Is the Land of Promise Being in South America Plagiarized from the RLDS?

While most of our Readers are quite knowledgeable and enlightened regarding the scriptural record, geography, science and how the world works, we do get some really interesting and sometimes unusual comments from readers and critics alike on issues that seemingly are just made up, or certainly not thought out beyond the initial blush of a thought.
    One such reader recently wrote, saying:
Reader: “A major point to address here. Your theory that Book of Mormon geography is in Northern South America came from RLDS Scholars - H.A Stebbins and a later RLDS gentleman named Louise Edward Hills who placed it farther north in Central America - which is what the current Book of Mormon Central, FairMormon former F.A.R.M.S., The Mormon Interpreter and current like-minded, have also plagiarized.”

Response: Interesting you seem to think you know where we got our idea of South America. However, you are completely wrong in addressing all of that to our work. When we began this journey, we knew nothing about any of the people you mention, or even the RLDS Church at the time other than their being a break off from the LDS Church back after Joseph and Hyrum’s death.
    Whether or not you have any interest in the truth of this matter, it pains us to think that because you wrote this flagrant accusation that other readers might attribute our writing, location and maps to being plagiarized, so let us straighten this issue out.
    Briefly, when we were all younger, the majority belief among Church members was that North America was the Land Northward, South America the Land Southward, and Central America the narrow neck area. As a young adult this interest centered in the belief that Mesoamerica was the area, mostly from a  book given us written by Hunter and Ferguson entitled Ancient America and the Book of Mormon. However, when much older and seriously studying the Book of Mormon that we developed a sincere interest in the geographical setting of the Land of Promise.
    Taking the advice of a friend, which has ever been the standard of our study since, a search was started by first and foremost reading Nephi’s writing. His description of his travels to Bountiful was closely followed along the trail he had to have taken and the only one that made any sense, and that was to Salalah (Khor Rori) in Oman, along the Sea of Arabia (Irreantum).

At this time a friend’s copy of John L. Sorenson’s book An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon came into our hands and we began comparing it with the scriptural record, and found so many errors in his interpretations and many, many changes of Mormon’s words and meaning, that we eventually wrote down pages and pages of Sorenson’s statements and the scriptural responses he claimed supported his view. This included an expanded study of Allen’s work and some others regarding Mesoamerica, and overall endeavor that took nearly eight years, and resulted in our book Inaccuracies of Mesoamerica and Other Theories, which was strictly a comparison between Mesoamerican statements made by these theorists and how they were mostly contrary to the statements and descriptions found in the scriptural record.
    As for a pursuit of the location, it was a matter of following the winds and currents, which were the only avenue to take since Nephi tells us his ship “was driven before the wind” on two occasions (1 Nephi 18:8,9). That led to a remarkable area where the winds die down, the currents die down, and minimal landward currents arose—taking a ship dependent on wind and current power into the shore, which happened to be at a place called Coquimbo Bay, Chile. Up to that point, we had never heard of Coquimbo, La Serena, or any other place in western South America, and only vaguely knew about Ecuador, Peru and Chile. Colombia was a little more familiar since a nephew served a mission there, but that was in the mountains to the north.
    From there it was a matter of scriptural study and enormous research that involved most of the best libraries in the States because of a constant travel itinerary at the time, where there were days available for research in the best libraries across the nation where thousands of books in more than 100 libraries (before the internet), and a lot of journals of explorers and adventurers and what they fund was undertaken.
    One of the things that came of this was learning how much more accurate historical documents were that had been published before 1900, and those later were still pretty good until about 1920, when history began to be people’s opinions and speculation, not actual facts.

