Who Were the people called the People of Zarahemla?

The term “people of Zarahemla,” as used in the Book of Mormon, actually refers to two different groups of people. The first time we hear of this term is when Mosiah was told by the Lord “that he should flee out of the Land of Nephi, and as many as would hearken unto the voice of the Lord should also depart out of the land with him, into the wilderness” (Omni 1:12).

This and the following scriptures were written by Amaleki some time after 279 B.C. To place Amaleki in chonorlogical perspective, the lineage of Nephi’s brother, Jacob, went from himself to, Enos, Jarom and Omni. The son of Jacob’s great grandson, Omni, was Amaron, who wrote in 279 B.C. (Omni 1:5). His brother, Chemish then wrote a bit, and his son, Abinadom, was the father of Amaleki. So, two generations after 279 B.C., Amaleki is the prophet or record keeper of the Plates of Nephi.

When Mosiah “came down into the land which is called the land of Zarahemla, (he) discovered a people called the people of Zarahemla” (Omni 1:14). It was in Mosiah’s day that the “people of Zarahemla,” that is, those who came out of Jerusalem with Mulek (Helaman 8:21), sometimes called Mulekites, joined with the Nephites and became one people (Omni 1:19) called Nephites.

Amaleki was with Mosiah at this time and not only saw this first hand, but lived into the days of King Benjamin (Omni 1:24), to whom he delivered up the records (Words of Mormon 1:10). These plates “were handed down from generation to generation until they” came into the hands of Mormon (Words of Mormon 1:11).

It was Amaleki’s brother (Omni 1:30) who was part of the group who went with Zeniff to return to the land of Nephi to possess the land of their inheritance” (Omni 1:17). And it was Zeniff’s grandson, Limhi, who sent a 43-man expeditionary force to find Zarahemla and seek succor from their brethren (Mosiah 8:7), the Nephites—however, they became lost and traveled into the Land of Many Waters where they found scattered across this land the Jaredite bones, and ruins of buildings of all kinds (Mosiah 8:8).

As was pointed out in the last post, the people of Zarahemla who went back to the Land of Nephi were Nephites, for they went intending “to inherit the land which was the land of their fathers” (Mosiah 7:9). Mulekites would not have considered the Land of Nephi the land of their fathers. Only a Nephite would think such.

This, then leads us to the second group who occupied the city and land of Zarahemla—the Nephites. After the days of Mosiah I, the Mulekites considered themselves Nephites, and after nearly 500 years when Mormon was writing, no one would have thought of Zarahemla being occupied by anyone other than Nephites. So when Mormon wrote in Alma 22:30 that the people of Zarahemla discovered the bones of the Jaredites, he would not have been referring to the Mulekites, but to the Nephites (see Mormon 1:8). Thus, the phrase: “it being so far northward that it came into the land which had been people and been destroyed, of whose bones we have spoken, which was discovered by the people of Zarahemla, it being the place of their first landing,” could not have been referring to the Mulekites’ first landing because he was referring to the Nephites in Zarahemla (and we know they did not land in the Land Northward).

Thus, Mormon, as any clear reading would show, was referring to that land of bones being the area of the Jaredite’s first landing.

So we see that the term “people of Zarahemla” meant the Mulekites prior to the time of Mosiah I, and afterward would have meant the Nephites. In 322 A.D., Mormon makes a point of mentioning who the Nephites were, and gives no indication there was any Mulekite tribe—only Nephites, Jacobites, Josephites and Zoramites (Mormon 1:8). And after nearly five hundred years of Nephites governing and inhabiting Zarahemla, no one would think of any people in Zarahemla as other than Nephites, for it was the capital of the Nephite Nation from 200 B.C. until 322 A.D. (Mormon 1:6), it was the seat of the Nephite religion and location of the temple, and the place where the prophets lived. Mormon could not have intended his menton of the people of Zarahemla to be other than Nephites.