Our live FIRM Foundation Expo featuring the 31st International Book of Mormon Evidence Conference will be here very soon. We are looking forward to your participation. This event will have over 75 inspirational speakers on Thurs, Fri, and Sat. April 6, 7, 8, 2023. Our first speaker will be at 9 am and our last speaker will be from 7-8 pm each night. The ticket registration link is here.
Event Title: FIRM Foundation Expo, featuring the 31st International Book of Mormon Evidence Conference Hall 4 on the north end of the complex.
Dates: Thurs, Fri, and Sat. April 6, 7, 8, 2023. From 9 am to 8 pm each day.
Location: Mountain America Expo Center (MAEC) 9575 S. State Street Sandy, UT 84070As part of this 3-day event you will see the unveiling of a 5-year project by Professional Artist Michael Bedard. He has created a masterpiece representing the 85 Native America Chiefs who were baptized for the dead, at the St George Temple on Aug. 29, 1877, just 8 days after the Founding Fathers had appeared to Wilford Woodruff, in the same temple.
Who found the names of those Chiefs?
Why was the rest of their temple work not completed in 1877?
Who were the 85 Chiefs and what did they contribute to our Nation?
Has their Temple work now been completed? By whom?
The story about how the names were first found is told for the first time in the article below titled, “My Lamanite Story” by Robert Goodwin.
MY LAMANITE STORY by Robert A. Goodwin
“Several years ago sometime in the first decade after the year 2000 I embarked on an unassuming endeavor that I didn’t recognize at the time would have an impact on promises made in Holy writ. The Book of Mormon front page states that it was written ‘to the Lamanites’ and further down the page are these words, ‘Which is to show unto the remnant of the House of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever’.
Also in Alma 37:7 ‘And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls’.
Many times in this imperfect earthly setting, stumbling blocks are thrown up to thwart His purposes as noted in the early history of the church and especially to the 4 missionaries that were sent to the Lamanites. Recorded in the 8th chapter of the Autobiography of Parley P Pratt is the graphic example of their success in being welcomed by the Delaware Indians and invited back only to be stopped by federal Indian agents and denied any further access to teach them.
Several other attempts were made over the years, some partially successful, but much of the effort was hampered by earthly opposition. This history is documented in Church archives and can be found at ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
This relates to what I am about to tell you. Like a few other times, I traveled to Salt Lake one afternoon to visit the Family History Library adjacent to Temple Square to do research. As I progressed on my Jerusha Parks line, it led me to look in the early St. George microfilmed temple records, housed in a separate room. As I was showing my temple recommend to enter, it came to my mind that I could possibly find the record of the Founders’ baptisms in St. George that took place in the year the temple was dedicated 1877. I switched my efforts and started to look for them and was successful.
As I turned the handle on the Microfilm reader, there they were-the names of George Washington and his family, many deceased Presidents and the signers of the Declaration of
Independence. I felt motivated to take advantage of this moment and make a xerox copy of these pages. As I was doing so, I was impressed by “historical curiosity” to examine surrounding pages and I was surprised to find a few pages further on these names that jumped out at me- Squanto, Massasoit, Samoset, Powhatan, Joseph Brant, Tecumseh, a whole page of Indian names that had been baptized 8 days after the Founders. I was at the copy machine and quickly copied that page also. I did not recognize the names at the
bottom of the page that would later become extremely important, names of Onondaga Iroquois sachems.
The story moves forward to the summer of 2014. I was involved in doing Patriot Camps dressed as Thomas Jefferson and involved somewhat in giving History presentations since 2011. I had attended Rod Meldrum’s Book of Mormon conferences and saw the relationship of what he was doing as it related to the covenant of America as the land of promise and what I was involved in. I had a desire to participate with his conferences. So I called him and he invited me to visit him in his home. I decided to give him a copy of the Founders’ St George baptism record and for good measure the page of the Indians. I purposely didn’t tell him about the page of Indians to see his reaction when he saw it. I wasn’t disappointed. He was astounded and stammered his response excitedly, “Where did you get this?, How did this happen? Did they appear also?,” he was grasping for words. Theses Indians had all been baptized on the same day, 8 days after the signers, he realized.
After I told him where the archive was, he emphatically stated, “I’ve got to know more”, and slowly he regained his composure. We parted with mutual awareness that something very significant had just occurred.
