Redaction: The advisability of a boat with a bottom and sides that were “tight like unto a dish” should be rather well understood. A leaky boat would be a rather distinct disadvantage on a long sea voyage. The very mention of the construction of the vessel suggests that it was somewhat unusual in its own day, but it is even more telling against the culture of Mosiah or Moroni. Mesoamerican sea-going vessels were all dugouts, even though they might be made of very large trees. In such a vessel, the idea of being watertight is not much of an issue because the vessel is made of a single tree.
The implication of the barges of the Jaredites is that they were constructed. They had to be larger than a tree, indeed, the length was of a tree, but the clear implication is that they were much wider. The construction is interesting, but even more interesting is the very fact that it exists in the text. It is here because it was interesting to Mosiah and/or Moroni. They put the information in the text (where Moroni is known to have left out at least the story of the creation and Garden of Eden) because it is interesting to them because it clearly differed from their current technology.
Historical: Milton R. Hunter cites Ixtlilxochitl as native historical remembrance of the voyage of the Jaredites:
“When things were at their best, their languages were changed and, not understanding each other, they went to different parts of the world; and the Toltecs, who were as many as seven companions and their wives, who understood their language among themselves, came to these parts, having first crossed large lands and seas, living in caves and undergoing great hardships, until they came to this land which they found good and fertile for their habitation… .” (Milton R. Hunter, Christ in Ancient America [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1959], 61.)
As in all other references to Ixtlilxochitl, Elder Hunter is placing too much faith is a source that is clearly mixing European and native stories. In this case, we can trace much of the native element of Ixtlilxochitl’s tale to the emergence of the Chichimeca from Chicomoztoc. While this is clearly the reference in Ixtlilxochitl, other texts tell us that they were considered real caves, and not barges and Elder Hunter reads them:
“Chicomoztoc: Literally “the seven caves,” this was a legendary mountain perforated by a single cave or by seven caves, and was considered a sacred place by the Aztecs and most other Nahuatl-speaking people of Central Mexico at the time of the Conquest. For many groups, Chicomoztoc was the place of origin from which mankind emerged; the Aztecs believed that they had sojourned there some time after their initial departure from the legendary Aztlan. In the mid-15th c., Motecuhzoma I sent 60 wise men to seek out Chicomoztoc, to learn more about Motecuhzoma’s ancestors, and to find out if the mother of Huitzilopochtli was still alive.
At the time of the Conquest, most Maya peoples of highland Guatemala also recognized authority issued by a place that the Quiche called Tulan Zuyua, or “seven caves.” In the Popol Vuh the tribal lineage heads journey to Tulan Zuyua to receive their gods; Tohil, for example, was loaded into the pack of Balam Quitze to be carried back home.
In 1971, during excavations to install sound and lighting equipment at Teotihuacan, a cave was found under the Pyramid of the Sun. The cave features several small chambers, almost in a clover-leaf arrangement, similar to the radiating caves depicted in the picture of Chicomoztoc in the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, and was used as a retreat for ritual. Caves have been found at other ancient sites, and a number may have been regarded at one time as a Chicomoztoc.” (Mary Miller and Karl Taube. An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. Thames & Hudson, 1993, p. 60.)
The large number of earth-emergence (autochthonous) myths from Mesoamerican as well as the American Southwest further establishes this origin myth as one relating to earth, not water-born vessels.