White Skin Nephites and Dark Skin Lamanites
"…they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white…" (2 Nephi 5:21) 588-570 BC
"…we, [the white skin Nephites], are in bondage to the Lamanites…." (Mosiah 7:15) About 121 BC
"...the [white skin], Nephites were driven and slaughtered with an exceedingly great slaughter; their women and their children were again sacrificed unto idols." (Mormon 4:21) 375-380 AD
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When Christopher Columbus and the early explorers came to the Americas they saw no white-skin people.
Why does the Book of Mormon claim that there were white skin Nephites?
And even a stranger claim in the Book of Mormon is the claims that at one time, about 121 BC, these these white-skin Nephites were slaves to the dark-skin Lamanites.
In the 1800's A.D., that was a perposterous claim.
Evidence of a pre-Columbus, light and dark skinned people living together in the Western Hemisphere is as follows:
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<< Hubert Howe Bancroft, was an American Historian
"...there are numerous vague traditions of settlements of nations of white men, who lived apart from the other of the country, and were possessed of an advanced civilization." (The Native Races, Vol. V, 1886, The works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Origin of the Americans p. 24)
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The Prophet Mormon, in the Book of Mormon recorded that "...the [white skin] Nephites were driven and slaughtered...there women and their children were again sacrificed unto idols." (Mormon 4:21) 364 A.D. to 375 AD
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún recorded the following: "And then they hunted out men of fair hair and white faces; and they sacrificed them to the sun." (Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España, 10:184)
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In the Mesoamerica area of Teotihuacán, Ixtlilxóchitl records that the ancestors of these native Mesoamerican Toltec Indians were white.
“These kings were high of stature and white and bearded like the Spaniards…” (Ixtlilxóchitl, cited in Hunter and Ferguson, idem. p. 240)
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<< Pre-Columbian Codex from Mexico Valley
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A picture taken February 1925, at Chichen Itza, Yucatan Peninsula, before the excavations and restoration of what was later called the Temple of the Warriors.
<< Temple of the Warriors, Chichen Itza, Mexico
101 years after the Book of Mormon was published to the World. Morris Charlot and Morris in 1931 made an illustration and study of the Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza Yucatan showing light & dark skinned people.
Note: No early explorer, Spanish Conquistador, Historian, Archaeologist, Catholic priest, or anyone else, from Christopher Columbus on down until 1931, ever recorded seeing or hearing anything in reference to a light-skin early race of people in the pre-Columbus Americas that were slaves or servants to a dark-skin race of people anywhere in the Americas.
Note:
Up until 1931, the only knowledge avaiiable in the United States of a light-skin people as slaves to a dark-skin people in ancient pre-Columbus America, was only to be found in the previously published Book of Mormon.
<< "Temple of the Warriors" Chichen Itza, Mexico
<< "Temple of the Warriors" Chichen Itza, Mexico
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<< Charles (Carlos) Frey in 1947 made the discovery of murals depicting dark and light-colored Indians painted on the interior walls of a temple in the southern jungles of Mexico. In 1947 Charles (Carlos) Frey, from Chicago, decided to get completely away from civilization so he went in the jungles of the Usumacinta, a river basin near the southern borders of Mexico. He joined a group of Maya the Lacandon Indians. Later after living with them for years noticing that the men from time to time left without him. He persuaded them to take him to where they were going. He was led by these Maya to ‘Bonampak’ or the “Temple of the Painted Walls.” (Archaeology and the Book of Mormon p. 135)
<< Ancient Aztec Manuscript, Codex Nuttall p. 69
<< Light & Dark Skin painting, Pre-Columbus, Quiché, Guatemala
The drawings of light and dark-skin people at war with each other and the white-skin people being slaves are painted on buildings that have been dated at a post Book of Mormon time period.
Some of these paintings may represent the descendants of Nephites who escaped the total destruction of a Nephite nation at war with the Book of Mormon Lamanite people. The Lamanites who were fighting against and enslaving some of the descendents of the Nephite people. Thus, the evidence indicates the fact that some of the descendants of the Nephites did escape the final Nephite and Lamanite wars.
There is also a possibility that these people painted historical events that did not take place in their time period. But they may have had stories, books or information about events that actually took place back to a Book of Mormon time period.
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"Dr. P. De Roo, in his Book History of America before Columbus, summarizes the vast amount of evidence of the wide distribution of tribes of white Indians throughout the Americas at the time of the coming of the Europeans.
The Uskihs, the Puruays, the Parias, the Chons, etc., were as white as the Spaniards, and fifty such tribes were found in South America. Along the whole of the north west coast Meares, Marchand, La Peruse, Eixon, and Maurelle have observed populations which, judging from some of their descriptions, we would take to be of pure white ancestry."
"Women as fair as English milkmaids were found in Central America." (Milton R. Hunter, Archaeology and the Book of Mormon)
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<< Chronicler, Cieza de León, records that "long before the rise of the Incas, the Colloans attacked and exterminated a white, bearded race on an island in Lake Titicaca." (Secret Cities of Old South America, pp. 88, 150.)
Note: "...the [White skinned], Nephites were driven and slaughtered with an exceedingly great slaughter; their women and their children were again sacrificed unto idols." (Mormon 4:21) 375-380 AD
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<< An ancient Mayan wall-painting in the temple at Chitzen-Itza, first published by Morris, Charlot and Morris in 1931, Vol. II, plate 146, who released this color reproduction of these pre-Columbian murals, and wrote in the caption that the mural;
"depict a series of relating episodes concerning a fair-skinned people with flowing yellow hair, defeated in battle and subsequently sacrificed by conventionally equipped black-skinned warriors.' The priests or artists who decorated this important Maya temple long before the arrival of Columbus, were obviously well acquainted with the fact that there existed people with race traits different from their own. [It] cannot help but bring to mind legends...throughout the American continent concerning the fair skin and golden hair...race." (Morris, Charlot and Morris in 1931, Vol. II, plate 146)
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<< White Skin Descendants of the Nephites.
(White skin native inhabitants living in the Darien Peninsula, Picture taken by Jack West.)
Jack West discovered that there were about 2,000 of these white skin native people living in the Darien Peninsula area. It seems obvious that some of the Nephites escaped the last great Nephite/ Lamanite war.
Note: A link to a 3:59 min segment of Jack Wests film strip. White Lamanites in Darien Peninsula
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Warning: This picture-link contains a disturbing Pre-Columbus grave.
A Pervian Inca with blonde hair << A Peruvian Inca mummy (14th-15th century) with natural blond hair, characteristic of the fair, red and light-brown hair found among many South American cultures in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Northern Chile. The fine hair, skin color and height are typically Caucasian.
