One More Time—Malay is Not the Land of Promise Part VI

Continuing from the last five posts regarding the clues Nephi and Mormon gave us to find their Land of Promise, we now take a look at Ralph Olsen’s claim about wheeled vehicles not being found in the Americas.

Again, we refer to the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century. At that time, the Maya, Aztec and Inca did not use wheeled vehicles, nor did they adopt them for centuries after the Spanish conquest. Whatever the reason, the Indian, as advanced a culture as he had, did not use any type of transportation. He relied on his feet and on military movement of foot soldiers, like the English and American military long into the 19th century. In many parts of the world, a mounted cavalry was unknown.

In the eastern United States, Indians lived around the English and French from the 1600s onward who had extensive wheeled vehicles, wagons, coaches, carriages, etc., yet over the next 300 years, the Indians never did adopt the wheeled vehicle for their own use. In the west, even with covered wagons, stage coaches, large wagons pulled by mule trains, the Indian never learned to use or required a wheeled vehicle. In the west, travois were pulled by women before the introduction of the horse—an animal only used by the American Indian across the western plains of the U.S. Eastern Indians did not use the horse, nor did coastal Indian tribes in the east or west.

Again, for some reason, the American Indian, no matter whether in North, South, or Central America, chose not to use the horse outside the western plains even after it was introduced to them.Thus, when the Spanish came, they conquered a vastly superior force of Indians with a handful of men mounted on war horses. Even recognizing the superiority of a mounted warrior, the Maya, Aztec and Inca never chose to use such animals when captured, but killed them.

However, just because the Indians did not use horses or wheeled vehicles in the 16th century when the Spanish arrived does not mean the capability did not exist at an earlier time. Take, for example, the use of horse-drawn chariots by the Nephites. When the final war of annihilation took place, there were no more Nephites to build such vehicles. If the Lamanites had been building any, it is not indicated in the scriptural record. But even so, at the conclusion of the Nephite wars, the Lamanites then began a long civil war among themselves, with tribe, clan, or family aligned against one another. As Moroni put it in 401 A.D., “the Lamanites are at war one with another; and the whole face of this land is one continual round of murder and bloodshed; and no one knoweth the end of the war” (Mormon 8:8). Twenty years later, Moroni says of the Lamanites, “their wars are exceedingly fierce among themselves” (Moroni 1:2). No doubt these wars continued on for some time, and most likely, never did completely cease, for wherever the native “Indians” are found, they live one tribe against another, and killing and bloodshed has persisted until modern times.

Thus, it would seem likely that for a thousand years, from the end of the Nephites to the time of the Inca rise to power in South America, the Indian or Lamanite deteriorated into a state of warring tribes until finally a powerful state rose up and conquered all the others. As in the case of the Inca, this was around 1400 to 1450 A.D. For the next 100 years or so, the Inca controlled the Andean lands from Ecuador to Chile. However, even if they had wanted to use wheeled vehicles, the horse had earlier died out. Probably eaten along with most other animals the Nephites once domesticated. Certainly the record shows that animals in certain areas were often hunted out of existence. During a thousand years of war when there were not Nephites to plant and harvest, and the Lamanite lived off the land as he had always done.

As Enos described them, “they were led by their evil nature that they became wild, and ferocious, and a bloodthirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness; feeding upon beasts of prey; dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins and their heads shaven; and their skill was in the bow, and in the cimeter, and the ax. And many of them did eat nothing save it was raw meat; and they were continually seeking to destroy us” (Enos 1:20; Alma 3:5).

It would be reasonable to assume that over a thousand years, whatever the Nephites had and used in their way of life, would not have survived through the generations of Lamanites.

(See the next post, “One More Time—Malay is Not the Land of Promise Part VI,” for more on the clues Nephi and Mormon gave us and to see what happened to the Nephite wheeled vehicles in the present location of the Land of Promise and what chariots represented)