These statements, typical of the Mormons of northeastern Ohio, flowed as easily in western Missouri, as members of the new faith began to settle in the area after Joseph Smith’s 1831 tour. Paulina E. Phelps, whose family was among the first recruits, remembered Joseph Smith, Jr., blessing her when visiting the area the following year. Told she would go to the Rocky Mountains in her lifetime, the young girl became alarmed. “I did not know at the time what the term ‘Rocky Mountains’ meant,” she later said, “but I supposed it to be something connected with the Indians.” Her fear of the Native American froze the event in her mind.45
Some of the Mormon Indian interest in Missouri lay in the public domain, The Church’s periodical, the Evening and the Morning Star, printed numerous pieces about the Native Americans, provided the text of Smith’s several revelations regarding them, and rhapsodized how these pieces fit into the latter-day prophetic mosaic. “What beauty to see prophecies fulfilled so exactly,” wrote editor W. W. Phelps. In his eyes, the government’s Indian resettlement policy was a “marvelous,” now-at-hand reality of the old predictions that the Indians were to be gathered. Phelps believed federal agents were acting as “nursing fathers unto. ..[their Indian) children,” as Book of Mormon prophecy had foretold. From all indication, the times of the gentiles were “short” and the promises to Jacob imminent. Something “great and good” lay in store for the benighted Lamanite, Phelps believed, as the red man’s last days certainly would be his “best.”46
[Editors note: This joy that fell on the Saints was soon lost. At first the Saints thought our government was going to take care of the Native Americans, by rounding them up and giving them their own land to flourish without the White Man’s molestation. Soon the Saints realized the Government under Andrew Jackson would be taking land from the Natives and treating them as second class citizens.]
To his steady drum roll about the Indian and his destiny, Phelps added his view of the land west of the Missouri settlements, which he called the “Far West.” Wasn’t this, the editor wondered, the land of the covenant, where the Book of Mormon Jaredites and Nephites had once roamed before meeting their destruction? While the world would never prize the area because of its want of timber and mill seats, Deity had a different view. This land was Zion, he argued, the land of Joseph (see map below), the receptacle of “the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills.” In a few sentences, Phelps wove together some of the images that Joseph Smith had been using when speaking of the western Zion and the soon-to-be redeemed Indian 47
Understandably, none of this talk set well with the Missourians. Already uneasy over the several thousand potentially hostile natives on their frontier, many angry over their forced relocation, old-line Missourians saw Phelps’s articles and the underlying Book of Mormon prophecies on which they were based as provocative and menacing. Weren’t the Mormons anxious to ally themselves with these dangerous red men? The reaction of the Missourians was not without cause. These hardy settlers of the border fully understood themselves to be counted among the imperiled “gentiles” spoken of in the Mormon revelations.
45 Affidavit, 31 July 1902, LOS Church Archives For this source and several others dealing with the Mormon fixation with the West, I am indebted to Lewis Clark Christian, “A Study of Mormon Knowledge of the American Far West Prior to the Exodus,” (MA. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1972), 65; and Ronald K Esplin, “‘A Place Prepared’ Joseph, Brigham and the Quest for Promised Refuge,”Journal of Mormon History 9 (1982) 85-111
46 Evening and the Morning Star 1 (December 1832): (54), (January 1833): 162]; 2 (June 1833)101; W. 1- Phelps to Oliver Cowdery, 13 November 1834, Letter III, Latter Day Saint Messenger and Advocate 1 (1 December 1834): 33-34
47 Evening and the Morning Star 1 (October 1832): 137] Phelps was citing Deuteronomy 3313-17 The editor later would help select Mormon settlement sites in Daviess County and may have had a role in choosing the name of the region’s most prominent town, Far West, thus giving another expression to his fascination with the western region.
SEEKING THE “REMNANT”: THE NATIVE AMERICAN DURING THE JOSEPH SMITH PERIOD Ronald W. Walker
0 stop and tell me, Red Man,
Who are ye? why you roam?
And how you get your living?
Have you no God;— no home?
