Promised Land

This monument at the Big Horn Battlefield in Montana is to commemorate the Native American way of life that was uprooted and destroyed by European peoples immigrating from Europe in the 1800’s. The scattering of the Native Americans were foretold by their ancient forefathers – they would be “scattered before the Gentiles and smitten.” Yet, their Fathers assured them that “the Lord God will not suffer that the Gentiles will utterly destroy the mixture of [their] seed…(1 Nephi 13, Book of Mormon)

As foretold, native American people in the United State, Canada and Mexico were “smitten” by disease and war before being restricted to private reservations and forced to assimilate to the strictures of their conquerors.

Over the last century, students of the Book of Mormon placed Nephite events in Central and South America – even though Joseph Smith, the translator of the Book of Mormon placed Nephite events in many of his personal letters and private musings as being areas such as Ohio and New York. In the last 20 years, there has been a growing consensus that the Book of Mormon was played out in North America.