I shared presentation at the April 2026 conference called, “Nephites are Iroquois, Lamanites are Algonquian.” You can watch it soon at our subscription site here: watch.bookofmormonevidence.org. 

Below is a basic chart of the many differences between the Iroquois and Algonquian Language groups. The Nephites and Lamanites had similar ancestry through Manasseh and Ephraim, yet the characteristics, lifestyles and beliefs are very different. I show that analysis below. You can come to your own conclusion as you research the information. 

I have researched many sources and I include one of many Here

Algonquian (Lamanites) vs Iroquois (Nephites)

Just as the Book of Mormon tells the story of two main societies at war Nephites vs. Lamanites, there are many instances historically of the same thing as some are called the Iroquois vs. the Algonquian, or the Tallegwi (Iroquois) vs the Leni-Lape (Algonquian), or the Cherokee (Iroquois)vs the Delaware (Algonquian). These tribes seem to always be at war with each other. The names on the list below (Map 1, 2) each are various sub-tribes under various groups of people. Sometimes in history writers have used various names for the same group of people without understanding the differences.

Iroquois or Haudenosaunee/ Alleghewi/Tallegwi/Tsalagi/Cherokee/Allegheny/Onondaga/ Nephite?

“Cherokee, North American Indians of Iroquoian lineage who constituted one of the largest politically integrated tribes at the time of European colonization of the Americas. Their name is derived from a Creek word meaning “people of different speech”; many prefer to be known as Keetoowah or Tsalagi. They are believed to have numbered some 22,500 individuals in 1650, and they controlled approximately 40,000 square miles (100,000 square km) of the Appalachian Mountains in parts of present-day Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and the western parts of what are now North Carolina and South Carolina.

Traditional Cherokee life and culture greatly resembled that of the Creek and other tribes of the Southeast. The Cherokee nation was composed of a confederacy of symbolically red (war) and white (peace) towns. The chiefs of individual red towns were subordinated to a supreme war chief, while the officials of individual white towns were under the supreme peace chief. The peace towns provided sanctuary for wrongdoers; war ceremonies were conducted in red towns.” Source

“Iroquois, any member of the North American Indian tribes speaking a language of the Iroquoian family—notably the Cayuga, Cherokee, Huron, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. The peoples who spoke Iroquoian languages occupied a continuous territory around Lakes Ontario, Huron, and Erie in present-day New York state and Pennsylvania (U.S.) and southern Ontario and Quebec (Canada). That larger group should be differentiated from the Five Nations (later Six Nations) better known as the Iroquois Confederacy (self name Haudenosaunee Confederacy).

As was typical of Northeast Indians before colonization, the Iroquois were semisedentary agriculturists who palisaded their villages in time of need. Each village typically comprised several hundred persons. Iroquois people dwelt in large longhouses made of saplings and sheathed with elm bark, each housing many families. The longhouse family was the basic unit of traditional Iroquois society, which used a nested form of social organization: households (each representing a lineage) were divisions of clans, several clans constituted each moiety, and the two moieties combined to create a tribe.

Groups of men built houses and palisades, fished, hunted, and engaged in military activities. Groups of women produced crops of corn (maize), beans, and squash, gathered wild foods, and prepared all clothing and most other residential goods. After the autumn harvest, family deer-hunting parties ranged far into the forests, returning to their villages at midwinter. Spring runs of fish drew families to nearby streams and lake inlets.

Kinship and locality were the bases for traditional Iroquois political life. Iroquois speakers were fond of meetings, spending considerable time in council. Council attendance was determined by locality, sex, age, and the specific question at hand; each council had its own protocol and devices for gaining consensus, which was the primary mode of decision-making.

The elaborate religious cosmology of the Iroquois was based on an origin tradition in which a woman fell from the sky; other parts of the religious tradition featured deluge and earth-diver motifs, supernatural aggression and cruelty, sorcery, torture, cannibalism, star myths, and journeys to the otherworld. The formal ceremonial cycle consisted of six agricultural festivals featuring long prayers of thanks. There were also rites for sanctioning political activity, such as treaty making.

Warfare was important in Iroquois society, and, for men, self-respect depended upon achieving personal glory in war endeavours. War captives were often enslaved or adopted to replace dead family members. Losses to battle and disease increased the need for captives, who had become a significant population within Iroquois settlements by the late 17th century.” Iroquoian

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Algonquian /Leni-Lape/Delaware/Chippewa/Micmac/Lamanites?

One of the most populous and widespread Native American groups, Algonquian tribes consist of peoples that speak Algonquian languages and historically shared cultural similarities. There are hundreds of original tribes that spoke several related dialects of the language group. Historically, they lived across eastern North America from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains and from northern Canada to the Carolinas.

Before Europeans came into contact, most Algonquian settlements lived by hunting, trapping, and fishing and gathering roots, nuts, wild rice, fruit, and berries; although quite a few supplemented their diet by cultivating corn, beans, and squash. Some tribes also grew tobacco. Because Northern weather patterns made growing food difficult, many Algonquian tribes moved their families from place to place. They traveled on foot, in canoes made of birch bark, and used snowshoes and toboggans in the snow. Their garments, as well as their shelters, known as wigwams, were fashioned with animal skins.

