Amaleki was the last to write upon the Smaller Plates. Finding that they were filled with the writings of others who had preceeded him, as well as his own short account, and being childless he gave them to King Benjamin.
King Benjamin was the second of the great and wise prophet-kings who reigned over the Nephites from Zarahemla, their capital city. His father was Mosiah I, who, being warned by the Lord to flee out of the Land of Lehi-Nephi, took those who would go with him, and led them northward where they found the people of Mulek. The two peoples joined, and chose Mosiah to be their king. In course of time, Mosiah died, and Benjamin, Amaleki recorded, "reigneth in his stead." Benjamin was a "just man before the Lord," says Amaleki, "I shall deliver up these plates unto him." (Omni 25)
In one of the many explanatory notes which Mormon inserts in the record he makes, he informs us that after Amaleki had placed the Smaller Plates of Nephi in the possession of King Benjamin, he, that is King Benjamin, put them with the other, or the Larger Plates. The Larger Plates contained what we have called, the secular history of the Nephite people. Thus, the two sets of plates, coming into the hands of one man, did what had not been done since Nephi had made them hundreds of years before. King Benjamin thus became the first to compile the full history of the people upon one set of plates. In this, we see the purposes of God, for together, in them, we will observe that the profane and the religious history combined into one complete account, the development of the Nephite people as one great nation.