David Whitmer's Testimony

On Tuesday, August 21, 1883, James H. Hart (1825-1906) interviewed Whitmer, then 78, at the elderly gentleman's home in Richmond, Missouri. According to Hart, Whitmer told him, "When we (the three witnesses) were first told to publish our statement, we felt sure the people would not believe it, for the Book told of a people who were refined and dwelt in large cities; but the Lord told us that He would make it known to the people, and the people should discover the ruins of the lost cities and abundant evidence of the truth of what is written in the Book."

If this is an accurate rendition of what the three witnesses came to know from a divine source, it helps locate Book of Mormon lands in ancient America.

1. In 1829, the three witnesses believed the antiquities discovered so far in the Americas evidenced ancient civilizations less refined than the ones described in the Book of Mormon. See the blog article "State Level Society" for context.
2. In 1829, the three witnesses were unaware of any American ruins of ancient cities as large as those described in the Book of Mormon. See the blog article "Mounds" for context.
3. In 1829, the three witnesses believed archaeological remains directly supporting the Book of Mormon record had not yet been discovered in the Americas, but would be forthcoming.

This rules out the North American mound builders as candidates for Book of Mormon peoples. Mounds were well-known in the young United States of America by 1829. It strongly supports a Mesoamerican setting for Book of Mormon lands. The splendor of Maya civilization burst upon the US scene when Stephens and Catherwood published their blockbuster Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1841).

Tens of thousands of mounds were discovered by early settlers homesteading land in what are now the states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and Kentucky. In the 1820 US Census, those 5 states had a combined population of 2,881,121. Ten years later, in the 1830 US Census, those 5 states had grown by 71% and had a combined population of 4,044,914. Many thousands of mounds were explored, surveyed, partially excavated, looted, plowed under, or obliterated by urban sprawl in the decades leading up to 1829. Publications describing and trying to explain the mounds included:

• Cadwallader Colden, History of the Five Nations, 1747
• David Zeisberger, History of the North American Indians, 1770
• Royal American Magazine, Boston, 1775
• James Adair, History of the American Indians, 1775
• Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785
• Benjamin Smith Barton, Observations on Some Parts of Natural History, 1787
• William Bartram, Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, 1791
• Winthrop Sargent, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1799
• James Madison, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1803
• Thaddeus M. Harris, Journal of a Tour into the Territory Northwest of the Allegheny Mountains, 1805
• H.H. Brackenridge, "On the population and tumuli of the aborigines of North America" in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1818
• Caleb Atwater, Archoeologia Americana: Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society, 1820
• John Van Ness Yates and Joseph White Moulton, History of the State of New York Including its Aboriginal and Colonial Annals, 1824

The three witnesses in 1829 had some knowledge of the North American mound builders. They knew that neither the level of cultural attainment nor the size of the urbanizations created by the mound builders satisfied the level and sizes the Book of Mormon requires. That makes David Whitmer a witness for a Book of Mormon location further south than the United States of America.

I thank Warren Aston for bringing this Whitmer reference to my attention.

Kirk Magleby, volunteering as Executive Director, Book of Mormon Central.