-W. W. Phelps 1
RECENT SCHOLARS HAVE largely set aside the Native American as an
important force in early Restoration history, 1830-44. After telling the
familiar story of Oliver Cowdery’s 1830-31 Lamanite mission, most writers
either grow quiet on the topic or say that Joseph Smith and other Mormon
leaders became preoccupied with more pressing things. But the evidence
supports another view. First-generation leaders, while not always having
the freedom to interact with the Indian as they wished, consistently sought
the Native American “remnant” of Jacob. This argument, more than revising
a familiar historical tenet, provides a window through which to view early Mormonism. It shows the millennial spirit of the movement’s first years,
helps to explain the intensity of early anti-Mormonism, and reveals one of
the reasons why the Mormon hegira took the path it did. Finally, it suggests
that the Book of Mormon, which lay at the heart of the original disciples’
view of the Indian, was more than a theoretical handbook. It actually affected how Mormons thought and what they did.2
There is no mistaking the importance of the Indian during the earliest
part of Joseph Smith’s ministry. His first and greatest revelation was the
Book of Mormon, which was not just a record of the “Lamanite” or Native
American people, but a highly unusual manifesto of their destiny. Historians may find plenty of parallels in the Indian doctrines of various seventeenth-, eighteenth- , and nineteenth-century preachers and philanthropists,3 but Joseph Smith taught something so unique for its time as to be inflammatory.
The Indians, descendants of the Old Testament prophet Israel, would in
the last days once more be joined into the ancient Israelite covenant.
Redeemed to the Christian fold and blossoming “like a rose,”4 the Indian
“remnant” would play a fearful role in the final end of things. The Book of
Mormon taught not simply Indian redemption but Indian cataclysm.
Notes:
1- W. W. Phelps, “The Red Man,” in W. W. Phelps to Oliver Cowdery, 6 November 1834, Letter No. 2, Latter Day Saints Messenger and Advocate 1 (1 December 1834): 34. The poem later became the lyrics for Hymn no. 63 in A Collection of Sacred Hymns, for the Church of the Latter Day Saints, selected by Emma Smith (Kirtland, Ohio: F. G. Williams & Co., 1835), 83-84.
2- Examples of the literature minimizing the role of the Indians on early Mormon events include Lawrence G. Coates, “A History of Indian Education by the Mormons, 1830-1900” (Ed.D. diss., Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, 1969), 55-62; Keith Parry, “Joseph Smith and the Clash of Sacred Cultures,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 18 (Winter 1985):
67-74; G. St. John Stott, “New Jerusalem Abandoned: The Failure to Carry Mormonism to the Delaware,” Journal of American Studies 21 (April 1987): 79-82; and Floyd A. O’Neil, “The Mormons, the Indians, and George Washington Bean,” in Churchmen and Western Indians, 1820-1920, edited by Clyde A. Milner II and Floyd A. O’Neil (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1985), 77-107. Other scholars have found the Book of Mormon’s influence limited on early happenings: Richard Bushman, “The Book of Mormon in Early Mormon History,” in New Views of Mormon History: A Collection of Essays in Honor of Leonard J. Arrington, edited by Davis Bitton and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987),
3- 18 and Grant Underwood, “Book of Mormon Usage in Early LDS Theology,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 17 (Autumn 1984): 35-74. 3 Dan Vogel, Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon: Religious Solutions from Columbus to Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1986) treats many of these non-Mormon views of the Native American.
4- Book of Commandments LIL23-26 (LDS Doctrine and Covenants [hereafter cited as D&C] 49:24-28); Joseph Smith, Jr., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, edited by B. H. Roberts, 7 vols., 2nd ed. rev. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1951 printing), 1:189.
