Mormon is lamenting the transformation of his people. Note that his vocabulary continues to echo the cultural comparative statement “delightsome.” He notes that they were once delightsome, but now they are not. Once they have followed Christ, now they follow Satan.
Translation: Joseph Smith’s cultural assumptions arise in his translation of Mormon’s lament. While it is quite certain that the intent of these passages was what Mormon attempted to communicate, it is equally certain that the specific phrases come from the modern context rather than the ancient ones. From a Mesoamerican standpoint, none of the items used to create the imagery used in this last sentence were part of Mesoamerican culture at the time that Mormon was writing.
Chaff: The imagery of chaff is related to grains such as wheat where the chaff around the edible portion must be removed. The chaff is light, and therefore flies away in the wind. It is an image frequently used in the Bible, which was a culture familiar with this type of grain. Mesoamerica, however, did not use such grains. Neither the stable corn nor beans would have anything that would work be similar to chaff. This imagery comes form the Bible or modern idiom rather than plate text.
Vessel with sail, no way to steer: The vessel adrift on the waters is another ready image in seafaring peoples of the Old World, and those who came to the New World from the Old. Mesoamerica had sea-going vessels, but they were large man-powered canoes. There were no vessels with sails, so an image of a vessel without a sail would hardly be appropriate for the Mesoamerican context. Similarly, the lack of a way to steer refers to the loss of the rudder, another innovation that was available in the Old World, but not in Mesoamerica. Mesoamerican canoes were steered by the paddlers, not rudders.