometimes, the full reasons for curses are known only to God. In addition, a cursed state is experienced by those who willfully disobey God and thereby withdraw themselves from the Spirit of the Lord.
The Lord may remove curses because of the individual’s or people’s faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel (Alma 23:16–18; 3 Ne. 2:14–16; A of F 1:3). ...
... Because the Lamanites would not listen to the Lord, they were separated from the presence of the Lord and cursed, 2 Ne. 5:20–24.
All are invited to come unto God, 2 Ne. 26:33.
The Lord shall curse those who commit whoredoms, Jacob 2:31–33.
The Nephites to receive a greater curse than the Lamanites unless they repent, Jacob 3:3–5.
Rebellious people bring curses upon themselves, Alma 3:18–19 ...
Korihor was cursed for leading people away from God, Alma 30:43–60.
The Lord cursed Nephite lands and riches because of the people’s iniquities, Hel. 13:22–23 (2 Ne. 1:7; Alma 37:31).
The Lord cursed the wicked Jaredites, Ether 9:28–35.
Christ’s Atonement removes the curse of Adam from little children, Moro. 8:8–12.
Those who turn away from the Lord are cursed, D&C 41:1.
The earth will be smitten with a curse unless there is a welding link between fathers and children, D&C 128:18 ...
So basically, just like the Revivalist Preachers of Smith's day who used various methods of emotional manipulation to gain converts, Smith used similar tactics. In the above quotes from LDS Scripture, we see the constant talk of God cursing people. So the Book of Mormon talking about cursing an entire ethnicity, Native Americans, would have scared readers of the Book of Mormon into seeking to avoid a similar cursing upon them, whether that cursing was meant as a literal change in skin color or not. For Smith also used the language of Hell to scare readers of the Book of Mormon into obedience and compliance, which is made clear in a revelation Smith gave to Martin Harris in D&C 19: wherein Smith admits the Hell fire language in the Book of Mormon was designed to "work upon the hearts of the children of men" (verse 7). In other words, Smith used Hell-fire threats to deliberately scare and manipulate his readers of the Book of Mormon (who in the early 1830s were mostly Protestants who feared an actual eternal Hell); so that they'd be scared into converting to his new Mormon religion. In other words, even if Smith himself did not personally believe in the threat of eternal conscious torment in Hell for wrong belief or lack of belief, Smith was willing to use that fear tactic to gain converts. So what does that say about Joseph Smith's personality that he was willing and able to use such a harmful psychological fear tactic? Does it not better explain that the same Joseph Smith would later produce a revelation that threatened his wife Emma with destruction, if she did not accept his taking plural wives in D&C 132?
I have found that many LDS members have no idea just how often the Book of Mormon actually attempts to scare readers with Hell fire threats. As the LDS article The Concept of Hell by Larry E. Dahl explains:
... The word hell appears sixty-two times in the text of the Book of Mormon. Thirty-three times it stands alone, without modifiers or explanation of what it means, as in, “And thus we see the end of him who perverteth the ways of the Lord; and thus we see that the devil will not support his children at the last day, but doth speedily drag them down to hell” (Alma 30:60). Twenty-nine times the word hell is used with descriptive modifiers, for example, “depths of hell” (1 Nephi 12:16), “hell which hath no end” (1 Nephi 14:3), “awful hell” (1 Nephi 15:29, 35; Alma 19:29; 54:7), “sleep of hell” (2 Nephi 1:13), “gates of hell” (2 Nephi 4:32; 3 Nephi 11:39–40; 18:13), “pains of hell” (Jacob 3:11; Alma 14:6; 26:13; 36:13), “chains of hell” (Alma 5:7, 9–10; 12:11; 13:30; 26:14), “child of hell” (Alma 11:23; 54:11), “powers of hell” (Alma 48:17), “everlasting hell” (Helaman 6:28), “hell fire” (3 Nephi 12:22; Mormon 8:17), and “endless hell” (Moroni 8:13).
Numerous times in the Book of Mormon other terms or phrases are used to mean hell, and these terms add to our understanding of what hell really is. For example, note Nephi’s explanation, which he received from an angel, of the river of filthy water in his and his father’s visions of the tree of life:
“And they said unto me: What meaneth the river of water which our father saw?
“And I said unto them that the water which my father saw was filthiness; and so much was his mind swallowed up in other things that he beheld not the filthiness of the water.
