It was always a source of great sorrow to the Nephite prophets that they could not penetrate the barrier of vicious hostility with which the Lamanites had surrounded themselves. Enos wants us to know that in his day the Nephites worked diligently to restore the Lamanites to a true faith in God. The same thing had been done by his father, Jacob, in his day, but Enos says it was with him as it was with his father. This missionary effort was completely in vain.
The hatred of the Lamanites was fixed and determined. They exploited the most degraded capacities of human nature so that they became wild and ferocious and blood-thirsty people who were practicing idolatry and were surrounded by filthiness. They ate beasts of prey, that is carnivorous, meat-eating animals such as the lion.
Instead of building cities they dwelt in tents and wandered about in the wilderness protected by nothing but a short skin girdle and with their heads shaven. Apparently they did not cultivate fields, manufacture cloth, or maintain domestic flocks. Their major skill was in the bow, and the cimeter and the ax. Many of them lived on nothing but raw meat and spent their entire energy seeking ways and means to destroy the Nephites.