The Lamanites were named after Laman, the eldest son of Lehi. The term came to cover more than Laman’s direct descendants: it included the descendants of Lemuel and of Ishmael, and later any group that dissented from the Nephites or rejected Nephite beliefs and practices. Jacob set this usage explicitly, saying he would call those who sought to destroy the people of Nephi “Lamanites,” and those friendly to Nephi “Nephites,” rather than track the longer list of tribal names (Jacob 1:13-14).
The Lamanites were repeatedly at war with the Nephites, the people named after Nephi, Laman’s younger brother. Nephi writes that the curse on those who rebelled was to be cut off from the presence of the Lord; he adds that a “skin of blackness” came upon Laman, Lemuel, and the sons and women of Ishmael to set their seed apart (2 Nephi 5:20-21). Mormon, abridging the later record, calls this a “mark” and ties it to allegiance more than birth: it fell on any who joined the Lamanites or fought against Nephi’s seed, and the Amlicites, who were Nephites, took it on themselves, marking their own foreheads with red “after the manner of the Lamanites” (Alma 3:4,6,10,13-16; 2 Nephi 5:23). Moroni once sought a descendant of Laman among his own men to send to the Lamanite guards; the man approached and verbally identified himself as a Lamanite to gain their trust (Alma 55:4,8). The “white” and “dark” skin language is used in a moral as much as a physical register: Jacob, rebuking Nephite pride, warned that the righteous Lamanites’ “skins will be whiter than yours” before the throne of God (Jacob 3:5-9). Mormon reports the reversal among the converted Lamanites: “the curse of God did no more follow them” (Alma 23:18), and “their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites” (3 Nephi 2:15).
During the ministry of Alma and Amulek, Lamanite armies came against the city of Ammonihah and destroyed it, fulfilling a prophecy against that city (Alma 16:2-3). The record also reports large conversions among them: the Lamanites brought to belief through the preaching of Ammon and his brethren became a peaceable people who laid down their weapons of rebellion and did not fall away; this group was later called the Anti-Nephi-Lehies (Alma 23:6-7). A generation later, when Nephi and Lehi, sons of Helaman, were imprisoned, those in the prison — Lamanites and Nephite dissenters alike — were first overshadowed by a cloud of darkness and then encircled by pillars of fire; a voice from heaven called them to repentance, angels ministered to them, and roughly three hundred who had seen and heard these things went immediately among other Lamanites to preach (Helaman 5:23-50). This episode stands as one of the largest single-event conversions in the record and is distinct from the earlier Anti-Nephi-Lehie movement.
A Lamanite prophet named Samuel came to Zarahemla and preached repentance for many days before the people cast him out; he was about to return home when the Lord commanded him to go back and prophesy. Denied re-entry into the city on his return, he climbed the wall and cried out what the Lord put in his heart. Speaking for the Lord, he declared that the Lamanites had grown more faithful in keeping the commandments than the Nephites, and that because of the steadiness of those who had believed, the Lord would not utterly destroy the Lamanite people but would restore them in the latter days to the knowledge of their Redeemer (Helaman 13:1-4; 15:5,9-13). Samuel’s ministry is the record’s most prominent example of a Lamanite acting as a prophet to the Nephites rather than as their adversary. Prophets across the record return to this promised future restoration of the Lamanites to the faith of their fathers.