The point is, this work on and in South America was the result of our own personal study without any other person’s involvement, books, writings, beliefs or theories. We find it both disappointing and extremely erroneous to label our work as that of someone else, of whom we have never heard (RLDS Scholars, Stebbins, Hills, etc. nor know anything about their writing or beliefs).
    In fact, knowledge of FARMS became available only through the works studied regarding Mesoamerica, and through that found their critique of other people’s writings both non-scholarly and extremely prejudicial.
    As far as believing any view we provide, which is strictly the result of studying the scriptural record on every single point and matching that work with available information. In fact, we found within the scriptural record 45 specific and exact Book of Mormon quotes and related them to Andean South America and another 20 related to history, Jewish/Hebrew history and practices.
    Regarding Henry A. Stebbins, who wrote a book in 1901, published by the Board of Publication of the Reorganized Church (RLDS), through the Herald Publishing House, in Lamoni, Iowa. The content of this work was a series of nine Sermons delivered in the RLDS Church’s Saints’ chapel, at Independence, Missouri, from February 13-21, 1894, that had been corrected and revised for the publication. The purpose of the lectures were “to give proper proofs from many antiquarians, historians, and scientists, in connection with the synopsis of the story of the peoples that came to America in ancient times.”
    In “Lecture 6” of these nine lectures, the case for a South American landing is made in articles entitled: From the Red Sea through Arabia; the Compass; they cross the Indian and Pacific Oceans landing in Peru; fertility of Peruvian Soil; Nephi writes their history; a Branch of Israel; Lamanite Rebellion; division of the Colony; Nephite faith and doctrine; and America a Land of Liberty.”
    In “Lecture 9,” Stebbins states: “Neither this story nor the traditions of the natives give us reason to believe that it included anything more than Central America and the northern part of South America (along the Caribbean Sea), and likely Southern Mexico, in which lands then dwelt the main bodies of the Nephites and Lamanites. The scene of the history, and the region into which Christ came to them, was Northern South America, evidently, but the book says that even greater destruction took place in the land northward. And we learn from Bancroft and other writers that Central America was indeed the chief center of those great catastrophes, by which much land was sunk and the waves of the sea came over the cities. The Book of Mormon and the historians agree on this point. Neither of them locate the scene of the great overthrow as in the United States, but further south in Central and South America.”
    He also concludes with, “As a result of this war, wherein the Lamanites began to offer the Nephites in sacrifice before their idols, the Nephites were driven from their homes and from their country. Some escaped into South America, but the main body was driven north and northeast. Others, doubtless, hid away in distant valleys and canyons.”

The point of all this is that Stebbins (left) gave these lectures in 1894 and they were published in 1901. However, Orson Pratt, in 1838, more than 55 years earlier, wrote a pamphlet entitled Remarkable visions, which subsequently went through multiple editions, stating that Lehi landed in Chile, saying: “The remnant of Joseph were also led in a miraculous manner from Jerusalem, in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah. They were first led to the eastern borders of the Red Sea; then they journeyed for some time along the borders thereof, nearly in a south-east direction; after which, they altered their course nearly eastward, until they came to the great waters, where, by the commandment of God, they built a vessel, in which they were safely brought across the great Pacific Ocean, and landed upon the western coast of South America” (Orson Pratt, A Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions, and of the Late Discovery of Ancient American Records, Ballantyne and Hughes, Edinburgh, 1840, pp15-21, emphasis added).
    After securing a copy of Orson Pratt’s pamphlet, Elder Orson Hyde, another Apostle who was a close associate of Joseph smith, verified the accuracy of this publication by translating it (with only a few modifications) into German (Milton V. Backman, Jr., “Defender of the Faith,” in Regional studies in Latter-day Saint Church History, BYU Department of Church History and Doctrine, BYU, 1992, pp34-38).
    In another instance of 1841, Benjamin Winchester, an original member of the first Quorum of the Seventy who had been the youngest adult member of Zion’s Camp, and editor of the first independent Mormon periodical, The Gospel Reflector, and President of a large branch of the church in Philadelphia, defended that the American Indian belonged to the house of Israel, and also in comparing the "History of the Ancients of America, and Also of the Book of Mormon," he wrote: “Six hundred years B.C. according to the Book of Mormon, Lehi fled into the wilderness. He pitched his tent in the wilderness near the Red Sea…and after a long and tedious journey, they came to the great waters, or the Ocean...they set sail, and in proper time landed as we infer from their records somewhere on the western coast of South America” (Winchester, “The Claims of the Book of Mormon Established—It Also Defended," The Gospel Reflector 1, 15 March 1841, pp105-23).

Also, Elder John Taylor (left), in 1842, stated: “When we read in the Book of Mormon that Jared and his brother came on to this continent from the confusion and scattering at the Tower, and lived here more than a thousand years, and covered the whole continent from sea to sea, with towns and cities; and that Lehi went down by the Red Sea to the great Southern Ocean, and crossed over to this land and landed a little south of the Isthmus of Darien, and improved the country according to the word of the Lord, as a branch of the house of Israel” (Taylor, “Facts Are Stubborn Things,” Times and Seasons, vol.3, no.22, September 15, 1842, pp921-922).
    From these 1838 to 1879 years, the latter when Orson Pratt died following40 years in senior Church leadership and as the geographical “expert” on the Book of Mormon, the idea that Lehi landed in South America was the standard point of belief among the Church and Church members.
    So why is it that someone can claim anyone in the church today is plagiarizing an RLDS leader’s lectures in 1894, and printed in 1901, about South America being the landing site of Lehi?
    It seems reasonable to state that if anyone is going to criticize our work regarding South America, which some certainly have been doing, perhaps they would like to at least be accurate in their comments about what is found in our work by reading the articles written and stated by the earliest Church leaders, as well as those posted in this blog as so many others have done and who comment regularly on our pages.