Sociological: These two verses are packed with information, and it is tempting to treat them separately. However, doing so would miss a very important point. Note the contrast between Lamanite and Nephite. In addition to the distinction in name, there is a tremendous difference in lifestyle with the Lamanites being more nomadic, or more in the line of what is termed hunter-gatherers, while the Nephite description requires reasonable permanence of place, and assumes some social organization. Above and beyond the specifics, the gulf between Lamanite and Nephite occurs across these disparate lifestyles. While hunting and gathering is a viable lifestyle (particularly in food-rich Mesoamerica) it is diametrically opposed in all facets to the more structured and localized life of the Nephites. Understanding that we all assume that our own customs are good, and that someone else’s different customs are unusual (at best) or terrible (typically), it is quite understandable that Enos characterized the Lamanites in the worst possible of terms When combined with the obvious fact of their enmity, and particularly the wars between them, discussing Lamanites in pejorative terms is only to be expected, and we should read those comments with a grain of salt.
The Lamanite Cultural Catalog
Let’s examine the characteristics Enos paints for the Lamanites:
…they became wild, and ferocious…
This information is a value judgement more than a cultural description. Enos is showing his cultural prejudice here, not a detached description. The evidence for their “wildness” and “ferocity” must be seen in other parts of the description, namely:
…feeding upon beasts of prey…And many of them did eat nothing save it was raw meat…
The terminology “beasts of prey” suggests that they Lamanites were hunting animals rather than keeping them. No one ever refers to domesticated animals as “beasts of prey.” Enos is therefore describing people who hunt wild animals for a living rather than tend to domesticated or semi-domesticated flocks. His phrase should not be seen as a condemnation of hunting in all cases, however, because he tells us that he has his great experience with the Lord while he was hunting. Rather, this should be seen as a mode of living to be contrasted to the description of the Nephites who have: “…flocks of herds, and flocks of all manner of cattle of every kind, and goats, and wild goats…” Enos is therefore contrasting the way in which the two peoples obtain their meat. The Lamanites are “wild and ferocious” because the hunt and eat animals that are also “wild and ferocious” (beasts of prey). As noted previously, this is a cultural contrast, with Enos obviously preferring his own way of life.
The eating of raw meat may or may not have occurred, but it is certainly significant in the wild/cultured opposition that Enos is creating. Of course the wild men would eat raw meat like wild animals. Whether or not it was correct, the purpose of the statement is to underline the wildness of the Lamanites, and their diametric opposition to the cultured life of the Nephite.
…dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness…
These are descriptive of a nomadic people. If the Lamanites are pursuing a hunter-gatherer strategy for survival, then the idea of dwelling in tents and “wandering about in the wilderness” would be accurate descriptions of the necessity of that lifestyle. Certainly Enos seems the terms pejoratively, but the fact is that they are simply aspects of a strategy for survival on the land. If the Lamanites had elected not to settle into towns, then the nomadic way of life is the only way to cover sufficient ground to provide food for the group.
The problem with this description is that it also stands in direct contrast to some of the later descriptions of Lamanites, where they do have cities, and even more importantly, large numbers in the army. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle is suited to smaller groups, not larger. The greater food needs of the larger community require that the community be engaged in careful tending of the food, such as farming or the apparently organized “flocks of herds” Enos speaks about. To the degree that we begin to see larger and larger numbers in the Lamanite army, we may be confident that those armies are supported by towns and farms, and not by the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
It would appear likely that just as the Lamanites have traditions about the Nephites that allow them to justify their aggression against the Nephites, so the Nephites had traditions about the Lamanites that allowed the Lamanites to be seen in an unfavorable light. No doubt the original Lamanites would have qualified for all of these descriptions, but it is likely that by the time of Enos, many of those that were being called Lamanites were equally as well grounded as the Nephites. The Mesoamerican model also tells us that groups of town dwellers and those that might have a more nomadic lifestyle might live in the same gross area, and so we may assume that there enough of the people who could be termed Lamanites that continued to fit Enos’ descriptions that the cultural descriptions could be continued, in spite of the increasing urbanization of the greater Lamanite population (parallel to the urbanization of the Nephites).
…full of idolatry…
Enos does not give us any examples, but certainly we can understand that Enos’ idea of idolatry would be close enough to the Jewish precedent to let us understand that the religious practices of the Lamanites had been altered to the point of accepting idols of gods. Unless this is also an exaggeration, the Lamanites would have begun accepting idols into their religious practices.
