Culture: No more than five years after the Gadiantons had been “swept away… insomuch that they have become extinct” (v. 10), they return. That return is part of the sinister pattern Mormon has been weaving about the Gadiantons which will be completed in his own day.
Here are the elements of that pattern: (1) Because their secret combinations are Satan-inspired, the Gadiantons have an almost supernatural longevity, persisting from the unnamed Jaredite secret combinations to the Gadiantons preceding Christ’s appearance to the final Gadiantons of Mormon’s day. (2) They are a manifestation of Nephite apostasy. While the band may include Lamanites, Mormon portrays them as having some connection to dissenting Nephites. (3) They are always characterized by the same sins: “murder and plunder” (v. 25). (See also commentary accompanying Alma 17:14, 50:21, and Helaman 6:17.)
This new band of Gadiantons appears to be establishing their own city in the mountains. Due to Mormon’s insistence on continuity, these people have unearthed the “secret plans of Gadianton, and thus they became robbers of Gadianton.” There is no firm connection between these new Gadiantons and the previous Gadiantons—who similarly had no firm connection to the original Gadianton band.
Mormon’s description of the new Gadiantons includes some interesting details about founding a new city in Mesoamerica, which may be paralleled by the founding of Dos Pilas (in the Petén region of modern Guatemala and near the location of Tikal) more than 650 years after Nephi’s time. According to Martin and Grube: “The emergence of the Dos Pilas polity is one of the rare cases in which an internal struggle—the kind of factional dispute within a kingdom that would normally leave no trace in the inscriptions—erupts into something more visible and enduring.”
One of the lords of Tikal, B’alaj Chan K’awiil, leaves that city to establish a new city, Dos Pilas. Martin and Grube tell us: “In the wake of Tikal’s conquest in 562 a new lineage of uncertain legitimacy established itself at the city. Plausibly, B’alaj Chan K’awiil was of the same line, perhaps as a full Tikal king, ousted in a coup that brought a rival lineage to power.”
B’alaj Chan K’awiil’s story and how he was (plausibly) forced from power parallel the expulsion of the Gadiantons from Zarahemla. B’alaj Chan K’awiil makes an alliance with another powerful city-state (Calakmul, an enemy to Tikal), as he establishes Dos Pilas. One of his next recorded acts was an attack on Tikal. The civil war between Tikal and Dos Pilas (with Calakmul’s assistance) continued for at least twenty years, ending in a stalemate.
Despite the separation of 650 years, the relationship of Tikal and Dos Pilas resembles the political intrigues that Mormon is apparently describing. Although Mormon editorially insists on attributing the opposition to the Gadianton robbers, a pejorative term that obscures the description, later descriptions of these Gadiantons suggests more in common with the Tikal-Dos Pilas story than with brigands.
Chronology: The eightieth year of the reign of the judges would be approximately 17 B.C.