At the time of the first European settlements in North America, Algonquian tribes occupied much of Canada east of the Rocky Mountains; what is now New England, New Jersey, southeastern New York, and Delaware and down the Atlantic Coast through the Upper South; and around the Great Lakes in present-day Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. Many of the tribes were at war with the Iroquois Confederacy.

The Algonquian were among the first North American natives to strike alliances with the French, who adopted Algonquian means of travel and terms like “canoe” and “toboggan.”

The English settlements were often engaged in border wars with their Algonquian neighbors, who, continually pressed farther toward the interior by the advancing white immigration, kept up for a time a futile struggle for the possession of their territory. The eastern tribes, from Maine to the Carolinas, were defeated and their tribal organization was broken up. Some withdrew to Canada, others crossed the mountains into the Ohio Valley, while a few bands were located on reservations by the whites, only to dwindle and ultimately become extinct.

The Abnaki and others who fled into Canada where they settled along the St. Lawrence River under the protection of the French, whose active allies they became in all the subsequent wars with the English down to the fall of the French power in Canada. Those who crossed the Allegheny mountains into the Ohio Valley, together with the Wyandot and the native Algonquian tribes of that region, formed themselves into a loose confederacy, allied first with the French and afterward with the English against the advancing settlements with the declared purpose of preserving the Ohio River as the Indian boundary. General Wayne’s victory in 1794 put an end to the struggle, and at the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 the Indians acknowledged their defeat and made the first cession of land west of the Ohio River.

Shawnee Chief Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, instigated by the British, again aroused the western tribes against the United States a few years later, but the disastrous defeat at Tippecanoe, Indiana in 1811 and the death of their leader broke the spirit of the Indians. In 1815 those who had taken part against the United States during the War of 1812 made peace with the Government; then began the series of treaties by which, within 30 years, most of the Indians of this region ceded their lands and removed west of the Mississippi River.

Algonquian tribes of the New England area include Mohegan, Pequot, Narragansett, Wampanoag, Massachusett, Nipmuc, Pennacook, Abenaki, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy. The Chippewa, Ottawa, Pottawatomie, and a variety of Cree groups lived in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Upper Michigan. In the Midwest lived the Shawnee, Illini, Kickapoo, Menominee, Miami, and Sac and Fox. The Great Plains were called home to the Arapaho, Blackfeet, and Cheyenne. In the mid-and South-Atlantic were the traditional homes of the Powhatan, Lumbee, Nanticoke, Lenape, Munsee, and Mahican peoples. Other Algonquian tribes reside in Canada.” Compiled by Kathy Alexander, updated January 2020. https://www.legendsofamerica.com/algonquian-peoples/

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The Siouan Language 

Completely different from the Algonquian and the Iroquois Language Group are the Siouan and the Muskogean Group.

There is obvious mixture between many of these language groups that are part of the Nephites, Lamanites, Mulekites and even the Jaredites, but that is not the purpose of this article.

 “Siouan or Siouan–Catawban is a language family of North America that is located primarily in the Great Plains, Ohio and Mississippi valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east.

Authors who call the entire family Siouan distinguish the two branches as Western Siouan and Eastern Siouan or as Siouan-proper and Catawban. Others restrict the name “Siouan” to the western branch and use the name Siouan–Catawban for the entire family. Generally, however, the name “Siouan” is used without distinction.” Wikepedia

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Muskogean Language Group 

The Muskogean family consists of six languages that are still spoken: Alabama, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek-Seminole, Koasati, and Mikasuki, as well as the now-extinct Apalachee, Houma, and Hitchiti (the last is generally considered a dialect of Mikasuki). “Seminole” is listed as one of the Muskogean languages in Hardy’s list, but it is generally considered a dialect of Creek rather than a separate language, as she comments.

The major subdivisions of the family have long been controversial, but the following lower-level groups are universally accepted: Choctaw–Chickasaw, Alabama–Koasati, Hitchiti–Mikasuki, and Creek–Seminole.” Wikepedia

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Algonquian (Lamanite) and Iroquois (Nephite) Groups

 

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Alleghewi or Tallegwi

Alleghewi or Tallegwi, have given their name to the Alleghany River and Mountains, and were the mound-builders

Leni-Lape = Delaware = Chippewa = Miqmak = ALGONQUIAN!
Alleghewi = Tallegwi = Tsalagi = Cherokee = Allegheny = Onondaga= IROQUOIS!

“There can be no reasonable doubt that the Alleghewi or Tallegwi, who have given their name to the Alleghany River and Mountains, were the mound-builders. The destiny which ultimately befell the Mound-builders can be inferred from what was known of the fate of the Huron themselves in their final was with the Iroquois. The greater portion of the Huron people were exterminated, and their towns reduced to ashes. Of the survivors many were received and adopted among the conquerors. A few fled to the east and sought protection from France.” Archaeological History of Ohio: The Mound builders and Later Indians pg 438

“It may be considered as beyond dispute that the Cherokees are a branch or off-shoot of the Huron-Iroquois family. Their language proves it. “The striking fact has become evident that the course of the migration of the Huron-Iroquois family has been from eastern Canada, on the Lower St. Lawrence, to the mountains of northern Alabama.” Archaeological history of Ohio : The Mound builders and later Indians / by Gerard Fowke.