When the October 2014 Book of Mormon Evidence conference approached, he called me and invited me pointedly to come in my Jefferson wardrobe and be on stage with him and roam around telling my Jefferson stories during the day. When it was his hour to speak, he started by saying, “I want to thank Thomas Jefferson, er, I mean, Bob Goodwin for bringing to my attention what I am about to show you” and I waved my tri-corn colonial hat from the middle of the 700 folks there in the Scera theatre.
Then he showed on the jumbo screen what he had discovered. Two weeks after our visit he had gone to the Library and found the microfilm with my page of Indians and three more pages, mainly of Iroquois nation chiefs or sachems, 72 Iroquois along with the 13 other that I had recognized, 85 in all that had been baptized all on the same day, August 29, 1877, 8 days after the 166 Founding men and women on August 21 who had appeared to Wilford Woodruff.
We still were searching for how this came about for the Indians. Fast forward to Thursday, April 9, 2015, when the next Book of Mormon Evidence conference was held. I debated whether to attend since I was doing my scheduled Thursday missionary work digitizing books. I was interested in hearing Cheyenne Sean Liitlebear again whose lecture was scheduled at 4:00, but our work schedule didn’t end until 4:30. So I decided that I wouldn’t
go unless we ran out of books ahead of time. Well, we ran out of books at 3:30, so I jumped in the car, made it to UVU McKay Fieldhouse, ran up the steps, signed in and found where Sean was speaking and sat down at 4:00. But I soon realized that it was the next speaker that I was there to hear. As Sean was finishing I looked at the program to decide what class I would go to next and what happened next was unexpected.
Rod Meldrum personally introduced this somewhat demure red-haired lady very conscientiously to make her feel comfortable to tell her story. She was Delores Kahkonen, from St George, a full blood Upper Cayuga Bear clan Iroquois Indian that had grown up with her grandmother in Canada whose home was almost considered to be an Iroquois museum. She told of attending a lecture of Mr. Meldrum’s in St George one or two months earlier where he showed the overhead pictures of these 85 Indians baptisms, and she reacted similar to how Rod had reacted the previous summer. She told how rude she was, she jumped up right in the middle of his sentence and pointed emphatically at the pictures and shouted, “those are my people, those are MY PEOPLE.”
This was all new to her also. After the lecture, she went up to Rod and apologized and asked for a copy of the Iroquois baptisms. Her life was redirected. She went to work finding all she could, was disappointed in not finding the names in FamilySearch, so she said she called and got an experienced worker on the phone to help her look further. She spelled one name, no success, then changed one letter in the name and he found it,
Baptized 29 Aug 1877 St George,
Confirmed 29 August 1877,
St George, Initiatory and Endowment-nothing, they were BLANK.
They were both bewildered and she said they were both in tears. They couldn’t understand why this was. They checked a few more from Rod’s paper with the same results, the rest of the temple work had not been completed and their hearts dropped further. “Why didn’t they finish the work of MY people?!” she asked emphatically.
Then she found out what had taken place, The baptisms were done in the morning of August 29 and at 4:05pm that afternoon Apostle Woodruff received a telegram from Salt Lake giving the sad news of the death of Brigham Young just moments before. As a result, Br. Woodruff sent all the workers home, arranged with fellow Apostle Erastus Snow to travel with dispatch to attend to duties in Salt Lake.
Upon further looking, it was found that Elder Woodruff did not return to St. George for 5 months, not until Jan. 22, the following year. During those 5 months the temple workers went back to work helping locals perform work for their names and these Indians had
been forgotten temporarily for 138 years until this new discovery and spiritual adventure for me and Rod and Delores transpired.
When I called Sister Kahkonen later, she informed me that she had gotten permission to do the necessary follow up research and perform the necessary temple ordinances. And conveniently there were men in a St. George Lamanite branch to help her by standing as proxies. But she had remembered that someone had informed Mr. Meldrum and realized that it was me, so she said on the phone, “Oh, you are the one that started this, I saved an endowment for you, but on one condition, you have to come to the St. George temple to do it, this is their temple,” she said. I was deeply overcome and my knees shook for a moment and I had to sit down. I recovered and emotionally consented by saying “I readily understand and accept your reason, this is my temple also.”
Since I lived in Panaca, Nevada, this was the temple in which I received my live endowment accompanied by my mother as I was preparing to embark on my mission.
We later arranged to come on May 15, which happened to be Aaronic Priesthood Restoration day, to rendezvous with her. I then had a very sacred spiritual confirmation of the meaning of this when I went to the computer and looked again on Family Search and saw in the ordinance records of some of these -Initiatory- 6 April 2015, St. George, just three days before she made the story public on April 9. The spirit engulfed me with heaven’s approval for what I had initiated unbeknown to myself at the time but realized I had been an instrument of sharing in the fulfillment of the promise in Alma 37:7 It brought a quiet but meaningful smile when I reread the words, ‘By very small Means…’ after 138 years.
