Culture: When Amulek describes Alma’s blessing upon his relatives, he suggests an interesting pattern of kin connections. First, he differentiates between a list of separate relatives from the generic “all my kindred.” Structurally, the sentence progresses from named categories to a generalization (“all my kindred”) that is the largest and most inclusive category. The interjection “yea” appears to extend the specifics of the first set of named categories. It is possible, therefore, that Alma’s blessing was direct and immediate for the first (present) set and indirect for the second (extended) set.
Possibly “all my kindred” may be better defined in Nephite society than in ours. Among the Aztecs, certain penalties could be applied to all of one’s relatives; and, depending on the source, it could apply to either the fifth or the fourth generation. Although the Aztecs had a different language and lived in a different time period, the same necessity of defining a maximum kin group may also have dictated Amulek’s definition of “all my kindred.”
The first list of specific kindred contains even more specific suggestions about Nephite kin relationships. The first clue is the reference to “my house.” For kin-based societies, a literal house typically symbolizes the family. Groups of kin frequently live in compounds. Anthropologists have reconstructed a picture of some Aztec households close to the time of the Spanish Conquest. The Aztec term for the “family” was cencaltin, “all the people of the house.” One account from 1580 indicates that the “house” typically contained six or seven married couples and their unmarried children.
The archaeological excavation of living structures consisting of multiple buildings led archaeologists to conclude that such structures were family compounds, a very common feature of Maya archaeological sites dating to the time period of the Book of Mormon. For example, the site of Salinas La Blanca (which predates the Book of Mormon Nephites) has two household mounds with multiple thatched houses, one with three houses, and one with four. It seems likely Amulek’s “house” was a typical Mesoamerican household compound. When Amulek speaks of Alma blessing his “house” and then lists specific relatives, these are almost certainly people living in the same “house” or entire compound, not a single structure.
Associated with Amulek’s “house” are “me, and my women, and my children, and my father and my kinsfolk.” Clearly Amulek is the head of the household, as he describes all of his kin by their relation to him. “My children” and “my father” are almost certainly terms that we ourselves would use. However, a more problematic term is “my women.” John A. Tvedtnes has suggested that
the Hebrew word used for wife really means woman. In three Book of Mormon passages, the word women appears to mean wives:
“Our women did bear children” (1 Ne. 17:1).
“Our women have toiled, being big with child; and they have borne children” (1 Ne. 17:20).
“For behold, he hath blessed mine house, he hath blessed me, and my women, and my children, and my father and my kinsfolk; yea, even all my kindred hath he blessed” (Alma 10:11).
A similar linguistic convention exists in Spanish (mi mujer, “my woman”) and Nahuatl (nocihua, “my woman”) and certainly other languages. Thus, Amulek is speaking of wives, of whom he had more than one. Was Amulek a polygamist? It seems likely that he was.
Amulek had been a much more worldly man before his conversion (v. 6). The people of Noah, as we have seen, practiced polygamy (Mosiah 11:2). Given the resemblances between the order of the Nehors and the apostate religion of the people of Noah, it seems likely that polygamy was also part of the set of objectionable religious/political “innovations” condemned by the Nephite prophets for both groups: the desire for kings, the desire for a hierarchical society (some not working with their own hands), costly apparel, and apparently plural wives. While Jacob is the last to dwell in detail on this aspect of apostasy (Jacob 2:23–27), it clearly enters the Nephite cultural experience at various points, including here in Ammonihah. A city that has quickly adopted the order of the Nehors could, logically, also include multiple wives—yet another cultural tradition picked up from the world around them.
Amulek also mentions “my kindred.” This general term obviously does not include the relatives he has already named (wives, children, or father). Probably other relatives and their spouses and children are sharing his compound, which would not be unusual considering his wealth. However, it is not clear why they would not have been included in “my house.” Pedro Carrasco describes a typical compound: “The house often is an extended family of four married couples. The head of the family lives with two married nieces and one married nephew. The head of this house also has a renter who lives with his two married brothers-in-law.” At least in Nahuatl, the term for “house” (cencaltin, “all the people of the house”) would encompass of these people because they shared the same compound.