The Wabash Indians were primarily the Miami, Weas and Piankashaws, but also included Kickapoos, Mascoutens, and others.[Algonquian/I call Remaining Lamanites]. In that time and place, Native American tribes were smaller political units, and the villages along the Wabash were multi-tribal settlements with no centralized government. The confederacy, then, was a loose alliance of influential village leaders (sometimes called headmen or chiefs). In the 1780s, headmen of the Wabash Confederacy allied themselves with a larger, loose confederacy of Native American leaders in the Ohio Country and Illinois Country known as the Northwestern Confederacy, in order to collectively resist U.S. expansion after the American Revolutionary War. In 1786, a Wyandot [Iroquois/ I call a remaining Nephite] messenger named Scotosh warned Congress that the Wabash, Twightwee, and Miami nations would disrupt U.S. surveyors, and Congress promised reprisals if that occurred. This resistance movement culminated with the Northwest Indian War. The alliance with the Western Confederacy ended in 1792 with the Wabash Confederacy signed a treaty with the United States.” Wikipedia

This quote above could have been in reference to the many battles fought between the Lamanites and Nephites in this general area. (See Map Below) The area described in the article above is the area we would call the middle of the Land Zarahemla and the Land Bountiful with the Land Desolation being north of Bountiful. As a matter of fact, my maps show that the Wabash River could possibly be the division point of the Land Bountiful, east of the Wabash, and the Land Zarahemla west of the Wabash to the Mississippi River and beyond, to the Missouri River.  The area of Lachoneus of the Book of Mormon and many other battles in Alma 2 and Alma 46 are probably likely just south of the Narrow Neck bordering on the land Zarahemla and the Land Bountiful on the Wabash River. That area of Missouri to Illinois, to Indiana to Ohio to Pennsylvania were all the direction of the last great battle of the Book of Mormon ending at Cumorah. Full Blog Here:

Native American Indians Time Periods

The Native American always held God, Christ, or the Great Spirit, as that great “One” God.

These ancient Adena and Hopewell cultures created pipes in the images that they saw and experienced. Ancient cultures respected all that the Great Spirit created, animals, birds, people, and nature. The Adena culture represents approximately the same time frame as the Jaredites (c. 1500 BC – 200 BC) and the Hopewell or Woodland culture (c.200 BC – 400 AD) parallels the time frame of the Nephites.“There is a bowl for the tobacco in their pipes in the top, and there is a small hole at one end to breathe in the smoke. The pipe was made by Native Americans living in what is today the US state of Ohio. These Native Americans were small-scale farmers who built large burial and ceremonial mounds. There were over 200 pipes buried in a collection of mounds known as the ‘Mound City Group’. The pipe was not simply smoked for pleasure but probably had a religious function. A shaman may have smoked it to evoke the otter as a representative of his clan, or as a spirit guide who would then accompany the shaman on a spiritual journey. Tobacco has been smoked in North America for at least 2300 years and pipe smoking still remains an integral part of modern Native American culture. Tobacco was first brought to Europe in the early 1500s, where it quickly spread across Europe, Africa and Asia.” A History of the World BBC

Read more about the reason for the various shapes of the pipes and how they were used. Why were these pipes so important to the Native Americans?

Great Spirit Appears to the Onondagas

“On the authority of some older inhabitants of Onondaga, New York, it is stated that on a ledge of rocks, about a mile south of Jamesville, (Near Syracuse and Oneida Castle) is a place which used to be pointed out by the Indians as a spot where the Great Spirit once came down and sat and gave good advice to the chiefs of Onondagas. That there are the prints of his hands and his feet, left in the rocks, still to be seen. In the former years the Onondagas used annually to offer, at this place, tobacco and pipes, and to burn tobacco and herbs as a sacrifice to the Great Spirit, to conciliate his favor and which was a means of preventing diseases.” Author L. Taylor Hansen He Walked the Americas 

“Native accounts tell of his arrival [Christ] from the direction of the rising sun, after which he set up his priesthood among his followers known as the “Wau-pa-nu” (the spelling phonetic). They were said to have healed the sick and instituted new laws. Blood sacrifice was forbidden and replaced by the use of tobacco, today an important element in all traditional Native American ceremonies. Among many eastern tribes, East Star Man is regarded as the son of Great Spirit, the Creator.” Wayne May, Christ in North America.

