According to Helaman 3:23, the secret combinations had been established by Gadianton the robber "in the more settled parts of the land." We might then assume that these secret combinations worked well in populated areas. [Alan C. Miner, Personal Notes]
“The Secret Combinations”
Critics of the Book of Mormon have long argued that, since the book uses the term "secret combinations" (Helaman 3:23) and since that term was indeed used in New York in the 1820's to refer to a supposed conspiracy among the Freemasons, the Gadianton robbers must simply represent a memory of the Masons (presumably worked into the Book of Mormon by an anti-Masonic Joseph Smith). Such an argument is illogical and flawed in many ways, and it was eventually dropped by Alexander Campbell, its original proponent.
The use of the term combination to mean "conspiracy" or "monopoly" was not unusual at the time of Joseph, as Noah Webster's 1828 American dictionary makes clear. The word also occurs in George Washington's "Proclamation on the Whiskey Rebellion" (1794) and in his "Farewell Address" (1796) . . . and can easily be found elsewhere. But what of the phrase "secret combination"? On June 25, 1831, Frederick Robinson, a journalist and Massachusetts legislator, wrote to Rufus Choate attacking the bar association as a "secret brotherhood." This "secret society," he says, is attempting to seize control of the American judicial system and to establish itself as a kind of aristocracy. "
Evidently, the terms combination and secret combination were not special code words in Joseph Smith's day referring solely to the Masons. They were normal words for conspiracies of all kinds in Joseph's day. [David R. Benard, John W. Welch, and Daniel C. Peterson, "Secret Combinations," in Reexploring the Book of Mormon, pp. 227-229]