Believe What the Natives Tell You?— The Sacred Records of Mesoamerica, Part I

When talking about sacred records held by the early natives (Toltecas, Olmecs, etc.) of Mesoamerica, we need to understand what these records were, where they came from, and why they were in Mesoamerica.

After all, the words "Lamanites" and "sacred records" simply do not go together according to the scriptural record (Mormon 2:17; 6:6, Enos 1:14), and nowhere is there any indication that the Lamanites kept any records at all, let alone sacred records.

Keep in mind that it is this "divine book" to which Ixtlilxochitl refers dealt with the creation of the world and the history of some of the New World colonizers. The complete consistency between Itlilxochitl's statements that the colonizers possessed histories and the story of the creation of the world and the declaration of the Catholic father Dionisio Jose Chonay is significant. Of course, it might be remembered that Ixtlilxochitl was a Castizo, that is, part Spanish, was raised by the fathers of the Catholic Church, taught Spanish, and wrote from a personal view, using memories from Indian nobles of his day (1608).

Again, it must be asked, what Lamanites in the land of Promise suddenly became religious to have a "divine book" of sacred records after wiping out the Nephites, being enemies of God, and having some forty years or more of internal savage wars among themselves throughout the land (Mormon 8:8; Moroni 1:2).

The attitude of the Nephites regarding the sacred records were far different. Alma (the Younger), when speaking to his son, Helaman, about the records, said, "Behold, it has been prophesied by our fathers, that they should be kept and handed down from one generation to another, and be kept and preserved by the hand of the Lord until they should go forth unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, that they shall know of the mysteries contained thereon" (Alma 37:4), and added, "were it not for these things that these records do contain, which are on these plates, Ammon and his brethren could not have convinced so many thousands of the Lamanites of the incorrect tradition of their fathers" (Alma 37:9).

Helaman tells us the Nephites kept many records, "And now there are many records kept of the proceedings of this people, by many of this people, which are particular and very large, concerning them" (Helaman 3:13), and that the records were about their wars with the Lamanites, and their internal, "contentions, and dissensions, and their preaching, and their prophecies, and their shipping and their building of ships, and their building of temples, and of synagogues and their sanctuaries, and their righteousness, and their wickedness, and their murders, and their robbings, and their plundering, and all manner of abominations and whoredoms" (Helaman 3:14).

In the preamble to the Titulo de Totonicapan account, which he translated from the Maya into Spanish in 1834, Chonay explains: "His said manuscript consists of thirty-one quarto pages; but the translation of the first pages is omitted because they are on the creation of the world of Adam, the early paradise in which Eve was deceived, not by a serpent, but by Lucifer himself, as an angel of light' (Recinos and Goetz, 1953, 166-167).

So just who would have had such records in 1200 A.D. in the Land of Promise? The Lamanites did not have records. The Nephite records were hidden away and unavailable to anyone after the demise of the Nephite nation in 385 AD. Just, exactly, what records would have been available for this Huematzin to have compiled???

It is claimed that Genesis creation data of the ancient colonizers were still in the possession of the Maya in Guatemala when the Titulo de Totonicapan account was written in 1554. Just what creation records are we talking about? In the Land of Promise, those records were hidden by Mormon around 385 A.D. just prior to the final battle with the Lamanites that saw the end of the Nephite Nation. Moroni survived and was responsible for such records and were hidden in the Hill Cumorah, which Joseph Smith found in 1827. Brigham Young said the Hill Cumorah is filled with wagon loads of Nephite records.

So we ask once again, what records would Huematzin, obviously not a Nephite descendant, have at his disposal in which to create or compile a "sacred record" of the creation down to his time in the 1200s?

In the Land of Promise, after 400 A.D. and the demise of the Nephite Nation, the only "sacred records" were 1) in the possession of Moroni, and 2) buried where his father, Mormon, buried them in the Hill Cumorah (Mormon 6:6).

There could have been no "sacred records" left to be obtained or found by the Lamanites--the ancestors of those living in the Land of promise in 1200 A.D. There is only one way any "sacred records" could have been in the hands of the Lamanites between 400 A.D. and 1200 A.D., in the area of Mesoamerica--and that is the subject of our next post.

(See the next post, "Believe What the Natives Tell You?--The Sacred Records of Mesoamerica, Part II," to see what records were available for Huematzin in 1200 A.D. and Ixtlilxochitl in 1600 A.D. to have known about)