Answering a Reader’s Eastern U.S. Model – Part II: The Map Without Error - Part II

Continuing with David McKane’s many comments left on this blog, and specifically below the continuation of the 17 errors on his “errorless maps.”

Also shown in the previous post

11. On another of McKane’s maps (Map C), he has the east wilderness and Lamanite occupation to the east of his Sea East and East Sea.
    Response: Nowhere in the entire Book of Mormon are there any descriptions, suggestions, or comments leading one to think that there is  any land to the east of the Sea East—not one! Therefore to claim a location of anything to the east of the Sea East is unsupportable and without merit and certainly a discrepancy to the scriptural record.
    Mormon tells us of the Land of Nephi (the Lamanite king’s territory throughout which a proclamation was being sent): “which was bordering even to the sea, on the east and on the west, and which was divided from the land of Zarahemla by a narrow strip of wilderness, which ran from the sea east even to the sea west, and round-about on the borders of the seashore, and the borders of the wilderness which was on the north by the land of Zarahemla, through the borders of Manti, by the head of the river Sidon, running from the east towards the west -- and thus were the Lamanites and the Nephites divided” (Alma 22:27, emphasis added to show the extent of the Lamanite territory).

 Circumventing the Narrow Neck would not be difficult at all. The Lamanites, as shown here, could have taken either or both of the alternate routes into the Land Northward to bypass the Narrow Neck or Narrow Passage in McKane’s model map

    In such s case, Mormon’s words, “Therefore the Lamanites could have no more possessions only in the land of Nephi, and the wilderness round about. Now this was wisdom in the Nephites -- as the Lamanites were an enemy to them, they would not suffer their afflictions on every hand, and also that they might have a country whither they might flee, according to their desires“ (Alma 22:34) would be meaningless.
12. The Narrow Neck and/or Narrow Passage are not the only paths into the Land Northward.
    Despite Mormon making it very clear that the Land Northward could only be reached through the Narrow Neck and Narrow Passage, in his case both being the same place, McKane’s location shows a simple matter of circumventing that narrow way and going around it, as any military group would have done to reach their unobstructed objective.

13. On still another McKane map (Map D), he places the New York Hopewell Indians to the east of Lake Erie (Sea East) and Lake Ontario (East Sea), though on still another map (Map E) he claims this is Lamanite lands (wilderness).

This is either Lamanite lands or Nephite lands, it cannot be both.

However, on yet another map (Map F), he labels the area to the east as the “Borders of Nephites Apalachian mountains,” suggesting this is not Lamanite lands after all.
14. Again, on Map D, he places the Havana Hopewell and Trempeleau Hopewell Indians, which he identifies as Nephites, in the lands to the west of Lake Michigan (West Sea), though on another map (Map E) he claims this area is Lamanite Lands (West Wilderness);
    Again, this is either Lamanite lands or Nephite lands, it cannot be both.
15. Launching a ship from the Land Southward at the Narrow Neck of Land would be into the waters to the North, you call the Sea West.
    Since building exceedingly large ships would be very costly, especially for a small sailing venture on an inland lake, it is highly unlikely that Hagoth would have built such ships in McKane’s scenario, especially since sailing northward from the narrow neck in McKane’s Land of Promise would allow Hagoth’s ships to travel only up Lake Huron or into Georgian Bay, which has 30,000 island and hardly a place for a sailing ship “driven before the wind” (if it was built like Nephi’s ship) to maneuver.

In addition, Georgian Bay, a calm fresh-water lake, and northern Lake Huron all flow toward the south (ships need to use several locks to be lifted from Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay, which, along with the canal were completed in 1918-1920, though with the emergence of power-boats, was no longer needed), making headway for a sailing ship that much more difficult, especially with the winds on these waters.
16. Hagoth had a Posterity that occupied the lands of Canada to the northwest of Lake Superior.

On another purely speculative idea, on a map area (white circle and arrow) you label "Posterity of Hagoth," there is absolutely no scriptural reference to such a people or place. There is simply no suggestion in the Book of Mormon that Hagoth had a posterity, let alone that they occupied a part of the Land of Promise. What we know about Hagoth is that he was a curious man who built exceedingly large ships (Alma 63:5), nothing more! To create a history for the man and a land area attributed to his posterity is worse than speculation, it is fallacious. Besides, neither Hagoth, nor any of his family or descendants went northward on the ships he built as far as it is known from the scriptural record.

17. Florida is the landing site of the Lehi Colony.
    Response: McKane places this in the area along the coast of Hernando or Citrus counties, which in an overall view of his Land of Promise territory, is toward the east instead of the west seashore, and so far from his West Sea it is hard to imagine, though he tries to compensate for this by claiming that an area covering 4½ states, an area about 600 miles across and 200 miles north to south, or about 120,000 square miles, which is an unbelievably large area, stretching almost as wide as his entire Land of Nephi—an area only about a 100 miles greater in width. This doesn’t sound anything like Mormon’s description of the area: “in the borders by the seashore, and on the west in the land of Nephi, in the place of their fathers' first inheritance, and thus bordering along by the seashore” (Alma 22:28). One can only wonder what his “narrow strip of wilderness” across those 4½ states would be like and where it is located.
18. His narrow strip of wilderness is north of the Sea East and runs along the Sea West (hard to tell if it runs to the Sea East from the map).

Response: It is also interesting that McKane places the narrow passage through the area of the Niagara Falls, which is nowhere near his Land of Nephi, yet Mormon makes it quite clear where that narrow strips of wilderness was located: “amongst all his people who were in all his land, who were in all the regions round about, which was bordering even to the sea, on the east and on the west, and which was divided from the land of Zarahemla by a narrow strip of wilderness, which ran from the sea east even to the sea west, and round about on the borders of the seashore, and the borders of the wilderness which was on the north by the land of Zarahemla, through the borders of Manti, by the head of the river Sidon, running from the east towards the west -- and thus were the Lamanites and the Nephites divided” (Alma 22:27).

Based on Mormon’s comments, the narrow strip of wilderness should be ) (large white line with narrow red line) between the Land of Zarahemla (top circle) and the Land of Nephi (bottom circle; however, that is not where McKane places his narrow strip. There is also no West Sea border of either the Land of Zarahemla or the Land of Nephi

    Now for a map no one has ever found any discrepancies with, and McKane claims there ar no errors with, we’ve showed numerous examples of his own maps to show that they do not agree in hardly anything with the scriptural record—what our readers have been telling him quite effectively for the past few weeks.
(See the next post, “Answering a Reader’s Eastern U.S. Model – Part III: The Six Seas,” for a continuation of evaluating McKane’s maps)