The Name of Nephi

“JOSEPHUS SAYS the Egyptian called their Creator ‘Kneph,’ ‘Noub,’ or ‘Nour.’ Reynolds points out that ancient variants of the name of Nephi include Knephi, Kneph, Noub, Nouv, Knouphis, Nebo, Naba, Nechi, Necho and others. These variants are found in many of the American Indian languages.” George Reynolds, Commentary on the Book of Mormon

“NEPHI: This is also an Egyptian name, usually given as Knephi, and transliterated into Hebrew as Nebi. It means ‘prophet’ or one who speaks with God. The great Osiris, one of the Egyptian gods, was called Nephi or Knephi and the city in his honor was n-ph (vowels always had to be supplied). It is the city we know today as Memphis, located across the Nile from Cairo, but it is referred to by its original name of Noph (a variant of Nephi) in the writings of Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah.” Treasures from the Book of Mormon, Volume One By W. Cleon Skousen

The Seat of the Iroquois

“Onondaga was, from the remotest times, the seat of the Iroquois government. Granting credence to the account of their own origin, on the high grounds or falls of the Oswego, (East of Fulton NY See map below) they had not proceeded far up the course of the widely gathered waters of this stream, when a portion of them planted their wigwams in this fertile region. Whatever was the cause of their migrating from their primary council fire, nothing was more natural than that, by pursuing this stream upward, they should separate into independent tribes, and by further tracing out its far spread forks, gradually expand themselves, as they were found by the discoverers and first settlers, over the entire area of western New-York. On reaching the grand junction of Three River Point (Phoenix, NY), a part went up the Seneca river, who subsequently dividing, formed the Senecas and Cayugas. The bands who took the eastern fork, or Oneida river, pushed forward over the Deowainsta, or Rome summit, into the first large stream, flowing east, and became the Mohawks. The central or Onondaga fork was chosen by the portion who, from the hill country (Onondaga) they first located in, took this name; and from them, the Oneidas, pursuing in fact the track of the Mohawks, were an off-shoot…”

“…The idea of a confederation was, it is believed, an old one with this people, for the very oldest traditions speak of something of this kind, among the lake and St. Lawrence tribes of older days. When the present league was formed, on the banks of the Onondaga lake, this central tribe had manifestly greatly increased in strength, and distinguished itself in arms, and feats of hunting and daring against giants and monsters… Most distinguished, however, above all others, east or west, was a leader of great courage, wisdom and address, called Atotarho…”

“A singular tradition may be here added. It is said that the XIIIth Atotarho reigned at Onondaga when America was discovered” (1414 AD) Aboriginal History, Antiquities and General Ethnology of Western New-York by Henry R. Schoolcraft

In speaking about the 13th Atotarho (or Sachem or Chief ) in the Iroquois tradition, we read also in the Book of Mormon. “And whoso should reign in [Nephi’s] stead were called by the people, ‘Second Nephi,’ ‘Third Nephi,’ and so forth…” (Jacob 1:11)

Tadodaho was said to be a warrior and primary chief of the Onondaga people. Depending on the speaker’s dialect and the writer’s orthography, other versions of the name include Adodarhoh, Atartaho, Atotarho, Tatotarho, Thatotarho, and Watatohtahro. In the 1883 work The Iroquois Book of Rites, edited by Horatio Hale, the term Atartaho is said to signify “entangled”. Wikepedia

“The temple registry page shown below is remarkable in that an Onondaga
Nation king was named King Tah-totah, then others that followed: King Tah to-tah 2, King Tah-to-tah 3…then on the next page, King Tah-to-tah 7 through …15, etc. This tradition of naming kings in respect and remembrance of a prior king follows the pattern of the early Nephite colony.” Annotated Book of Mormon David Hocking and Rod Meldrum page 101

Just like Tah-to-tah means Chief or Prophet to the Iroquois,
Nephi meant Chief or Prophet to the Nephites

See my blog here titled, 85 NATIVE AMERICAN CHIEFS-BAPTIZED AT THE ST GEORGE TEMPLE

See my blog here: THE ONANDAGA-JOSEPH SMITH’S INDIANS

Manasseh and Ephraim grew together upon this American continent

“I am Mormon, and a pure descendant of Lehi. I have reason to bless my God and my Savior Jesus Christ, that he brought our fathers out of the land of Jerusalem” 3 Nephi 5:20

“1 Nephi 7:2. Ishmael Is of Ephraim. The Book of Mormon is sometimes referred to as the “stick of Joseph” (Ezekiel 37:19) or the “stick of Ephraim” (D&C 27:5). Lehi was a descendant of Manasseh (see Alma 10:3) and Ishmael was a descendant of Ephraim. The prophecies of Jacob (see Genesis 48:16; 49:22) were fulfilled as Ishmael’s family (Ephraim) came to the American continent with Lehi (Manasseh).

Elder Erastus Snow (1818–88) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles discussed the importance of Ishmael’s lineage: “Whoever has read the Book of Mormon carefully will have learned that the remnants of the house of Joseph dwelt upon the American continent; and that Lehi learned by searching the records of his fathers that were written upon the plates of brass, that he was of the lineage of Manasseh. The Prophet Joseph informed us that the record of Lehi was contained on the 116 pages that were first translated and subsequently stolen, and of which an abridgment is given us in the first Book of Nephi, which is the record of Nephi individually, he himself being of the lineage of Manasseh; but that Ishmael was of the lineage of Ephraim, and that his sons married into Lehi’s family, and Lehi’s sons married Ishmael’s daughters, thus fulfilling the words of Jacob upon Ephraim and Manasseh in the 48th chapter of Genesis, which says: ‘And let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the land.’ Thus these descendants of Manasseh and Ephraim grew together upon this American continent” (in Daniel H. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon [1976], 199). LDS Study Manual

