Culture: Nephi writes this verse in approximately 557 B.C. By this time, the Lamanites were sufficiently numerous and sufficiently prosperous to conduct “wars and contentions.” Nephi gives no details about casualties; yet with his personal knowledge of his people, he would probably have known each slain warrior personally. It seems therefore likely that these “wars and contentions” were not the massive scenes of destruction characteristic of later Nephite history but are more likely raids. The records of any kind of pre-Columbian conquest are scarce (best attested for the much later Aztecs) but evidence for raiding this early and on a smaller scale is virtually absent. Such a documentary absence should not suggest that it did not occur, but rather that it was not the type of large-scale warfare that was later glorified in stone texts. Given human history, it would be more remarkable in its absence than its presence.
Text: The 1830 edition does not have a chapter break here.