Culture: The Gadiantons are becoming a more significant force, exerting their power in acts of “death and carnage” and laying “waste so many cities.” In the Mesoamerican context, the Gadiantons have completely adopted the cult of war and are aggressively imposing their tribute system on neighboring cities.
Although Mormon calls the Gadiantons “robbers,” his descriptions present a different picture. A thief tends to work alone or with a small number of partners. The more people, the more thinly the spoils must be spread. To support a large number by theft alone, the thefts would have to be massive and continual. In contrast, Mormon describes the Gadiantons as engaged in murder and conquest over cities. As theft goes, this method is counterproductive. If thieves always kill their victims, they are not available to continue producing goods. Destroying cities likewise cuts off the basis for stealable materials. Mormon is describing, not a band of thieves or brigands, but a city-state that had its own agricultural base but increased its wealth by subjugating other cities and forcing them to pay tribute. While the Gadiantons certainly killed men who opposed them and damaged cities to force their surrender, they would not have engaged in wholesale slaughter or complete destruction. The conquered city and its citizens had to survive on a basis sufficiently above subsistence to provide a continual stream of goods for the Gadianton city. (See footnote accompanying Helaman 11:28–29.)
When the Gadiantons gained the political ascendancy among the Nephites, they instituted “plunderings and murders” (Hel. 6:17–18). These techniques, while criminal from Mormon’s perspective, are best seen as economic, both earlier and at this point. Although archaeological/historical data are skimpy for Nephi3’s day, Mormon is accurately depicting a Mesoamerican war cult of his own time. His reworking of his material is, by my reading, taking historical liberties to create stronger parallels between the Gadiantons of Nephi3’s day and those of his own day. I argue that he has taken evidence from the historical record of increasing militarism and reshaped it to fit his thesis of the Gadiantons’ role in Nephite history. (See Helaman, Part 1: Context, Chapter 3, “The Gadianton Robbers in Mormon’s Theological History: Their Structural Role and Plausible Identification.”)