I believe Joseph Smith was a pure descendant of Ephraim who obtained the Stick of Ephraim (D&C 27:5) from Mormon, who was a direct descendant of Lehi. Both sons of Joseph of Egypt  came together is a significant way in regard to that sacred record here in the United States, which is the Promised Land of the Book of Mormon. Elder Perry said, “The United States is the promised land foretold in the Book of Mormon—a place where divine guidance directed inspired men to create the conditions necessary for the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Elder L. Tom Perry Ensign Dec. 2012

Hebrew from Eber to Mulek Joined Joseph of Israel in America

Remember how important the Tribe of Judah was to the Lord which is His lineage through David. The People of Zarahemla (Mulekites) were of Judah as was Ammon of the Book of Mormon who later helped to free King Limhi and his people from the Lamanites and bring them back to Zarahemla. Mosiah 22

Just think, just as Joseph Smith (Ephraim) and Mormon (Lehi) represented the tripe of Judah (Christ), the Nephites who are of Joseph joined up with the people of Zarahemla who are of Judah the brother of Joseph of Israel.

Mulek: “A son of the Old Testament king Zedekiah (about 589 B.C.). The Bible records that all the sons of Zedekiah were slain (2 Kgs. 25:7), but the Book of Mormon clarifies that Mulek survived (Hel. 8:21).

Zarahemla was a descendant of Mulek, Mosiah 25:2.
The people of Mulek joined the Nephites, Mosiah 25:13.
The Lord brought Mulek into the land north, Hel. 6:10.
All of Zedekiah’s sons were slain except Mulek, Hel. 8:21.” LDS Study Guide

Ammon, Descendant of Zarahemla (Hebrew from Eber)

Burial of Mormon

“When serving as Mission President to the Seminole Indians in Central Florida, Murray J. Rawson was teaching a group of the tribe about the Book of Mormon when he was interrupted by their Chief, saying: “We had a war long ago with a light skinned people around the Great Lakes. We conquered them but we had so much respect for their warrior chief that we buried him at the mouth of the Oswego River that is in New York State. We don’t discuss this very much because it is an embarrassment to us. President Rawson then asked why this is an embarrassment, and the Chief replied, “ Our history is written on metal plates and buried in a hill in New York, but we don’t know which hill!” (Talk given to missionaries in training at the MTC, Provo, Utah 1979, by President Murray J. Rawson). This talk has a poor audio but you can find it here: (See Map Above for Mormon’s burial place on Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Oswego River)

Dating and Purpose of the Ancient Pipes

“In the first few years following the creation of the [Smithsonian] Bureau, the debate began to escalate regarding the interpretation of the many bird and animal carvings that were coming out of the mounds. Many artifacts being recovered from the Hopewell and Adena mounds appeared to be birds and mammals that only exist in the southern tropical regions of the world. M. C. Read in Archaeology of Ohio, pointed out: “Of the animal that is supposed to represent the seacow, seven carvings have been found. This inhabitant of tropical waters is not met in the higher latitudes of North America.”¹⁶² Many carvings of birds, and animals from tropical climates such as the manatee, large seal-like animals, elephants and tropical birds like the big-beaked toucan and parrot-like carvings were found, all of which were raising questions as to a possible connections with peoples from these tropical regions.

The Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, published in 1884, included for the first time a brief section entitled, Explorations in Mounds. It discusses work done in West Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Florida, …by 1883, Cyrus Thomas’s Division of Mound Explorations included three full-time assistants and five temporary helpers, and work was under way in Tennessee, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and Missouri. Some 4,100 artifacts had been collected for the National Museum in Washington. They included elegant pipes and pendants of polished stones and such humbler things as hoes, scrapers, diggers, axes, and hammers. Some of the mounds had yielded clear evidence of contact with European civilizations: bits of hammered iron in North Carolina; silver bracelets, brooches, and crosses in Wisconsin, and fragments of copper plate bearing the marks of machinery in Illinois. All this served to back Powell’s original belief that “a few, at least, of the important mounds of the valley of the Mississippi had been constructed and used subsequent to the occupation of the continent by Europeans, and that some at least, of the mound builders were therefore none other than known Indian tribes.¹⁶³

In the early annual reports of the Bureau of Ethnology public documents, one finds that it is not what they included in their reports, but what they have obviously excluded. The discussions and findings that were explored and addressed in the Bureau’s publications followed a prescribed agenda, pointing out that Indian populations and America’s ancient cultures were never highly advanced, with little to no discussions as to their cultural achievements. Lost from these studies were acknowledgements that the Indians were at one time more advanced than first perceived. As evidence in the construction of their communities, fortifications, smelting of metals and their construction of watercrafts capable of navigating the many rivers and lakes of the northeast. Also distinctively missing were the findings that show that these ancient mound-building cultures possessed knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, written language and engineering, as shown in the building of earthwork structures, which were comparable to any achievements of any ancient culture in the world of their day.

