The Facts About the Zelph Mound – Part II

Continued from the previous post, regarding the events surrounding the Zelph story and what those who were there had to say about it as compared to what has been written about the event and what was added to their original journal entries later on.

In any event, the bones of Zelph were then carried in Wilford Woodruff’s wagon for the purpose of burying them in the envisioned temple site, but the later eviction of the Saints from Missouri before the temple could be built caused Wilford Woodruff to take the bones to Clay County “near the house owned by Colonel Arthur and occupied by Lyman Wight,” where he reburied the thigh bone near Liberty.

The journals of Woodruff, Heber C. Kimball, Levi W. Hancock (left), George A. Smith, Moses Martin and Reuben McBride, all recorded the incident. It was further and formally recorded in Church history from available sources in 1842 by Church historian, Willard Richards, who recorded that Joseph said, “The visions of the past being opened to my understanding by the Spirit of the Almighty, I discovered that the person whose skeleton lay before us was a white Lamanite, a large thick-set man, a white Lamanite, and a man of God…He was a warrior and chieftain under the great prophet Onandagus, who was known from the eastern sea to the Rocky Mountains” (Joseph Smith History of the Church, Vol.2, pp79–80).

(Red Line) Zion’s Camp march westward. Beyond Detroit in Pike County, some of the Elders (Yellow Dotted Line) walked about a mile northward to the large mound in which they found the bones of the skeleton

According to the Smithsonian, the mound, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, was “On the right bank of the Illinois river about 300 yards below [south of] Griggsville Landing, rises a lofty bluff fully 300 feet above the level of the river. On the summit is a beautiful, oval mound, 150 long, 92 feet wide in the middle, and 25 or 30 feet high…within a radius of 5 miles from Naples there are a least fifty mounds, very few of which have ever been opened" (Smithsonian Institution, 1882, p692).
    As for the event being downplayed by our South American interests, the opposite is true. The History of the Church records the Zelph incident as factual, and we consider it likewise to be factual, so long as it is taken in its original context and not including all the changes that have been made since. That the Zelph event took place in North America is merely proof of the claim that we have always stated that all of North and South America is the Land of Promise (though only a small portion of it was the land to which the Jaredites were led and later promised to Lehi and his descendants (2 Nephi 1:5) and thus the portion of the land written about in the Book of Mormon.

According to Joseph Smith, the ancient prophet Onandagus was known from the Rocky Mountains to the Eastern Sea

Since Joseph Smith tells us that Zelph lived at the time of the ancient prophet Onandagus, a name not mentioned in any way in the scriptural record, yet we are told he was well known from the Rocky Mountains to the eastern sea—clearly, Onandagus lived after the demise of the Nephites in 385 AD, and after the Nephite record, which ended in 421 AD, for surely if such a prominent prophet was that well known, he would have been mentioned had he lived during the Nephite era. But neither he nor the name Zelph are included in the record, or are there any references suggesting such individuals in the record.
    Obviously, Onandagus (and Zelph) lived after the demise of the Nephites at Cumorah (Mormon 6:9-13) and after those few Nephites who escaped were hunted down and were all destroyed (Mormon 8:2). In fact, Moroni assures us “the Lamanites have hunted my people, the Nephites, down from city to city and from place to place, even until they are no more; and great has been their fall; yea, great and marvelous is the destruction of my people, the Nephites” (Mormon 8:7, emphasis added).
    To make sure we understand that the Nephites were all killed off, Moroni adds, “I say no more concerning them, for there are none save it be the Lamanites and robbers that do exist upon the face of the land” (Mormon 8:9, emphasis added).
    It is interesting that while North American theorists place a great deal of emphasis on Zelph’s bones being found in Illinois, they fail to mention that he and Onandagus, the prophet of Zelph’s time, are not mentioned in the scriptural record. That, alone, should suggest to even the most skeptical, that if no Nephites remained in the Land of Promise, as both Mormon and Moroni state, that Zelph and Onandagus lived elsewhere at a later time.
    That elsewhere was obviously in North America, in the area of what is now west-central Illinois. In fact, as Apostle John A. Widtsoe remarked regarding the story of Zelph, “This is not of much value in Book of Mormon geographical studies, since Zelph probably dated from a later time when Nephites and Lamanites had been somewhat dispersed and had wandered over the country” (Improvement Era, July 1950, p547).

The Movement of the Nephites and Lamanites via the exceedingly large ships that Hagoth built is recorded in Alma 63:4-7, which sailed northward

So, given that Zelph and Onandagus were not within the area referred to in the Book of Mormon as the land promised to Lehi, how did Zelph and Onandagus get to North America? The answer is plain and simple, and given us by Mormon when he abridged the record of Alma. As he stated: “the first ship did also return, and many more people did enter into it; and they also took much provisions, and set out again to the land northward. And it came to pass that they were never heard of more…and one other ship also did sail forth; and whither she did go we know not” (Alma 63:7-8).
    That one ship was believed to have sunk at sea, is only because they did not return and “were never beard of more,” but another ship also sailed, and nothing more was known of that one either. The fact that “there were many of the Nephites who did enter therein and did sail forth with much provisions, and also many women and children; and they took their course northward” (Alma 63:6, emphasis added) should suggest that when some did not return or were heard from again, that if they survived the voyage, went to “a land which was northward,” and ended up in an area separate from the island upon which the Jaredite kingdom and the Nephite nation occupied and were promised.
    Thus we see how Nephites and Lamanites ended up in lands to the north of the land promised to Lehi, of which there are ample examples of their existence in Central and Mesoamerica, and as Zelph shows, also in North America. In fact, there are the plains over which the Nephites roamed, according to Joseph Smith. Consequently, the Church leaders from Joseph Smith’s time forward until now, whose comments and speculations covered both North and South America, are both factual and consistent with the scriptural record and modern comments regarding the location of Lehi’s descendants at the time of the organization of the Church in 1830.