Turning Lakes Into Seas

The disingenuousness of Great Lakes Theorists sometimes staggers the imagination. First of all, you have a landlocked set of waterways being called seas, though, as has been pointed out in earlier posts, the word sea as Joseph Smith knew it in his translation is a portion of an ocean. In earlier sections of his translation, Joseph correctly called the Red Sea a sea (it empties into and is part of the Arabian Sea), and is not a land-locked sea.
Second, and most important, in Mormon’s description of the geography, in Joseph’s translation of the seas, and in mention by other prophets writing in the record, an understanding of movement across great bodies of water is outlined in which the winds and the currents drove Nephi’s vessel toward the land of promise. At some point (after many days sailing), the vessel landed along a coast of some sort and the occupants (the Lehi colony) disembarked. At this point, “they went forth upon the land and did pitch our tents” (1 Nephi 18:23), and began “to till the earth and we began to plant seeds, yea, we did put all our seeds into the earth, which we had brought form the land of Jerusalem” (1 Nephi 18:24). Following this, Nephi describes finding where they disembarked, set up tents, tilled the earth and planted their seeds, beasts and wild animals, ore, and a combination of gold, silver, and copper (1 Nephi 18:25).

At no point is there any suggestion, reference, indication, or wordage to suggest that they traveled from their landing site to an area where they then settled. Yet, Great Lakes Theorists, out of necessity, must move the Lehi colony form a coast to an inland, land-locked lake, or series of lakes and rivers, for the colony to settle in a land which would later be called their “Land of First Inheritance.”

This movement overland for hundreds of miles is necessary for these Theorists because there is no direct coastal area within their land of promise. In 600 B.C., and for more than 2000 years afterward, no ocean-going vessel could have reached any of the great lakes within the U.S. and Canada. As has been shown in previous posts, the St. Lawrence River did not have passage to Lake Ontario as it does now because of the rapids that blocked passage to Montreal; nor could a deep ocean ship sail up the Mississippi and reach any of the great lakes, then or now (passage upriver from the Gulf of Mexico has always been restricted to flat-bottomed boats, like the Mississippi paddlewheel river boats of the 19th century) before dredging of the river. In fact, the closest the Mississippi comes to Lake Michigan is 170 miles, to Lake Superior is 180 miles, and the closest the Ohio comes to Lake Erie is 100 miles. However, the closest a deep-sea ocean vessel driven by the winds could have come to any of the great lakes in 600 B.C. would be Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where the river becomes too shallow for ocean-going vessels, which is 800 miles from Lake Michigan and 875 miles from Lake Erie.

This means, if the route suggested up the Mississippi is considered, the overland travel would have been upwards of 800 to 900 miles—which is about the same distance the colony traveled along the Red Sea before turning eastward. And that journey took quite some time and Nephi wrote about it extensively—yet not a word of the travel it would have taken across an unknown land with numerous sights never seen before and, no doubt, more problems from his older brothers and the sons of Ishmael.

On the other hand, some of these Theorists claim the Lehi Colony sailed up the Chesapeake River and landed in Baltimore, which would be about a 300 mile overland journey to either Lake Ontario or Lake Erie. Still, a considerable distance—about the length of the entire country of Palestine in their day and not a single word about it nor even the slightest indication they traveled from their coastal landing site.