So where did the Mound Builders’ knowledge of these skills come from and why was so much of this knowledge not celebrated or passed on to our day and to their descendants?

“The fourth Annual Report contains an essay by Garrick Mallery on the picture-writing of the Indians, in which he discusses the various inscribed tablets found in mounds. Most of these he dismisses as frauds.” Such was the case of the Holy Stones found by David Wyrick of Newark, Ohio,) “…discovered in 1860 a tablet bearing on one side a truculent likeness of Moses with his name in Hebrew.”¹⁶⁴ [Editors note: These so-called hoaxes are also pushed by the Scholars and Intellects that believe in the Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon]. It is interesting to note that these early men of the Bureau of Ethnology described and defined these artifacts as picture-writings of the Indians or frauds without giving any real consideration to the potential of other visitor, to the America’s prior to Columbus.” Lost Civilizations of North America Steve Smoot Chapter 18, Learning from America’s Antiquities

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¹⁶² Read, 48.

¹⁶³ Silverberg, The Mound Builders, 136-137.

¹⁶⁴ Silverberg, 137-138.

Choctaw Traditions – The Council Fire, The Nahullo

The faces of the Choctaw and Chickasaw men of sixty years ago were as smooth as a woman’s, in fact they had no beard. Sometimes there might be seen a few tine hairs (if hairs they might be called) here and there upon the face, but they were few and far between, and extracted with a pair of small tweezers whenever discovered. Oft have I seen a Choctaw warrior standing before a mirror seeking with untiring perseverance and unwearied eyes, as he turned his face at different angles to the glass, if by chance a hair could be found lurking there, which, if discovered, was instantly removed as an unwelcome intruder. Even today, a full blood Choctaw or Chickasaw with a heavy beard is never seen. I have seen a few, here and there, with a little patch of beard upon their chins, but it was thin and short, and with good reasons to suspect that white blood flowed in their veins.

It is a truth but little known among the whites, that the North American Indians of untarnished blood have no hair upon any part of the body except the head. My knowledge of this peculiarity was confined, however, to the Choctaws and Chickasaws alone. But in conversation with an aged Choctaw friend upon this subject, and inquiring” if this peculiarity extended to all Indians, he replied; “To all, I believe. I have been among the Comanche’s, Kiowa’s and other western Indians, and have often seen them bathing, men and women, promiscuously together, in the rivers of their country, and found it was the same with them, their heads alone were adorned with hair.”

In conversation soon after with a Creek friend upon the subject in regard to the full-blood Creeks, he said, “They have no hair whatever upon the body, except that of the head, and the same is the case with all full-bloods that I have seen of other tribes.” It is also the testimony of all the early explorers of this continent.

The Council of Fire
Choctaw Village near the Chefuncte, The women appear to be making dye to color the strips of cane beside them, by François Bernard, 1869
Choctaw Village near the Chefuncte, The women appear to be making dye to color the strips of cane beside them, by François Bernard, 1869
In their ancient councils and great national assemblies, the Choctaws always observed the utmost order arid decorum, which, however, is universally characteristic of the Indians everywhere. In those grave and imposing deliberations of years ago convened at night, all sat on the ground in a circle around a blazing fire called “The Council Fire.” The aged, who from decrepitude had long retired from the scenes of active life, the war-path and the chase, formed the inner circle; the middle aged warriors, the next and the young warriors, the outer circle. The women and children were always excluded from all their national assemblies. The old men, beginning with the oldest patriarch, would then in regular succession state to the attentive audience all that had been told them by their fathers, and what they themselves had learned in the experience of an eventful life the past history of their nation; their vicissitudes and changes; what difficulties they had encountered, and how overcome; their various successes in war and their defeats; the character and kind of enemies whom they had defeated and by whom they had been defeated, the mighty deeds of their renowned chiefs and famous warriors in days past, together with their own achievements both in war and the chase; their nation’s days of prosperity and adversity; in short; all of their traditions and legends handed down to them through: the successive generations of ages past; and when those old seers and patriarchs, oracles of the past, had in their turn gone to dwell with their fathers in the Spirit Land, and their voices were no longer heard in wise counsel, the next oldest occupied the chairs of state, and in turn rehearsed to their young braves the traditions of the past, as related to them by the former sages of their tribe, together with their own knowledge; and thus were handed down through a long line of successive generations, and with much accuracy and truth, the events of their past history; and when we consider the extent to which all Indians cultivated that one faculty, memory, their connections in the history of the past is not so astonishing. I will here relate a little incident (frequently published) in the life of the famous Indian chief, Red Jacket, as an evidence of strength and correctness of the Indian s memory. It is said of Red Jacket, that he never forgot any thing he once learned. On a certain occasion, a dispute arose in a council with his tribe and the whites, concerning the stipulations made and agreed upon in a certain treaty. “You have forgotten,” said the agent, “we have it written on paper.” “The paper then tells a lie,” replied Red Jacket. “I have it written down here,” he added, placing his hand with great dignity on his brow. “This is the book the Great Spirit has given the Indian; it does not lie.” A reference was immediately made to the treaty in question, when, to the astonishment of all present, the document confirmed every word the unlettered warrior and statesman had uttered. There can be little doubt but that a large majority of their traditions are based upon truth; though passing as they have through so long a period of time, it is reasonable to suppose that many errors have crept in.