Even though the practice is expressly forbidden in the Torah, Israel for years had had problems expunging the influence of the foreign gods from their midst. Laman and Lemuel were not gospel scholars (evidenced by their exchanges with Nephi) and it is very understandable that they would have been susceptible to the inclusion of foreign gods. In the context of a Mesoamerican setting, we know that there were multiple gods worshipped, with multiple representations. If the Lamanites were accepting these modes of native American worship, then the accusation of idolatry is easily understandable, and need not be explained as an exaggeration, but rather a correct portrayal of the Lamanite practice.
…filthiness…
The filthiness of the Lamanites is a concept that fits into both the pejorative comparisons and the requirements of a hunter-gatherer life. With the need to travel far, and without set facilities, the nomadic Lamanite groups could be seen as filthy by the more urbanized Nephites.
…with a short skin girdle about their loins and their heads shaven…
This is surely descriptive of at least some of the Lamanites. It is most likely descriptive of the earliest groups who would have stayed along the coastal regions of the Guatemalan coast. Sorenson suggests:
“What can we tell about living conditions in the land of first inheritance? The coastal plain where the landing of Lehi would have occurred was uncomfortably hot and humid. That climate favored rapid crop growth, but the weather would be unpleasant for colonizers. The Nephites soon fled up to the land of Nephi, where the elevation permitted living in greater comfort. As Nephi tells the story, the Lamanites down in the hot lowlands were nomadic hunters, bloodthirsty, near naked, and lazy (2 Nephi 5:24; Enos 1:20). The circumstances of life in that environment could account for some of those characteristics. Many centuries later the Spaniards spoke in like terms of natives in the same area. The Tomas Medel manuscript, dating about A.D. 1550, just a generation after the first Spaniards arrived in the area, reported that the Indian men on the Pacific coast of Guatemala ”spent their entire lives as naked as when they were born.“ That practice may have seemed a sensible response to the oppressive climate. In the late seventeenth century Catholic priest Fuentes y Guzman contrasted the ”lassitude and laziness“ of the same lowlanders with the energy of the highland inhabitants. As for getting a living, the tangle of forest and swamp along the coast itself may have been too hard for the Lamanite newcomers to farm effectively, since they wouldn’t immediately get the knack of cultivation in that locale. (They, or their fathers, might not even have been farmers in Palestine.) It may have been economically smart for them to hunt and gather the abundant natural food from the estuaries, while again the damp heat would make their lack of energy understandable.” (Sorenson, John L. An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. Provo, FARMS. 1985, p. 140).
We should remember, however, that this is a description based upon the early experience of the Nephites and Lamanites, which may become a codified description. We find similar references to minimal clothing for the Lamanites in Mosiah 10:8, Alma 3:5, 43:20, and 49:6. However, each of these citations places the clothing in a military context, and probably says more about battle attire than daily attire.
To the extent that we find larger Lamanite populations later in the Book of Mormon, we may assume that those urban Lamanites would have had the same taste for fine clothes as the Nephites of Jacob’s time.
…a blood-thirsty people…their skill was in the bow, and in the cimeter, and the ax…
The first weapon listed is the bow. The bow is rather controversial in Mesoamerica, as there is no proof positive of the existence of the bow in early Nephite times. However, recent research has shed more light on the subject which is treated at length by William Hamblin. He concludes:
" In summary, there is no inscriptional evidence relating to the use of bows in Mesoamerica. However, there are limited artistic representations of the use of the bow by at least the second century A.D. Furthermore, there are numerous stone projectile points that can be classified as arrowheads, and the current trend in scholarship is to reclassify such projectile points as arrowheads, thereby dating the use of the bow by Mesoamericans to at least the first millennium It is also possible that some Mesoamericans used arrows with nonstone projectile points. Thus there is no reason to maintain that the mention of the bow in the Book of Mormon is incompatible with the archaeological evidence from Mesoamerica.
I should emphasize one last point. The fact that the bow was known in Mesoamerica does not mean that all cultures in that region would have used the weapon or would have used it extensively in warfare. As Christian Feest puts it: “Since the bow undoubtedly represents the highest development of arms technology in the tribal world, it seems strange that it is not always employed as a weapon of war. In Polynesia bows and arrows were restricted to hunting; in parts of Melanesia the spear replaced the bow, and even the civilizations of Mexico and Peru preferred the spearthrower. Since there are no technical reasons for this, it is likely that the bow was less suited to the particular war tactics of these regions.” One could add that although the bow was known throughout Africa, some African tribes preferred not to use it in warfare.“ (Hamlin, William J. ”The Bow and Arrow in the Book of Mormon." In: Warfare in the Book of Mormon. Provo, FARMS, p. 386.)
