No Man Knows My History (Arkosh History)

by Fawn M. Brodie

scholar. For Mitchell was one of the few antiquarians of his day who believed the now established theory that the Indians had originated in eastern Asia* This theory already had a bulky though recondite literature supporting it. But even in the nineteenth century, Mongolian civilization was too remote to most Americans for the idea to be widely accepted. The Yankee knew only the stereotyped Chinese mandarin, almond-eyed, yellowskinned, and dressed in embroidered silks, a figure bearing no resemblance to the copper-colored Indian, buckskin-clad and dirty, who menaced the outposts along the frontier.

And Martin became the perfect believer. “He said he had no more doubt of Smith’s commission than of the divine commission of the apostles,” wrote J. A. Clark, who knew him in these years. “The very fact that Smith was an obscure and illiterate man showed that he must be acting under divine impulse: ‘God had chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things to confound the mighty’ ... he was determined that the book should be published though it consumed all his worldly substance.” * Henceforth he was Joseph’s champion, and his liberal purse became the cornerstone of a new religion.

A blanket flung across a rope divided the room where they worked. On one side sat Joseph staring into his stones, and on the other was Harris writing at a table. Joseph warned his scribe that God’s wrath would strike him down should he dare to examine the plates or look at him while he was translating. Harris never betrayed his trust, though he once admitted that he tried to trick Joseph by substituting an ordinary stone for the seer stone.f

For all his facility in the local debating society, Joseph had yet to learn how to write. Moreover, his sentences had to be compounded correctly, for Harris believed that the translation was automatic, and revision was therefore unthinkable.

But none of Joseph’s secretaries knew'the rudiments of punc- *Gleanings by the Way (Philadelphia, 1842), p. 230. t See the summary of Harris’s sermon in Salt Lake City, September 4, 1870,Historical Record, Vol. VI, p. 216. tuation, and when the manuscript finally went to press there was scarcely a capital letter, comma, or period in the whole. The typesetters broke up the clauses as they saw fit, with the result that of the first two hundred sentences one hundred and forty began with “And.”

Despairingly he realized that it was impossible for him to reproduce the story exactly, and that to redictate it would be to invite devastating comparisons. Harris’s wife taunted him: “If this be a divine communication, the same being who revealed it to you can easily replace it.”

Although he may not have sensed their significance, these, Joseph’s first revelations, marked a turning-point in his life. For they changed the Book of Mormon from what might have been merely an ingenious speculation into a genuinely religious book.

TO THE READER - As many false reports have been circulated respecting the following work, and also many unlawful measures taken by evil designing persons to destroy me, and also the work, I would inform you that I translated, by the gift and power of God, and caused to be written, one hundred and sixteen pages,

Part of the martyr complex seen within the modern Church

Thus about twenty-five thousand words in the Book of Mormon consisted of passages from the Old Testament — chiefly those chapters from Isaiah mentioned in Ethan Smith’sView of the Hebrews — and about two thousand more words were taken from the New Testament.

Before 1816 there had been no Catholics in this area; but the Erie Canal had brought a tremendous influx of Irish labor. Landing penniless in New York City, the “foreigners” had sailed up the Hudson by hundreds to work on the big ditch. Their priests had followed after, and Catholic church spires had risen successively westward — Albany, Geneva, Rochester, Buffalo.

It was to be some years before the nativistic frenzy that led to the burning of nunneries in New York and Boston would reach its peak, but as early as 1828 Josiah Priest, publishing in Albany, was calling the Catholic Church “Babylon the Great.” Rochester, next door to Palmyra, blistered the Roman Church at every opportunity, theRochester Observer calling it “the Beast” and “the mother of abominations.” When Catholic stagecoach- owners refused to abolish Sunday mails at the request of ^Protestant owners, theRochester Album published on February 29, 1828 an obviously counterfeit letter bearing the signature of Pope Leo XII:

“These days were never to be forgotten,” Cowdery later wrote. “To sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven awakened the utmost gratitude of this bosom.” But he admitted on another occasion that he sometimes “had sea- • F. J. Zwierlein:Life and Letters of Bishop McQuaid, prefaced with a History of Catholic Rochester(Louvain, 1925), p. 27. Cf. Book of Mormon, pp. 28, 32. See also Josiah Priest:A View of the Expected Christian Millennium (Albany 1828). sons of skepticism, in which I did seriously wonder whether the prophet and I were men in our sober senses when we would be translating from plates through ‘the Urim and Thummim’ and the plates not be in sight at all.”