But one has given his opinion, on page 92 of his “History of the Indian Tribes of North America,” in the following positive and presumptuous assertion, though his apparent ignorance of all the characteristics (well known to the thousands of the White Race who have lived among them and studied them a long life-time) of the North American Indians so plainly manifested throughout his entire work, entitles his assumed learned opinion regarding the truth or untruth of the traditions of the North American Indians, or anything else concerning that people, to but little, if any, credit. He boldly asserts, with a seemingly great indifference as regards its truth, that “Nothing can be more uncertain, and more unworthy, we will not say of credit, but of consideration, than their (the Indians) earlier traditions; and probably there is not a single fact in all their history, supported by satisfactory evidence, which occurred half a century previous to the establishment of the Europeans.” Though all admit that the voices of tradition coming from all Nations even from our own ancestors, the Britons are enshrouded, to a greater or less extent, in dense and dubious fogs, and become more dim and distant as we go further back into the past. Yet that does not necessarily bring even the traditions of the North American Indians under his edict, “Nothing can be more uncertain, and more unworthy, we will not say of credit, but of consideration, than their traditions, “as here comes to our aid modern Oriental Discovery, with records engraved on rocks and stamped on bricks records contemporary with the events, and in all cases independent of the modern authority since the records have been hidden from the eyes of both the believer and disbeliever. Inscriptions are disclosed, in languages now dead, in characters long-forgotten, and to which every key had been apparently lost. Ancient cities and countries, Thebes, Ninevah, Pompeii, Balbee, Babylon, Jerusalem and Egypt rise to testify and confirm the credit of many of the traditions, fables and legends of the Old World. And so also, from the buried past of the New World, hundreds of witnesses have already been summoned, and are still being summoned, that confirm the credit of the traditions and legends of the North American Indians, and to which they pointed back through the long vista of ages past, ere the Indians were known to the White Race, and give the merited contradiction to the assertion that their traditions “merit not even consideration.”

Mammoths & Nahullo Mastodon
As the climate warmed during the last part of the Ice Age, large mammal such as the Mastodon migrated into the Shenandoah Valley. Source: VR image by Richard Thornton
An ancient Choctaw tradition attributes the origin of the prairies along the western banks of the Tombigbee River, to some huge animals (mammoths) that existed there at the advent of their ancestors from the west to Mississippi. Their tradition also states that the Nahullo, (Supernatural) a race of giant people, also inhabited the same country, with whom their forefathers oft came in hostile contact. These mighty animals broke off the low limbs of the trees in eating the leaves, and also gnawed the bark off the trees, which, in the course of time, caused them to wither and die; that they roamed in different bands, which engaged in desperate battles whenever and wherever they met, and thus caused them to rapidly decrease in numbers; and that, in the course of years all had perished but two large males, who, separate and alone, wandered about for several years each confining himself to the solitude of the forest many miles from the other. Finally, in their wanderings they met, and at once engaged in terrible conflict in which one was killed. The survivor, now monarch of the forests, strolled about for a few years wrapped in the solitude of his own reflections and independence then died, and with him the race became extinct.

That the Choctaw traditions of both the mammoth and great men, was based on truth as to their former existence in the southern and western parts of this continent is satisfactorily established by the many mammoth skeletons of both men and beasts and fragments of huge bones that have been, and are continually being found in different parts of the country, and all of whom, according to their tradition were contemporary with the ancient fathers of the present Indian race. It is well known that the ancient existence of those giants and mammoth was wholly unknown to the White Race, until the excavation of their bones proved their former existence; yet were known to the Indians to have existed and so declared; but which was regarded by the whites as only an Indian fable, unworthy of belief or even a second thought. A huge skeleton of one of those ancient animals was found in March 1877, four miles east of the town of Greenville, Hunt County, Texas. I secured a fragment of the skeleton, evidently a part of the femoral bone, which measured twenty-one inches in circumference. A tooth measured three inches in width, five inches in length along the surface of the jawbone and five inches in depth into the jaw, and weighed the seemingly incredible weight of eleven pounds. The teeth proved the monster herbaceous, the animal of which was in a perfect state of preservation. The greater part of the frame crumbled to dust, as soon as exposed to the action of the air.

Here then it had found a burial place, among others of the prehistoric population of the various animals which held possession of this continent before, perhaps, the advent of man, rising up before us like some old granite dome, weather-beaten and darkened by the lapse of ages past. But death came to it, as to its predecessors, whose cemeteries time has opened here and there, and revealed to the scrutiny of the curious, the testimony of vanished age. Many citizens of the immediate neighborhood visited the place of disinterment, and viewed the solitary grave and looked with wondering interest upon this stranger of hoary antiquity arising from his forest tomb where he has so long slept in silence, unknown and unsung; whose history, as that of his mighty race, is wrapped in the eternal silence of the unknown past. Yet, to one who seeks to muse over the mysteries of the unwritten long ago, this fossil tells a story of the mystic days of yore and of the multiplied thousands of years since old Mother Earth commenced to bear and then destroy her children.

