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3. From Lamanites to Indians
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3. From Lamanites to Indians What says the Book of Mormon in relation to the building up of the New Jerusalem on this continent . . . ? Does not that book say that the Lamanites are to be the principal operators in that important work, and that those who embrace the Gospel from among the Gentiles are to have the privilege of assisting the Lamanites to build up the city called the New Jerusalem? —Orson Pratt, 1855 An occasional whiff of nonsense goes around the Church acclaiming that the Lamanites will build the temple in the New Jerusalem and that Ephraim and others will come to their assistance. This illusion is born of an inordinate love for Father Lehi’s children. . . . The temple in Jackson County will be built by Ephraim, meaning the Church as it is now constituted . . . and it will be to this Ephraim that all the other tribes will come in due course to receive their temple blessings. —Bruce R. McConkie, 1985 The juxtaposition of these two apostolic statements, separated by more than a century, illustrates well the transformation across time in the early Mormons’ understanding of their relation to the American Indians.1 For Orson Pratt and others of the founding generation of Mormonism,the “Lamanites ” (as they called the Indians) were at the forefront of the eschatological drama then unfolding in preparation for the millennium. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, just established among the Gentiles, was to play a supporting role in this drama by bringing to the Lamanites and all other remnants of Israel the lost knowledge of the true Messiah and his gospel . The church was also to assist politically and materially in the gathering of Israel to the divinely designated Zions—Jerusalem in Palestine for the Jews and the New Jerusalem in America for the Lamanites and the rest of scattered Israel. Once the “day of the Gentiles” was thus “fulfilled,” the divine destiny would again belong to God’s chosen Israel, as promised in scripture and sacred history.2 After a century of acting on such an understanding,however,the Mormons had found little Lamanite receptivity to their religion and even less endur- 42 all abraham’s children ing attachment. The understandable consequence was that the “Lamanite” identity of these native peoples came to seem less salient to Mormons than their identity simply as “Indians.” In this respect, the Mormon experience simply replicated that of other American religious denominations (Deloria 1969 and 1992; Tinker 1993). The resistance of the Indians to the continuing efforts of whites to “civilize” them (and to usurp their lands) was often violent .The manifest futility of transforming the continent’s aboriginal peoples, either spiritually or culturally, eventually brought a transformation in white aspirations and policies toward them. Changing Mormon views across the century, then, came to correspond to those of other Americans, even if with some lag in time. Of course, Mormons continued to envision an eventual divine destiny for the Lamanites, but now (like the millennium itself) at a much later and more indefinite time.Meanwhile,the Mormons had acquired a new understanding of themselves as literal Israelites, as explained in the previous chapter, and had taken over the responsibility for building the New Jerusalem.The original romantic scenario for the Lamanites had become, in Bruce McConkie’s words, a “whiff of nonsense,” based on an “inordinate love” for them.3 Religious idealism had thus become a casualty of practical experience—and not for the first time in human history. The convergence between the Mormon and the general American outlook on the Indians was apparent as early as 1845, when the Proclamation of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was issued in Nauvoo laying out LDS plans for proselyting in the world. That proclamation read, in part, that Mormons would “soon be required to devote a portion of their time in instructing the children of the forest; for they must be educated and instructed in all the arts of civil life, as well as in the gospel. They must be clothed, fed, and instructed in the principles and practice of virtue,modesty,temperance,cleanliness,industry,mechanical arts,manners, customs, dress, music, and all other things which are calculated in their nature to refine, purify, exalt, and glorify them as the sons and daughters of the royal house of Israel and of Joseph . . .” (in James Clark 1965–70, 1:256). Brigham Young’s philosophy expressed...