Knowing that the end is near, Mormon (a Nephite military captain and spiritual leader) explains that he has edited the records of his ancestors (his work consists of most of our current Book of Mormon) and has given his son Moroni only that small portion of it that he thinks will be useful.
Although most nineteenth-century Mormons believed that the “hill Cumorah” was located in western New York State, where the prophet Joseph Smith was led to discover the record in the 1820s, many now hold that the actual battle site of Cumorah is located much further south, possibly somewhere in Central America. Mormon’s son Moroni, we know from the text, spent more than three decades wandering alone trying to flee the Lamanites, so it is very plausible that he took his small abridgment of the records and buried them in what became western New York. Although there is a place in modern-day New York that Mormons call “the Hill Cumorah,” this is almost certainly not the same hill that is mentioned as the site of the Nephites’ final battle.