Ah, could the records of the ages to which they point be restored, how many doubts and problems would be solved? But they only tantalize us by their near approach and undiminished inscrutableness, while imagination shrinks from the contemplation of the intervening years between. Yet, from those relics of the ages past, an unlimited field for the imagination is open to view, which many thinkers have attempted to explore only to find themselves utterly lost.

“Hupimmi hattak tikba a mintih hushi aiokatula” (our, forefathers came from the west), [Jaredites?] declare the ancient Choctaws through their tradition, and they saw the mighty beasts of the forests, whose tread shook the earth; but our forefathers ancestry came from the northwest beyond the big water.”

“Tis but the tradition of the ignorant Indian a foolish fable,” responded he of the pale-face, of boasted historical attainments when lo! Accident unearths the long hidden monster of traditional record, and the truth of the rejected declaration of the despised Indian is established, and with equal truth establishing the fact that, mid all our boasted ancient pedigree, theirs is more ancient, and perhaps more honorable, reaching back through the vista of pre-historic times to the” dim and hazy regions of ages past and unknown.

In regard to the race of giants that once occupied the now State of Tennessee and mentioned in the tradition of the ancient Choctaws, Mr. H. S. Halbert, an esteemed friend, says in a letter to me, January 22, 1878, “I will give you some facts which modern researches have thrown upon the ancient occupancy of this continent, on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States stretching from the coast of North Carolina up to and through New England. I refer particularly to the seaboard .

“I am satisfied that the Indian race were in occupancy of this seaboard region only about 200 years before the discovery of America in 1492, I give the reasons:

About the year 1000, A. D. (I quote the date from memory, not having the authorities before me) the Northmen discovered America and made some settlements on the New England coast. All this, as you know, is historical. The Northmen there came in contact with a people whom they called Skrellings. Now these Skrellings, from the description given by them were not Indians, but Esquimaux. They were the same kind of people the Northmen had previously met in Greenland and whom they called also Skrellings, or rather Skraellinger. This is plain proof that 500 years before Columbus, the Esquimaux race inhabited the seaboard of New England and not the Indians.

“Again, the Tuscarora Indians, now living in Canada, but formerly from North Carolina, state in their traditions that they came from the west and settled on the North Carolina seaboard about the year A. D. 1300. Their traditions also state that they came in contact with a people of short stature, ignorant of maize and eaters of raw flesh.

“Now to whom does this description apply but to the Esquimaux? Thirdly, relics have been discovered implements of various kinds, along the seaboard exactly similar to those used by the Esquimaux of the present day. All this is plain proof to my mind, that the Esquimaux once inhabited the Atlantic seaboard as far south as North Carolina, and that they were pushed northward by the influx of the incoming Indian tribes; and that- the Indian had not been settled but for comparatively a short period in this seaboard at the time of Columbus discovery. The Mound Builders seemed to have never occupied this seaboard stretching from North Carolina upward. Now as to the Delaware tradition.

“The Delawares, or Leni Lenape as they style themselves in their native tongue, have a tradition that they came from the west. When they came to the Great River, perhaps, somewhere in the latitude of St. Louis, they found a people of tall stature, and living in towns. This people the Delawares called Allegewi. They asked the Allegewi for permission to cross the river, which was granted. The Allegewi, however, seeing the Indians constantly coming from the west in such large numbers, and fearing they would ultimately dispossess them of their country, commenced war upon them. After years of fighting, the Allegewi were defeated and driven out of their country retreating southward, and the Delawares and other tribes took possession of their country. Now these Allegewi are without doubt the same stock of people spoken of in Choctaw tradition as the Nahoolo.”

The word Nahoolo is a corruption of the Choctaw word Nahullo and is now applied to the entire White Race, but anciently it referred to a giant race with which they came in contact when they first crossed the Mississippi river. These giants, says their tradition, as related to the missionaries occupied the northern part of the now States of Mississippi and Alabama and the western part of Tennessee. The true signification of the word Nahullo is a superhuman or super natural being, and the true words for white man are Hattak-tohbi. The Nahullo were of white complexion, according to Choctaw tradition, and were still an existing people at the time of the advent of the Choctaws to Mississippi; that they were a hunting people and also cannibals, who killed and ate the Indians whenever they could capture them, consequently the Nahullo were held in great dread by the Indians and were killed by them whenever an opportunity was presented; by what means they finally became extinct, tradition is silent.

“Chemical analysis of the bones of this giant race in Tennessee and elsewhere,” says Mr. H. S. Halbert, in a letter of January 3rd, 1878, “indicate the ravages of one of the most terrible diseases to which flesh is heir. Bones exhumed from these ancient cemeteries indicate with painful certainty that syphilis was, at least, one cause of the extinct ion of this ancient people. 1 It was long supposed that syphilis was imported into this continent by the European race. That may have been the case, in the historical period, but I have no doubt it prevailed with awful fatality among that ancient people, who -dominated a large portion of this continent before the advent of the Indian race” https://accessgenealogy.com/alabama/choctaw-traditions-council-fire-nahullo.htm