“And I said unto them that it was an awful gulf, which separated the wicked from the tree of life, and also from the saints of God.
“And I said unto them that it was a representation of that awful hell, which the angel said unto me was prepared for the wicked.
“And I said unto them that our father also saw that the justice of God did also divide the wicked from the righteous; and the brightness thereof was like unto the brightness of a flaming fire, which ascendeth up unto God forever and ever, and hath no end” (1 Nephi 15:26–30; see also 12:16–18). ...
Other terms or phrases used in the Book of Mormon to refer to hell are “eternal gulf of misery and woe” (2 Nephi 1:13), “kingdom of the devil” (2 Nephi 2:29; 28:19; Alma 41:4), “spiritual death” (2 Nephi 9:12), “awful monster” (2 Nephi 9:10), “lake of fire and brimstone” (2 Nephi 9:19, 26; 28:23), “misery and endless torment” (Mosiah 3:25; Moroni 8:21), “awful chains” (2 Nephi 28:22), “everlasting chains of death” (Alma 36:18), “slumber of death” (Jacob 3:11), “deep sleep” (Alma 5:7), “second death” (Alma 13:30), “place of filthiness” (1 Nephi 15:34), “endless night of darkness” (Alma 41:7), “misery which never dies” (Mormon 8:38), and “dregs of a bitter cup” (Alma 40:26). ...
Several of these terms appear to say that hell is a permanent condition. ... Clearly the Book of Mormon teaches of a permanent hell for the devil and his angels and for those who, at the final judgment day, are found to be “wicked” or “filthy still”—rebellious, defiant, incorrigible enemies of God, having chosen to follow Satan rather than Christ. ...
For the humanistic New Order Mormon type, this is hard to ignore, for Smith very clearly used such language of Hell and the Devil and curses in a very literal way to scare and manipulate people into blind obedience and compliance. For many of the manipulated Book of Mormon readers, joining Smith's Church became the only way to feel safe from Hell-fire, as Smith as holy seer and revelator was the only one who could allegedly reveal God's will (see D&C 21: 1–5); thus Smith’s way became the way to salvation safety and purity; to not join his church as "the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth ...” (D&C 1:30) was to risk being subject to the "chains" of the Devil and being cursed and going to Hell! No wonder the LDS Church grew so fast in the early years!
So it does not matter if Smith, as a sincere converted Christian in the 1820s, was trying to also sincerely convert Native Americans to "save their souls" -- and also convince white Protestants to not be racist and shun the "Lamanites" with a message of "all are one, black and white, ...." -- because despite Smith's plausibly pious intentions, the actual fraud of replacing the true identity of the Native Americans with a false history of their people and convincing them they were cursed is incredibly immoral in my view. Note again that the cursing of the Lamanites, whether by a change in skin color or as a mere metaphor as the withdrawal of God's Spirit (as LDS apologists now argue post 2013), this alleged "cursing" is still about a deity cursing an entire group of people so they became filthy, idle, and unenticing etc., according to the Book of Mormon.
At the end of the day, the Book of Mormon starts to looks like Joseph Smith using the legends of the day that Native Americans are Jews, as a way to bolster his own Protestant Christian opinions on issues like infant baptism, the Fall, atonement, and the Trinity, etc. As Alexander Campbell put it in 1831, in the Millennial Harbinger, page 13:
This prophet Smith, through his stone spectacles, wrote on the plates of Nephi, in his book of Mormon, every error and almost every truth discussed in N. York for the last ten years. He decides all the great controversies ‑ infant baptism, ordination, the trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fasting, penance, church government, religious experience, the call to the ministry, the general resurrection, eternal punishment, who may baptize, and even the question of freemasonry, republican government, and the rights of man. All these topics are repeatedly alluded to.
In other words, Smith was willing to intentionally or unintentionally lie about an entire people in order to preach his own version of Protestant theology contained in the Book of Mormon. For even if Smith believed he was spiritually channeling a real history of Jews (of Lehi and his family) who left Jerusalem to come to America, it was in fact a lie nonetheless: for we know today that Native Americans are not Jewish. So consciously or unconsciously, Smith did lie and deceive the Native Americans of his day.
So right off the bat Smith began as a fraudulent hell-fire and brimstone preacher presenting new scripture as a false history of Native Americans; so whether he was sincerely pious or not, his claims were deceptive and wrong and his methods to gain converts were controlling and manipulative from the beginning.
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