Legends of the Book of Mormon – Part VI

Continuing from the previous post regarding the legends found in the Amerias, and that those in South America are as legitimate as those found in Mesoamerica and North America. 
    Most of the Guaraní legends were compiled by the Univeridad Nacional de Misiones, and published as Myths and Legends: A journey around the Guarani lands, Anthology in 1870 (translated into the English language in 1906. Guarani myth and legend can roughly be divided into broad categories, with one of their origination legends stating: 

“at one time in the distant past our ancestors crossed a great and spacious ocean from a far land to settle in the Americas. They found the land both wonderful yet full of dangers; through diligence and effort they subdued the land and inaugurated a new civilization.” There were two brothers that vied for leadership of the people: Tupi and Guaraní. Eventually they feuded and divided the people into two separate nations. Each nation, or tribe, adopted the name of the brother who was its leader.” In this division, the Tupi tribes adopted a more fierce, nomadic lifestyle, rejecting the agricultural traditions of their fathers. They engaged in the practice of drinking large quantities of “mate,” a drink prepared from the guarana tree.
    The Guaraní tribes became a stable, God-fearing people, believing in ñamandu, “the true father, the first one” who worked the land and became excellent craftsmen. These hospitable people were well-built, vigorous, and healthy, and seemed gifted with good character and abounding joy, and looked forward to the coming of a tall, fair-skinned, blue eyed, bearded God (Pa'i Shume) who, according to legend, descended from the skies and expressed his pleasure with the Guaraní, and imparted religious instruction. He unlocked the secrets of health and medicine and revealed the healing qualities of native plants.
    Today, the descendants of these people live mostly in Paraguay, which at the time the Spanish arrived, was a territory much larger than today, and still speak the Guaraní language. Over the last few centuries their population has made a comeback and now stands around 270,000. 

The bearded Creator God, Bochica, also alluded to as Nemquetaha, Nemqueteba, and Sadigua, is a figure in the religion of the muisca, who inhabited the Altiplano Cundiboyacense during the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the central Andean highlands of present-day Colombia. He was the founding hero of their civilization, who according to legend brought morals and laws to the people and taught them agriculture and other crafts. In the Andes, he is much like the Peruvian Viracocha
    In Colombia the ancient natives had a legend of a creator and civilizer God, like Viracocha named Bochica, a bearded man who came from the east. He was a gentle hero, a teaching of all thing good, including laws and morals, wandering far and wide teaching the natives right from wrong, and considerined the founding hero of their civilization, who the people ethical and moral normals and a model of by which they could organize their states with both a spiritual leader and a secular leader. He also taught the agricultgure, how to build, and many other crafts. He is remembered as having a startling appearance, tall and imposing-looking, weathered and dressed in a tunic. In his strong broned hand he carried a large gold scepter. He wanted the people to learn how to care for themselves, so he began to teach them. He taught them how to sow their fields, how to plant and harvest, how to build houses and how to weave cottyon and other fibers that they learned to grow in abundance upon their land. 
    Over time, it would appear, lthat this legend became mixed with the legend of a mortal, one easily paralleling Nephi, who taught his people how to do so many things (2 Nephi 5:15). He was the founding hero of their civilization, who the people ethical and moral norms and a model by which they could organize their states with both a spiritual leader and a secular leader. He also taught them agriculture and other crafts.
    In Peru is the legend of two races, or two peoples, both came to the land by sea, one to the north and the other settled in the south, with the one in the north advanced, busy, active builders and developers, while to the south is a less capable people with totally different customs, speaking different languages though at one time they were the same, who continually attack, kill and rob the people to the  north. Another legend considers these two peoples the Quichua and the other the Aymara, with two separate languages that today are recognized as a common grammatical structure, with a great number of words being common to both.
    There is another legend of four peoples settling the greater Cuzco region, which they divided into four sections, that of the Colla-suyu, with the valley of Titicaca as its center, and stretching from the Bolivian highlands to Cuzco; the Conti-suyu, between the Colla-suyu and the ocean; the Quichua Chinchay-suyu, of the north-west; and the Anti-suyu, of the montaña region. Much later in time, when the Inca people, coming suddenly into these lands, annexed them with surprising rapidity, and, making the aboriginal tribes dependent upon their rule, spread themselves over the face of the country. Thus wrote the Spanish historians and chroniclers, but now it is that such rapid conquest was a practical impossibility, and it is now understood that the Inca power was consolidated only some hundred years before the coming of Pizarro.
    The legend of Manco Capac, the hero of Peruvian antiquity, and his sister-wife Mama Oullo Huaca, who was involved in laying the foundations of a city, called today Cuzco. This heavenly pair in the land of Peru abounded in every desirable thing, like the Eden of Genesis. This is sometimes mixed with the legend of the four brothers, with Manco being the youngest of the four who rose to lead the others, and their wives were all sisters, and thus having had the beginning of their lineage in them, they made huacas [sacred things] and places of worship of them, in memory of the origin of their lineage (this certain sounds once again like Nephi and his brothers and their wives, the daughters of Ishmael, who founded the land after Lehi landed).

The point of all of this is to show that Lehi and Nephite legends abound in Andean Peru, including evidences of baptism; Egyptian-style mummification of the dead; stone burial sepulchers like those in the Middle East; the legend of Tupã, Viracocha, Pachacamac, all the supreme God of all creation known by different cultures throughout South America;  flood legends among all ancient cultures there; earliest dated metallurgy in the Americas; archaeological evidence showing paleoamericans were first in South America, as well as white tribes in South America.
    Thus, we find evidence of Lehi and Nephite legends and occurrences throughout the Western Hemisphere. We also find that it began in the south (South America) and worked its way northward (Meso/Central America) and finally into where Joseph mentions Nephites/Lamanites in the land of the plains where Zelph was found (North America). This verifies the many comments made by modern-day Prophets and Church leaders that Zion and the Land of Promise if the Americas, both North and South America.
    This also verifies the scriptural record that tells us that the Nephites were continually moving northward with the Lamanites following them from the south. Thus, we see that the Nephites began in the south where Mormon tells us Lehi landed (Alma 22:28). From there they advanced northward, with many going further north in Hagoth’s ships to “a land which was northward” and disappearing from the Nephite Nation and the story-line of the scriptural record, but not lost to history as Joseph Smith informed us with his vision of Zelph and understading of the Nephite Plains.
    There is simply too much evidence of the Nephites and Lamanites in all three general areas to deny the fact any longer. Lehi landed in South America, and the entire Book of Mormon incidents took place in Andean South America, with Lehi’s descendants traveling northward, beginning with Hagoth’s ships (Alma 63:5, 6-7), ending up in the plains Joseph Smith wrote his wife, Emma, about.
    Thus, the inheritance of Lehi (Menasseh) will be in the south, and the New Jerusalem and the government of the Church (Ephraim) will be in the north.