The next weapon discussed is the cimeter, of which the more modern spelling is scimitar. In modern literature the reference is always to the sickle sword associated with the Middle East. In Mesoamerica no such metal sickle swords are known. However, in the Book of Mormon we are also dealing with a conflation of vocabularies that can make some identifications imprecise. We have two possibilities of vocabulary disjuncture, the Nephties themselves who would have brought Old World vocabulary to New World artifacts (including plants, animals, and weapons) and we have a similar disjuncture with Joseph Smith as a translator, who might also bring a more modern vocabulary to bear on cultural items for which there was no precise identification available to him. Such appears to the be case with the scimitar, a name for a Mesoamerican weapon for which the curved shape gives it the linguistic connection to the Old World or modern term.
Hamlin and Merrill discuss several aspects of the use of cimeter in the Book of Mormon. Of particular interest is the likely corresponding Mesoamerican weapon:
"One of the earliest Mesoamerican candidates for the Book of Mormon scimitar is found in a Late Pre-Classic sculpture that shows a warrior holding in one hand a macuahuitl and in the other a strange curved weapon (see fig. 3, p. 339 in chapter 15). It is impossible to say for certain what this item is supposed to represent. However, a similar weapon is known in India—the haladi. Note that this warrior holds both a macuahuitl sword and a curved weapon just as Zerahemnah is described in the Book of Mormon as being armed with.
In our opinion, however, the Book of Mormon cimeter should probably be identified with a curved, axlike weapon held by many of the figures in the Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza. It appears to be a curved piece of wood in the end of which was inserted obsidian or flint blades (see fig. 1). Although in appearance it is somewhat like an ax, it is structurally different, in that an ax has a straight shaft of wood with a blade mounted on the shaft, while this weapon has a curved shaft of wood with a blade mounted at the tip of the wood. (Hamblin, William J. and A. Brent Merrill “Notes on the Cimeter (Scimitar) in the Book of Mormon.” In: Warfare in the Book of Mormon. Provo, FARMS, p. 361).
The ax is much less controversial, as several types of weapons easily fit the general concept of weapon designed for striking.
The Nephite Cultural Catalog
…till the land, and raise all manner of grain, and of fruit…
The first important aspect of the Nephite cultural catalog is the raising of foodstuffs. They raise all manner of grain and fruit. These are tended farms, and the depiction is of a settled life rather than a nomadic one. Once a society finds that sedentary agriculture provides the best strategy for their survival, the ties to the land get stronger, and
“wandering about in the wilderness” (as accused of the Lamanites) becomes and unacceptable way of life as the fields require attention.
…flocks of herds, and flocks of all manner of cattle of every kind, and goats, and wild goats, and also many horses…
There are two aspects of this catalog of animals. The first is the general import of the statement itself, which is to describe the tending of animals as opposed to the hunting of “beasts of prey.” In that light, Enos is making a direct contrast to the strategies for obtaining meat, with hunting contrasted to husbandry.
The second aspect is the particular animals mentioned.
As noted in the discussion of 2 Nephi 5:11, the Book of Mormon usage of “flocks” becomes problematic, and particularly in Enos where we find “flocks of herds.” It appears that there has been some type of linguistic shift for Enos that can conflate two terms that we would use for separate collective descriptions of animals in English. In the very old animal terminology inheritance of English, specific collectives are attached to specific types of animals (such as a pride of lions). In English, “flocks” refer to fowls, and “herds” are typically reserved for cattle, though the extension to other types of four legged domesticated animals understandable. In Enos, however, our English can make no sense of “flocks of herds” precisely because it implies two very different types of animals in the same phrase.
In short, “flocks of herds” is a mistake, and the question is why. We may presume Joseph Smith knew nothing of animal husbandry only to our folly, for it would be difficult to exist in an agricultural area such as those of Joseph’s youth and not understand the standard vocabulary of both agriculture and husbandry. The much more likely scenario is that we have alterations of terms used to describe the domesticated or semi-domesticated collectives of Mesoamerican animals.
John L. Sorenson discusses the concepts of domestication attached to “flocks” and “herds” without noting Enos’ unusual usage. His comments are instructive for the possible linguistic disjunctures that might account for the Book of Mormon naming animals not known to be present in Mesoamerica:
“The late Dennis Puleston of the University of Minnesota concluded a few years ago that the Maya ate the flesh of ”semi-domesticated animals" far more often than had been thought. I have accumulated additional evidence to support Puleston’s point. Considering all we now know about animal use in Mesoamerican cultures, it is fair to state that most of what the Book of Mormon says about animals is plausible. Some of the book’s statements remain hard to square with present knowledge, but the picture is considerably more acceptable to scientists than a few years ago.