David Whitmer, a young farmer from Fayette, New York, and a friend of Cowdery, paid them a visit and watched the process of translation with great wonder. “Joseph Smith,” he said, “would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.”

There is no doubt, however, that Joseph had developed a remarkable facility for dictation. The speed was not “far beyond his natural ability”; it was evidence of his ability. To belittle his creative talent is to do him as great an injustice as to say that he had no learning — a favorite Mormon thesis designed to prove the authenticity of the book.

The book improved in tempo as it was written; there were fewer sermons and more adventures. But the prose style was unfortunate. Joseph’s sentences were loose-jointed, like an earthworm hacked into segments that crawl away alive and whole. Innumerable repetitions bogging down the narrative were chiefly responsible for Mark Twain’s ejaculation that the book was “chloroform in print.” The phrase “and it came to pass” appeared at least two thousand times.

Churches dismissed pastors who would not renounce Masonry, and deacons who would not resign their membership were forbidden the sacrament. Anti-Jackson politicians saw in the rising fever the makings of a political party. Although the Palmyra newspapers maintained a measure of objectivity for a time, this eventually broke down and the local lodge was forced to disband.

The Democrats were appalled to count nineteen anti-Masonic conventions within twelve months and began to wonder if they might lose the election because their beloved Andrew Jackson was a Mason of high rank. Masonry was being denounced everywhere as a threat to free government, a secret cabal insidiously working into the key positions of state in order to regulate the whole machinery of the Republic.

So it happened that Joseph Smith was writing the Book of Mormon in the thick of a political crusade that gave backwoods New York, hitherto politically stagnant and socially declasse, a certain prestige and glory. And he quickly introduced into the book the theme of the Gadianton band, a secret society whose oaths for fraternal protection were bald parallels of Masonic oaths, and whose avowed aim was the overthrow of the democratic Nephite government.

Like the Masons the Gadiantons claimed to derive their secrets from Tubal Cain. Boring from within, they became powerful enough to bring about the murder at different times of four chief judges, democratic rulers of the Nephite people. Strengthened by dissenters from the Nephite church, they lived in' anarchy among the mountains, descending in periodic raids until the government itself was overthrown and the land of liberty ruled by tyranny. In the end Gadianton Masonry became so powerful that it precipitated the war of extermination fought near the hill Cumorah.

Scholars of American literary history have remained persistently uninterested in the Book of Mormon. Their indifference is the more surprising since the book is one of the earliest examples of frontier fiction, the first long Yankee narrative that owes nothing to English literary fashions.

It is easy enough to deride its style, and painstaking research can uncover the sources of all its ideas. But nothing can detract from the fact that many people have found it convincing history. Henry A. Wallace recognized this when he said in 1937: “Of all the American religious books of the nineteenth century, it seems probable that the Book of Mormon was the most powerful. It reached perhaps only one per cent of the people of the United States, but it affected this one per cent so powerfully and lastingly that all the people of the United States have been affected, especially by its contribution to opening up one of our great frontiers.”

Far from being the fruit of an obsession, the Book of Mormon is a useful key to Joseph’s complex and frequently baffling character. For it clearly reveals in him what both orthodox Mormon histories and unfriendly testimony deny him: a measure of learning and a fecund imagination. The Mormon Church has exaggerated the ignorance of its prophet, since the more meager his learning, the more divine must be his book. NonMormons attempting psychiatric analyses have been content to pin a label upon the youth and have ignored his greatest creative achievement because they found it dull. Dull it is, in truth, but not formless, aimless, or absurd. Its structure shows elaborate design, its narrative is spun coherently, and it demonstrates throughout a unity of purpose. Its matter is drawn directly from the American frontier, from the impassioned revivalist sermons, the popular fallacies about Indian origin, and the current political crusades.

For the book can best be explained, not by Joseph’s ignorance nor by his delusions, but by his responsiveness to the provincial opinions of his time.

blow. If his book is monotonous today, it is because the frontier fires are long since dead and the burning questions that the book answered are ashes.

Alexander Campbell, founder of the Disciples of Christ, wrote in the first able review of the Book of Mormon: “This prophet Smith, through his stone spectacles, wrote on the plates of Nephi, in his Book of Mormon, every error and almost every truth discussed in New York for the last ten years. He decided all the great controversies:— infant baptism, ordination, the trinity, regenera- * “The Centennial of Mormonism," American Mercury, Vol. XIX (1930), p. 5. tion, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fasting, penance, church government, religious experience, the call to the ministry, the general resurrection, eternal punishment, who may baptize, and even the question of free masonry, republican government and the rights of man. . . . But he is better skilled in the controversies in New York than in the geography or history of Judea. He makes John baptize in the village of Bethabara and says Jesus was born in Jerusalem.”