Anne and I drove to St. George and we visited friends for dinner and games until about 8 o’clock when I called Sister Kahkonen (her surname was her Finnish husband’s name). She informed me that there was a problem, her husband had fallen and hurt his back severely so they couldn’t join us to go through the temple, I remember holding my breath then she reassured me that she would bring the card to the temple the next morning, I gave a quiet
sigh of relief and hung up, then called her back and said, “under the circumstances, why don’t we come to your home to make it more convenient, and she quickly said; “Oh, that would be nice”.
When we got there, she was waiting on her curb in front of her home. She handed me the card that evening of May 15, the anniversary of the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood. As she handed me the card for Abraham Schuyler, I asked her two questions. 1) When did these sachems live? Her response was, “Oh, the Tahtotahs date back to the beginnings of the Iroquois Confederacy, 14th or 12th century or earlier, and How did the people of St George know their names?” She had some evidence but wasn’t entirely sure and until she was entirely sure, she wasn’t telling anyone. I have since done some homework and now have a 65 slide power point presentation about the special Iroquois heritage.
At the time Wilford Woodruff obtained the names of these sachems, this man’s work hadn’t been done. It was discovered some time later that Abraham Schuyler’s work had been accomplished in Logan in 1942. But there is a special significance of the St. George Temple that gives special reason for us coming to St. George. Abraham and the 72-74 others needed the Priesthood to be called as described in D&C 138:30 ‘But behold, from among the righteous, he organized his forces and appointed messengers, clothed with power and authority [the Priesthood], and commissioned them to go forth, and carry the light of the gospel to them that were in darkness [the Book of Mormon Lamanite people and their posterity], even to all the spirits of men; and thus was the gospel preached to the dead. Verse 31 And the chosen messengers (these great sachems if they have accepted along with many many others that have already been called) went forth to declare the acceptable day of the Lord and to proclaim liberty to the captives who were bound.
What an honor to have been given the Temple card on May 15 to do the endowment for Br. Schuyler, an honorary sachem from the Oneidas. His people joined forces with the Founders to fight for liberty in the promised land. His story of crossing the great waters to ask for authority from Queen Anne to receive the words of Christ among his people, is remarkably related to the story of John the Baptist crossing the great divide to bestow authority to enable being reborn by the waters of baptism into God’s presence.
It is my prayer that these great Iroquois sachems, the patriarchs of their people will accept the offering of Rod, and especially Delores (as she appropriately reminded us, ‘these are my people’) and myself and accept the Priesthood authority and go forth as missionaries and visit the Zelph’s and Captain Onandagus, Canonicus, who rescued Roger Williams, Manti Noah, the Cayuga Sachem, Little Beard, the Seneca Chief. and to all those whose
bones are laid from Tennessee, through Ohio, and Michigan and New York and the Mississippi Valley and beyond who are crying to have the shackles removed and receive the blessed promise of the Savior “Let the prisoners go free.” They are not cast off forever.
I bear my testimony that this was part of God’s plan. As Daniel Webster defined ‘History is-God’s Providence in human affairs’. His Son has conquered all our enemies, including all earthly obstacles, and he proclaims, “Oh death, where is thy sting”. He is our Savior and King. I so testify in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen
The more complete story of the man I had the privilege of sitting as proxy for on May 16, 2015, Abraham Davidsee Schuyler, an honorary Oneida Sachem, can be found in Family Search Memories under PID- LTYL-J85.
With remembrance of his legacy, I carefully included Pictures, the first three entries in Stories, My Lamanite Story in Documents, and my Audio testimony (I had to correct one date error in the written notes of these contributed files). Please honor the memory of Abraham by examining ALL of these entries.” Robert Goodwin (Color and emphasis added)
I wrote a blog a few days ago about the 85 Chiefs and an amazing song written in 1836 by WW Phelps titled “O, Stop and tell me Redman.” This song will be sung by Professional Artist Nathan Osmond, Tatia Godsey with flute by Betty Red Ant Lafontaine at our Conference Thurs April 6,th 2023 at the Mountain America Center. Come join us here:
You can read my blog about that song here: https://bookofmormonevidence.org/o-stop-and-tell-me-red-man-by-ww-phelps/
