The one main barrier that the sons of Mosiah ran into was the Amalekites: “And the Amalekites were not converted, save only one” and “neither were any of the Amulonites” (23:14). They become problems for the Nephite world. The Amulonites were the successors of the priests of Noah. The Amalekites are unidentified. They were not descendants of Laman or Lemuel. They may have been Ishmaelites. They may have been Zoramites, or perhaps Mulekites. Or they could have been complete outsiders.
One possibility is that they are related to the Amlicites. Because in the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon, the words Amalekite and Amlicite were spelled four or five different ways, we do not know whether they represented different groups. It is possible that Oliver Cowdery did not know how to spell this term every time the word came up. It is also possible that the words were pronounced differently depending on the ancient dialect. The history indicates that sometimes when Joseph Smith came across a new name in the Book of Mormon translation, he would spell it out. There is also manuscript evidence of in-process corrections of the spelling of some words. This means a word would be written, but then it would be crossed out and spelled again in line—not above the line, but right after it. However, that would only happen the first time it was spelled. And then Joseph expected Oliver to remember how it was spelled, which apparently did not always happen.
Book of Mormon Central, “How Were the Amlicites and Amalekites Related? (Alma 2:11),” KnoWhy 109 (March 27, 2016).
Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon: Part Three, Mosiah 17–Alma 20 (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2006), 1605–1609.
J. Christopher Conkling, “Alma’s Enemies: The Case of the Lamanites, Amlicites, and Mysterious Amalekites,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 108–117, 130–132.