“Flight into the Northernmost Part of the Land”

Mormon documents the departure of Jacob₃’s people into the “northernmost part of the land” where they “build… a kingdom.” Mormon thus provides an explicit movement of a secret combination to the north while earlier migrations north only implied the bridge that would carry the Gadianton movement north. (See Helaman, Part 1: Context, Chapter 3, “The Gadianton Robbers in Mormon’s Theological History: Their Structural Role and Plausible Identification.”) He does not name this secret combination “Gadianton,” though he associates virtually all non-Jaredite secret combinations with the label “Gadianton.” In his narrative, this is an explicit occasion when a secret combination goes north, the direction to which Mormon points as the origin of the Gadiantons that participate in the final destruction of the Nephites.