The great atheist Korihor was struck dumb for his blasphemy, yet he stated his case with more eloquence than the prophet who called down upon him the wrath of heaven.

beasts. He had the Jaredites bring horses, swine, sheep, cattle, and asses, when it was known even in his own day that Columbus had found the land devoid of these species.f He blundered similarly in having the Nephites produce wheat and barley rather than the indigenous maize and potatoes.

Always an eclectic, Joseph never exhausted any theory he had appropriated.

Since the ancient Hebrew was far more real than the contemporary Mongolian to the rural folk of western New York, where the Old Testament was meat and drink and the gathering of Israel marvelously imminent, Joseph’s instinct in ignoring the Asiatic theory was sound.

Of the 350 names in the book he took more than a hundred directly from the Bible. Over a hundred others were Biblical names with slight changes in spelling or additions of syllables. But since in the Old Testament no names began with the letters F, Q> W, X, or Y, he was careful not to include any in his manuscript.

And since Joseph was an organizer as well as a dreamer, the building of a church was inevitable. Cowdery, however, who had none of Joseph’s audacity, was disturbed because his leader was not even an ordained preacher. They argued the matter of authority and ordination at length, and finally decided to fast for many hours and then go to the woods and pray.

Fast and pray about it until you get the same answer as everyone else.

No one can walk in the woods in May without an exaltation of spirit, and when the two men knelt in prayer Cowdery was overcome with a vision of heaven. “The voice of the Redeemer spake peace to us,” he said, “while the veil was parted and the angel of God came down clothed with glory, and delivered the anxiously looked for message, and the keys of the Gospel of repentance ... as we heard we rejoiced, while his love enkindled our souls, and we were rapt in the vision of the Almighty! Where was room for doubt? Nowhere; uncertainty had fled, doubt had sunk, no more to rise, while fiction and deception had fled forever.”

Joseph also described this vision, but without hyperbole. He wrote simply that the angel was John the Baptist, who had conferred upon them the true Hebraic priesthood of Aaron and had ordered them to baptize each other. Ten years later Cowdery left Joseph Smith in disillusionment, yet he wrote of this season as hallowed and said of the vision: “. . . the angel was John the Baptist, which I doubt not and deny not.”

It is probable that no one was more surprised at this than Joseph Smith. The tractable Cowdery had seen a vision after long fasting and intense prayer, but Mother Whitmer had had a vision on his behalf quite by herself, and Joseph doubtless pondered this miracle in his heart with wonder. Moved by the hospitality showered upon him, he repaid it with the only wealth he had, personal revelations carrying the blessings of heaven.

Patriarchal/Priesthood Blessings.

According to the local press of the time, the three witnesses all told different versions of their experience,! a fact that makes it all the more likely that the men were not conspirators but victims of Joseph’s unconscious but positive talent at hypnosis.

Martin Harris was questioned by a Palmyra lawyer, who asked him pointedly: “Did you see the plates and the engravings upon them with your bodily eyes?” To which he replied: “I did not see them as I do that pencil-case, yet I saw them with the eye of faith; I saw them just as distinctly as I see anything around me — though at the time they were covered with a cloth.” * However, when Harris was a very old man he told one interviewer that he “saw the angel turn the golden leaves over and over” and heard him say: “The book translated from those plates is true and translated correctly.”

David Whitmer told the editor of theReflector that Joseph had led him to an open field, where they found the plates lying on the ground. But in later years Whitmer’s story too was richly embellished. “We saw not only the plates of the Book of Mormon,” he said, “but also the brass plates, the plates of the book of Ether, the plates containing the records of the wickedness and secret combinations of the people of the world. . . . there appeared as it were a table with many records or plates upon it, besides the plates of the Book of Mormon, also the Sword of Laban, the directors — i.e., the ball which Lehi had, and the Interpreters.”

All three witnesses eventually quarreled with Joseph and left his church. At their going he heaped abuse upon them, but none ever denied the reality of his vision, and Cowdery and Harris eventually were rebaptized. Joseph had no fear in vilifying them; he neither expected nor received reprisals. For he had conjured up a vision they would never forget.

