Lehi blessed the household of Ishmael, who died and was buried in the Old Country, at a place which they called Nahom (1 Ne. 16:34). The name Ishmael means, “[Whom] God Hears.” The blessing bestowed upon the house of Ishmael is not recorded.
“Ishmael was of the lineage of Ephraim, and his sons married into Lehi’s family, and Lehi‘s sons married Ishmael’s daughters, thus fulfilling the words of Jacob upon Ephraim and Manasseh in the 48th chapter of Genesis which says: ’And let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the Earth.’ Thus these descendants of Manasseh and Ephraim grew together upon this American continent, with a sprinkling from the house of Judah, from Mulek descended ... thus making an intermixture of Ephraim and Manasseh with the remnants of Judah, and for aught we know, the remnants of some other tribes that may have accompanied Mulek.” (Apostle Erastus Snow, Jour. of Dis., Vol. 23, pp. 184-5)
Apostle Snow says that the Prophet Joseph informed the Saints that the genealogical record of Lehi was contained on the 116 pages first translated and subsequently lost, and that Ishmael was, as stated, of the lineage of Ephraim.
In the history of Israel in America, Lehi, a descendant of Manasseh, the firstborn of Joseph, took the lead over the descendants of Ephraim, although Jacob, in his blessing gave him the first place. It was different in the historic development in Palestine. There Ephraim was in the front ranks. Joshua, the successor of Moses, was an Ephraimite. To this day, when a Hebrew blesses his son, he repeats the very words of the dying Patriarch and says, “God make thee as Ephraim and Manasseh,”—Ephraim first. But Jacob predicted also that a people would come from Manasseh, and that he, too, would be great. (Gen. 48:19) The Nephites are the literal fulfilment of this prophecy. And, if, as I surmise, the Nahuas of American ethnology are the Nephites of the Book of Mormon, the fulfilment is a matter of history. (See Introduction to the Study of the Book of Mormon, Sjodahl, pp. 146 and 367)
The Nahuas, according to Dr. Daniel Brinton, “occupied the Pacific coast from about the Rio del Fuerte in Sinaloa, N. lat. 26 degrees, to the frontiers of Guatemala, except a portion at the isthmus of Tehuantepec ... On the borders of the lakes in the valley of Mexico were the three important states, Tezcuco, Tlacopan and Tenochtitlan, who at the time of the conquest were formed into a confederacy of wide sway. The last mentioned, Tenochtitlan, had its chief town where the city of Mexico now stands, and its inhabitants were the Aztecs.” (The American Race, p. 128)
If my theory is sound, the history of the Nahuas should be studied in the light of the blessings given Joseph by his father, Jacob, in Egypt.