Continued from the previous post regarding the answer to Mormon’s clear and precise descriptions. As mentioned in the previous post, Mormon makes it clear how the “Small Neck” (Alma 22:32), the “Narrow Neck” (Alma 63:5), the Narrow Pass” (Mormon 2:29), and “Narrow Passage” (Mormon 3:5), are connected in relation to one another, and how there is only one place in the entire Land of Promise where they could be located. The problem for theorists in finding this location, which lies in how they approach Mormon’s information.
Left: Knowing that Lehi left Jerusalem does not tell us which direction he took—a second point (location of Bountiful) is required in order to map out his path (along the Red Sea and then inland across the desert
As an example, Jonathan Neville states of the Book of Mormon that a geography can be worked out based on two locations identified in revelation. The rest of the geography can then be constructed from those two known points. Even knowing one firm location (Jerusalem) had made the examination of Lehi’s trail from Jerusalem to Bountiful much more secure than most New World geographies” (Jonathan Edward Neville, Moroni’s America: The North American Setting for The Book Of Mormon, Digital Legend Press & Publishing, Salt Lake City, 2015; Warren P. Aston and Michaela Knoth Aston, In the Footsteps of Lehi: New Evidence for Lehi’s Journey across Arabia to Bountiful, Deseret Book, Salt Lake City, 1994).
Knowing one firm location does not tell you in which direction Lehi took to reach Bountiful—from Jerusalem a choice to where a ship could be obtained or built could be just about anywhere along a north, west, or south direction.
The trouble is, Neville has hindsight on his side—where Lehi traveled is now well known because of all the research done and results printed. However, if we go back before the Hiltons and the others who first wrote about it, we would have a choice from Jerusalem, since a ship could have set sail from Tyre in the north, from the coast west of Jerusalem, or from the Egyptian coast to the south. Without the research, none would have known in what direction Lehi traveled. After all, Hugh Nibley in his seminal work Lehi in the Desert, the World of the Jaredites, has one direction of travel eastward, moving across central Asia to the Pacific Ocean.
The shallow Grand Kankokee Marsh near South Bend
Another problem is Neville’s usage of the Black Swamp or the Grand Kankokee Marsh as separate points and locations. Knowing either one is of little value, unless one knows both locations. For instance, the Black Swamp’s ancient perimeter is fairly well known, running from Lake Erie area, from Sandusky and Toledo westward toward Ft.Wayne. However, that still leaves about 120 miles to Lake Michigan.
Here is where a second point is needed. That is, the ancient wetlands called the Grand Kankokee Marsh, which was a marshland surrounding and running along the path of the Kankokee River, is less known as to its size, which modern estimates vary considerably.
The glacial lobes that receded, leaving several lakes and significant marshlands from what is now Lake Erie to Lake Michigan
Both of these areas were initially part of the great glacial coverage of what is now the northern United States. As the Michigan, Saginaw, and Huron-Erie lobes retreated northward, numerous lakes, large and small, such as Tippecanoe, Wawasee, Dewart, Webster, Big Chapman and Syracuse lakes, all different sized depressions left by the retreating and evaporating glaciers that filled with water between lakes Michigan and Erie.
A major area was where water congregated along both banks of what is now the Kankokee River, and spread out, running from near South Bend in northwest Indiana, southwestward to the Illinois state line. This shallow marshland was from flooding of the Kankokee River, creating a large area of standing water that developed into a marshland many centuries ago—but today is a lush area with parks and many sightseeing and trails through the area.
The Grand Kankokee Marsh a little southeast of Lake Michigan that runs south westward along the Kankokee River
Even in its ancient form, the Kankokee Marsh was a shallow marshland, dominated by herbaceous plants, such as grasses, reeds, and sedges. It was and is a type of wetland, an area of land where water covers ground for long periods of time, but shallow enough for the herbaceous plants (which have no woody stem above the water line) to grow. Unlike the Great Black Swamp, which was dominated by trees, the Grand Kankokee Marsh was treeless and with grasses and other low-growing plants.
This entire area between lakes Michigan and Erie, was at one time covered by glaciers, and their retreat northward, claimed to be about 12,000 years ago, left vast depressions in the ground that filled with water as the glaciers melted in their withdrawal. For three decades, Richard Foster Flint, Yale University's eminent authority on the glacial ages, was a Quaternary geologist, when the concept of glacial ages in Earth history had become firmly established and the basic framework of a global stratigraphy of multiple Pleistocene glaciation broadly outlined.
He was a leading scholar that had a long and distinguished career providing an authoritative global synthesis of Quaternary processes and events. In addition, he was well versed in Stratigraphy, as well as the fields of Palynology, Marine Geochemistry, Climatology, Archaeology, and Vertebrate Paleontology.
For three decades, Flint spent numerous field seasons studying the glaciation of the northern states, from the Pacific Northwest Okanogan Highlands, Scablands, and the adjacent Columbia Plateau in Washington, across the norther states to the marine terraces along the eastern seaboard and the glaciation in Labrador and Newfoundland, and even to the large Pleistocene glaciers of Greenland. One of the results of his work was a glacial map of North America, published in 1945, and an impressively detailed Glacial Map of the United States East of the Rocky Mountains.
Catastrophic floods were common place anciently, rather than slow, millions-of-years-changes to the water tables
Unconvinced by arguments for catastrophic flooding, which had been published by J. Harlen Bretz, who received his Ph.D in geology, regarding his earliest papers on the Channeled Scabland, Flint took a more cautioned approach. He became a participant in the “flood controversy” that persisted for the next three decades until the carefully documented regional evidence for sudden release of the ice-dammed waters of Lake Missoula across eastern Washington led to wide spread acceptance of Bretz’s ideas.
In the remaining years before the war, Flint’s interest shifted to problems of marine terraces along the eastern seaboard of the United States and to problems of glaciation in Labrador and Newfoundland. During this period, he also participated as Senior Scientist in the Boyd Arctic Expedition to Northeast Greenland where he was able to see at first hand a modern analogue of the large Pleistocene glaciers that would continue to occupy his attention in the coming years.
Marshes develop along the edges of rivers and lakes. The Grand Kankokee Marsh developed along the Kankokee River from near South Bend all the way to the Illinois border
It was an understanding of this geology, coupled with the hydrology of the area, that showed the origin of the Great Black Swamp and the Grand Kankokee Marsh. These findings provided an understanding of the shallow depth of these swampy marches, were they were and their boundaries—it also showed where the water was located, and the patches of soggy earth that was higher than the ancient water line, providing a difficult, but not impossible passage through the entire area, especially at certain times of the year (Richard Foster Flint, Glacial and Pleistocene Geology, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1947, pp131–133).
(See the next post regarding the answer to Mormon’s clear and precise descriptions)
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