A “Place Prepared” in the Rockies
More than a dozen of his followers later said that Smith spoke similar things to them during the Church’s stay in Nauvoo, Illinois. But the Mormon leader did more than predict future events. Perhaps for the first time since his 1831 trip to Missouri, Smith had the chance to meet Native 
Americans first hand. One of the most important of these encounters involved an Oneida Indian, who traveled several hundred miles to Illinois with his wife and daughter to visit the Mormons. The native styled himself as “an Interpreter of six tribes,” whom he confidently predicted would “receive the work.” He himself did, being “joyfully” baptized in May 1840. The unnamed Indian may have been Lewis Dana and his wife Mary Gont. During the next decade, the two were at the heart of the Mormons’ Lamanite effort.83
“Less than a year after founding Nauvoo, the Prophet sent missionaries among the Indians west of the Missouri River. Immediately after the Prophet’s death, the Council of the Twelve confirmed that this action involved settlement as well as missionary work. They dispatched missionaries, including Jonathan Dunham (who had been sent previously by the Prophet among the western tribes in 1839–40), to “fill Joseph’s original measures” by “proceeding from tribe to tribe, to unite the Lamanites and find a home for the Saints.” Even in 1840, Dunham understood; he spoke of great things “in the west, in fulfillment of prophecy,” including “a place of safety preparing … away towards the Rocky Mountains.”7 Source
Joseph, Brigham, and the Quest for Promised Refuge
Early Mormon expectations for the West were clearly related to Book of Mormon prophecies about the redemption and future power of the Lamanites, or American Indians. This connection is explicit in the 1832 The Evening and the Morning Star article. And in 1834 E. D. Howe characterized the belief that the Native Americans “in a very few years, will be converted to Mormonism” and take possession of their ancient inheritance as a leading article of Mormon faith. [10] Brigham Young believed that from the first time Joseph Smith stood on the banks of the Missouri River looking westward across Indian country, he desired to go further west among the American Indians but “there was a watch placed upon him continually to see that he had no communication” with them. [11] Government regulations enforced by Indian agents forbade dwelling among the American Indians and attempted to regulate all intercourse with them, and Missourians were suspicious very early on of supposed Mormon meddling with the Native Americans. Whatever Joseph Smith’s hopes and plans for the American Indians and the West in the 1830s, he could not implement them from Missouri. Only when he had access to the American Indians through Iowa in 1839–40 could he and did he begin implementation. “A Place Prepared”: Joseph, Brigham, and the Quest for Promised Refuge in the West Ronald K. Esplin Source
10 Indians who Joined the Early Church.
The rumor was that Mormons had “ten hundred thousand” Indian allies ready to avenge Joseph’s death,2 but these were not Mormon Indians.3 There were not many more than 10 Indians who had joined the early church. Penina Cotton (Cherokee)4, William McCary (Choctaw)5, Anthony Navarre (Potawatomi)6, William Clute (Seneca)7, Solomon Zundel (Delaware)8, Moses Otis, Edward Whiteseye, Peter Cooper9, and, by some accounts, William McLellin (Cherokee).10 Among the Mormon Indians, a few served as guides for the westward movement. They were: Lewis Dana (Oneida)11, George Herring (Mohawk), and his brother Joseph Herring, called Nigeajasha. These three men were baptized, ordained, and intimately involved with Mormon insiders. Source
SEEKING THE “REMNANT”: THE NATIVE AMERICAN DURING THE JOSEPH SMITH PERIOD by Ronald W Walker
Six weeks later, Smith’s interest in the Native Americans had not cooled. He and his Council of Fifty met with eleven Native Americans. “We had a very pleasant and impressive interview,” secretary William Clayton wrote without providing detail.114 In another session the Council of Fifty discussed Wight’s southwest proposal. A Mormon colony led by Wight should be placed near the “Cordilleras,” or Rocky Mountains, at the headwaters of the Red and Colorado Rivers, Smith concluded, perhaps somewhere in the expansive American Southwest. After the meeting, Smith met privately with Wight and again confirmed the mission. His instructions on these two occasions, Wight recalled, were designed to bring the Lamanites the “knowledge of the truth, [thus] paving the way for the redemption of Zion and building the Temple in Jackson County.” After Smith’s final charge, given with “great zeal,” the two men shook hands and said good-bye. The event carried a special poignancy and power. It was Wight’s last meeting with his Prophet.115
This last Council of Fifty meeting may have been the event that another apostle, Amasa Lyman, later referred to. Joseph had given the leading elders a “frank relation” about their Lamanite mission and said “don’t stop” till it was accomplished.116 Such advice was difficult for even Smith to follow. With events in Nauvoo pressing hard upon him and his campaign for the American presidency requiring the labor of the Church’s elders, Smith postponed the western expedition until fall.117
The halt did not end Smith’s Native American activity. There were a few last events that gave his career a symmetry. He had begun preoccupied by the Lamanite and interested in the West, and his final days had similar themes. Five days before his death, Smith and his closest associates passed over the Mississippi River. They thought they might find refuge from their troubles in the Rocky Mountains, they explained. 118 Then they returned to Nauvoo, where Smith, dressed in his Nauvoo Legion uniform and standing on a “small house frame,” spoke to his followers before going to fateful Carthage. Only reminiscent accounts remain, but their reports appear faithful to themes that had compelled Smith during his life. You will yet be called upon to go the “strongholds of the Rocky Mountains,” Smith predicted. “You will gather the Red Man.. . from their scattered and dispersed situation to become the strong arm of Jehovah.” At that time, he continued, the Lamanite would become “a strong bulwark of protection from your foes.”119
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