This verse gives us complex social information for which we may not have sufficient information to make a complete analysis. We are dealing with the disposition of prisoners, and this disposition is not described until four years after the capture. It is possible that these four years have someone provided a test of faithfulness to the covenant they had made. When these former captives are released, they are given land “wherewith to subsist upon.” They are apparently located together, and they form a separate land.
These were all warriors, and their ability to exist in a separate land would depend on the same long term principles as any other population, and one of the important aspects of settled life is the presence of women. There were none that were captives. These former captives did not return to the Gadiantons, but they were given lands. Somewhere, they also would have women. There are two possibilities for the women among the former captives. They might have received women from among the Nephites, or they may have been able to retrieve their wives from their Gadianton homeland. This latter possibility is not so far-fetched, as the Mesoamerican world would have seen several transfers of population. The warriors would have been farmers when they were not fighting, and their families were likely located on the outskirts of the central city. Thus they could return to their families and move without any particular difficulty, or impedance by the Gadianton government. This scenario is more likely that the marriage to Nephite women.
The most important part of this passage is that these captives “were desirous to remain Lamanites.” The suggestion that they would remain Lamanites has two very interesting implications. The first is that although they had pledged peace, they did not pledge allegiance. They did not become part of the Nephite polity. Secondly, the idea of remaining Lamanites suggested that they had been Lamanites. Prior to their capture, they were designated as Gadianton robbers.
It is this last interesting issue that tells us more about the way Mormon sees the Gadianton robbers. When the specific threat is no longer there, when the people involved are no longer under the sway of their secret combinations, they remain Lamanites. They are still “others,” that is, not Nephites. However, they return to being the “common Lamanite.” Thus Mormon makes a distinction between Lamanites who are not Nephites, and any “Lamanite” who is associated with the Gadianton secret oaths. It would appear that Mormon sees the Gadianton secret oaths as external to the Lamanites. When no longer affiliated with this particular set of secret oaths, they return to being “common Lamanites.” This view is consistent with Mormon’s perception of the Gadiantons of his own day as connected to the separate cultural area to the North. Even when he connects the Gadiantons to the past, he connects them to the Jaredites, who were a people whose lands were to the north.
This statement appears to confirm Mormon’s perception of the Gadianton threat as one representing an external influence among both the Lamanites and the Nephites. If the Gadiantons are later to be seen as reflective of the Central Mexican influence in the Maya lands, perhaps we are seeing at this time an earlier influence of that same cultural area. Historically, the evidence of Central Mexican influence comes later in history. It may be, however, that the evidence is later because the evidence is later, not because the influence was exclusively later. The very stone monuments that have preserved the evidence of the Central Mexican influence are all of a later date that the events Mormon is currently describing. While this is the epoch where Teotihuacán is forming, other Central Mexican areas are strong, particularly Cuicuilco. While the archaeological evidence for sustained cultural contact is must less for this earlier period, that is not necessarily evidence of the lack, of contact, only the lack of sustained influence.
The pattern of the Gadiantons in their expanded militarism is suggestive of the known effect of the Central Mexican influence when it becomes well-documented for a time period just a couple of hundred years later.