Christian WhitmerHiram Page Jacob WhitmerJoseph Smith, Sen. Peter Whitmer, Jr.Hyrum Smith John WhitmerSamuel H. Smith It will be seen that four witnesses were Whitmers and three were members of Joseph’s own family. The eighth witness, Hiram Page, had married a Whitmer daughter. Mark Twain was later to observe: “I could not feel more satisfied and at rest if the entire Whitmer family had testified.”

In later editions the words “Author and Proprietor,” which may merely have followed the copyright form, were changed to “translator.” The same change was made on the book’s title- page, which in the first edition was signed “Joseph Smith, Author and Proprietor.”

This was the first time that a revelation had gone awry. With disarming candor Joseph explained: “Some revelations are of God: some revelations are of man: and some revelations are of the devil. . . . When a man enquires of the Lord concerning a matter, if he is deceived by his own carnal desires, and is in error, he will receive an answer according to his erring heart, but it will not be a revelation from the Lord.”

Gaslighting, gaslighting, gaslighting.

On April 2 the RochesterDaily Advertiser published the first review: BLASPHEMY —BOOK OF MORMON, ALIAS THE GOLDEN BIBLE The Book of Mormon has been placed in our hands. A viler imposition was never practiced. It is an evidence of fraud, blasphemy, and credulity, shocking both to Christians and moralists. The author and proprietor is Joseph Smith, Jr., a fellow who by some hocus pocus acquired such influence over a wealthy farmer of Wayne county that the latter mortgaged his farm for $3,000, which he paid for printing and binding five thousand copies of the blasphemous work.

A fortnight after the publication of the Book of Mormon Joseph Smith announced to his following his official title as “Seer, a Translator, a Prophet, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, and Elder of the Church through the will of God the Father, and the grace of your Lord Jesus Christ.”

The casual reader will be shocked by his deceptions — sometimes clumsy, but even more shocking when they were deft — because Joseph was practicing in the field of religion, where honesty and integrity presumably should count for something.

Joseph put his hand on Martin’s head and answered: ‘Martin, God revealed that to you. Brothers and Sisters, the Saviour has been in your midst. I want you to remember it. He cast a veil over your eyes for you could not endure to look upon Him, you must be fed with milk and honey, not meat.

The Church of Christwas formally established on Tuesday, April 6, 1830, with six members. Within a month the number had jumped to forty. Most of the converts, like Joseph Knight and his son Newel, came from southern New York, not Palmyra, where Joseph was denied even the use of the town meeting hall.

But for every person he baptized, there were a dozen who remembered his early trial for money-digging and believedhimnow to be not only a fraud but also a callous blasphemer. Some of them tore out a dam that his followers had built across a stream to make a pool deep enough for baptisms. After it was defiantly rebuilt and the ceremonies performed, about fifty men surrounded the house where Joseph and his converts took refuge. All day the mob milled around the house. That night a constable appeared at the door with a warrant for Joseph’s arrest on the old charge of disorderly conduct.

Very early the young prophet learned to use persecution as a means of identifying himself with the great martyrs. In writing of his ill-treatment in his history he said: “They spit upon me, pointed their fingers at me, saying, ‘Prophesy, prophesy!’ And thus did they imitate those who crucified the Savior of mankind, not knowing what they did.” The insults magnified the significance of his mission, else they would have been unbearable.

This revelation was meant, not for Cowdery, but for Emma Smith. Racked anew with doubt, chagrined over their poverty, and frightened by the rancor that greeted her husband’s preaching, she had been the first to urge him to go back to the soil. She had seen no plates and heard no voices. She had held out six weeks after the church was organized before she was baptized, and now it was mid-July and she had not been “confirmed” an official member. Her parents’ contempt, her neighbors’ derision, and even the death of her child she had borne with fortitude. But the prospect of living off the dubious and intermittent charity of Joseph’s followers was more than this proud girl could stomach.

A whole month passed, however, before Emma consented to the confirmation ceremony, and the occasion of her acquiescence apparently made a vivid impression on Joseph, for he described the evening in detail in his history almost ten years later: “. . . we prepared some wine of our own making, and held our meeting, consisting only of five, viz., Newel Knight and his wife, myself and my wife, and John Whitmer. We partook together of the Sacrament, after which we confirmed these two sisters into the Church, and spent the evening in a glorious manner. The Spirit of the Lord was poured out upon us, we praised the Lord God, and rejoiced exceedingly.”