Zelph, the White Lamanite

Zelph was a white Lamanite. He well might have been a General among the Nephites, but he was a Lamanite. As stated in the corrected text of Church History: “Zelph was a white Lamanite, a man of God who was a warrior and chieftain under the great prophet Onandagus who was known from the eastern Sea, to the Rocky Mountains. He was killed in battle, by the arrow found among his ribs, during a great struggle with the Lamanites.”

Note that In 1842, Willard Richards compiled a number of records in order to produce a history of the church. Among the records examined were the various accounts related to Zelph. In the process of combining the accounts, Richards crossed out Woodruff's references to "hill Cumorah," and Heber C. Kimball's reference to the "last" great struggle with the Lamanites—neither statement of which was ever recorded by Joseph or even correctly attributed to him, but rather the interpolation of these two brethren who were present at the time of the discovery.

As for support of his being a Lamanite, there were Lamanites among the Nephites who went north in Hagoth’s ships. This period of time (about 46 B.C.) followed the end of one of the great periods of war between the Nephites and the Lamanites, and was about 17 years after the Lamanite Stripling Warriors went to battle for the Nephits (Alma 53:22). Thus, not only those young warriors, who would have been somewhere in their mid- to late-thirties when the emigrants went north in Hagoth’s ships, but possibly some of their parents, who would have been about 20 years older or more, or about 55 to 60. Thus, converted Lamanites (the people of Ammon Alma 53:10) were undoubtedly among the Nephites going north.

That Zelph was white, he either descended from those converted Lamanites who were granted a white skin, or those mentioned in 3 Nephi 2:14-15, who received a white skin because of their righteousness, which extended to their children (2 Nephi 2:16)—this was recorded in 15 A.D., about 60 years after those who went north in Hagoth’s ships—but others could have also gone north in other ships later on.

It might also be suggested that the 2,060 Lamanite stripling warriors, after the war, finding themselves around 20 or so, would have had less interest in the Land of Promise as in a new land “which was northward,” and would make sense they went north in great numbers—at east they are never mentioned again in the record.

In any event, we do know that a white Lamanite showed up in Illinois and died in a battle with the Lamanites sometime after these events recorded in the BOM. John A. Widtsoe stated that the account of Zelph "is not of much value in Book of Mormon geographical studies, since Zelph probably dated from a later time when Nephites and Lamanites had been somewhat dispersed and had wandered over the country." Obviously, this somewhat later time would have been after they separated themselves from the lands recorded in the Book of Mormon and were elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, just as obviously in the Land of Promise covering North America.

At this time in question, anyone not a Nephite was called a Lamanite. The difference was more accurately described as those who were members of the true church and believers in Christ (Nephites) [4 Nephi 1:36-37] and those who were enemies of the church (Lamanites) [4 Nephi 1:38]. Those called Lamanites under this division, taught their children to “hate the children of God, even as the Lamanites were taught to hate the children of Nephi from the beginning (4 Nephi 1:39).

These wicked people (calling themselves Lamanites) “began again to build up the secret oaths and combinations of Gadianton” (4 Nephi 1:42). As a side note, Gadianton and the Gadianton Robbers were, in the beginning, wicked or evil Nephites, not Lamanites. Anyway, with all this in mind, it might be assumed that after about 230 A.D. or so, the split and identity of Nephite and Lamanite was not necessarily by blood, but by religious preference (Members, non-members). So in the 3rd century A.D., we might find that many of those called Lamanites were, in fact, originally Nephites who rejected Christ and His church.

Thus, we are left with only speculation regarding Zelph. He was, as we are told, a white Lamanite. A Nephite military leader. And lived during the time of a prophet known well across the breadth of the land.