The terms flocks and herds are easy to account for. Deer and pigs (peccary) could have fallen under those terms. Fowls in flocks were common. The turkey (Meleagris sp. and Agriocharis sp.) was, after all, an American native. Other domesticated, tamed, or at least caged fowls included the Muscovy duck, Tinamou duck, quail, “pheasant,” “partridge,” “dove,” curassow, cotinga, roseate spoonbill, macaw, chachalaca, and parrot. The term flocks could have included such smaller animals much used by native peoples in Mesoamerica as hares, rabbits, and the paca and agouti (both rodents the size of small pigs).
Dogs are mentioned at five places in the Book of Mormon, but nothing is said of their use. Two types (perhaps two species) were common in Mesoamerica. The large, white, humped mastiff (Nahuatl itzcuintepotzotli) was the creature whose noisy descendants plague Mexican villages today. A smaller, hairless sort (Nahuatl xoloitzcuintli) was fattened and eaten as a delicacy. The Spaniards relished the flesh of these animals at the time of the conquest, although they would have been offended, as most of us would be, at being offered the flesh of the bigger dog. Perhaps Nephite “flocks” included fattened dogs." (Sorenson, John L. An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. FARMS, 1985. P. 292-3).
What about the horse? Again, Sorenson notes:
“I recently summarized evidence suggesting that the issue is not settled. Actual horse bones have been found in a number of archaeological sites on the Yucatan Peninsula, in one case with artifacts six feet beneath the surface under circumstances that rule out their coming from Spanish horses. Still, other large animals might have functioned or looked enough like a horse that one of them was what was referred to by horse. A prehispanic figure modeled on the cover of an incense burner from Poptun, Guatemala, shows a man sitting on the back of a deer holding its ears or horns, and a stone monument dating to around A.D. 700 represents a woman astride the neck of a deer, grasping its horns. Then there is another figurine of a person riding an animal, this one from central Mexico. Possibly, then, the deer served as a sort of ”horse" for riding. (That was a practice in Siberia until recently, so the idea is not as odd as moderns might think. Besides, in the Quiche languages of highland Guatemala we have expressions like keh, deer or horse, keheh, mount or ride, and so on.) (Sorenson, John L. An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. FARMS, 1985. P. 295).
The linguistic evidence from the Quiche is particularly interesting, and as keh for “deer” can be reconstructed to proto-Quichean, placing the term firmly pre-Hispanic (Campbell, Lyle. Quichean Linguistic Prehistory. University of California Press, Berkeley. 1977, p. 48). Thus the Quiche, when faced with an animal without a name in their language, transferred their word for deer onto the animal we know as a horse. Of course Sorenson’s suggestion about keheh for “mount or ride” may or may not refer to the riding of deer, likely to have been a ritual/shamanistic function, as this term could easily be derived from regular grammatical rules after the association of keh with “horse.” In spite of this, however, the linguistic practice of using a familiar name for an unfamiliar animal is amply attested, and specifically in this example.
Enos 1:22
22 And there were exceedingly many prophets among us. And the people were a stiffnecked people, hard to understand.
The modern LDS model of church presumes a single prophet at the head of a unified organization. This is not the model of the Old Testament, nor certainly of the early Nephite society. During Nephi’s lifetime the community had both Nephi and Jacob as “prophets,” although only Jacob was officially in the priestly capacity, with Nephi in the more secular capacity (though such distinctions are two absolute for ancient societies). Enos has declared that after his epiphany he preaches to the people, and prophesies (verse 19) to the people. Thus Enos is a prophet. Yet during Enos’ lifetime he speaks of “exceedingly many prophets.” This is very certainly the Old World model of the individualized prophetic calling, where the call is to social and religious repentance, rather than to a single person to lead the community of religious adherents.
In spite of the general turnaround of the people after Jacob’s experience with Sherem, there was still a tendency for them to leave the way of the Lord. If the proposed scenario is correct in that much of the social unrest was a direct result of trading interactions with other powerful non-Nephite communities, we may presume that such contact continued, and that the pressures to conform to the greater Mesoamerican ideology/culture-set continued to be great. Thus the people would have continued to be a “stiffnecked people.” The “hard to understand” phrase means that the Nephites had a hard time understanding the Lord’s way, not that it was difficult to comprehend what a Nephite said.