This is Ether’s account of the miraculous voyage of the Jaredites from their port of embarkation to some part of the American Continents. There were eight vessels (Leviticus 9:24), so the praises of the Jaredites to God kept ascending day and night, naturally under the direction and supervision of the Brother of Jared.
Dancing. Let us here note, in passing, that although songs of praise are mentioned as the main feature of the divine services of the Jaredites, it is almost certain that the rhythmical movement called dance accompanied their worship. Primitive peoples knew how to express their emotions—joy or sorrow, love or hatred—by means of gestures and movements. Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, all had their sacred dances which were performed on special occasions. In all probability, dancing was originally religious worship, although it gradually degenerated into worldly pastime, and even into unmitigated profanity. Among the Jews, during the Mosaic order of things, it certainly was a ceremony by which the people intended to show their loyalty to God, 2 and to praise Him for favors and mercies they had received. This is apparent from these quotations:
“And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously;...” (Exodus 15:20-21)
“And David danced before the Lord with all his might ... so David and all the House of Israel brought up the Ark of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the trumpet.” (II Samuel 6:14-15)
“Praise ye the Lord ... Praise Him with the timbrel and the dance; praise Him with the stringed instruments and organ.” (Psalm 150:1-4)
The Indians have always been noted for dancing, as they understand the terpsichorean art, and to this day some of them are still practicing the rhythmic movement of their bodies as a religious performance. In the American Anthropologist for April and June, 1923, there are interesting notes on Two Pueblo Feasts by Esther S. Goldfrank on the reverence paid to St. Joseph and St. Elizabeth. Bancroft, in Native Races, describes dancing by natives in widely separated localities, both the religious, dignified kind, and the degenerated variety. Referring to the first-mentioned class, he says that the dances were portraying love, jealousy, hatred, and friendship; “men and women dance in honor of the spirit of the sea.” Among the Veeards, he says, “When the dance is concluded, an orator pronounces a thanksgiving oration. The Cahrocs have a similar festival which they call ’The Feast of Propitiation.‘ The chief personage of the day is called ’The Charega,’ which is the appellation of their deity.”
Recent instances of Indian religious dances. Newspapers often note the holding of dance festivals by the Indian tribes of North America. One such is recorded to have been effected by the Hopi Indians of Arizona on August 26, 1934. The Indians danced and prayed for rain. Hundreds of visitors, curious to see the result, congregated. Dispatches from Oaraibi, Arizona, the following day related that a thunderstorm had broken the drought, and that the Indians and the tourists were watching the rain with mounting enthusiasm and relief. On July 6, 1936, something similar happened. A dispatch from Ganada, Arizona, said that rains had drenched the Tohatchi and Fluted Mountains, and that showers watered fifteen millions of acres in answer to the dancing and supplications of the native Navajo medicinemen.
Origin of the religious dance. This peculiar feature of Indian culture is, we believe, and as we see it, an inheritance from their Asiatic forebears. We know from I Nephi 18:9). From the Book of Mormon it is, therefore, evident that the leaders of both these lines of immigration brought the religious dance with them to the Promised Land.
A verifying tradition. Elsewhere we have called attention to a Navajo Indian tradition which seems to verify and corroborate the accounts of Nephi as regards dancing. Here we desire to give further details concerning that tradition, as kindly furnished us by Elder J. Fred Evans, of Council Bluffs, Iowa, in a letter dated November 3, 1938. He says:
"I have checked up on the reference in Brasseur de Bourbourg‘s ’Quatre Lettres sur le Mexique, 3 published in Paris, in 1868. On page 401 he gives us a translation of several native Indian documents comprising 46 pages, and entitled ’Corroborating Documents.’ No. 1, ’History of the Mexican Nation,’ manuscript in the Nahuatl language of the year 1576, comes from the collection of Boturini.
"On page 403 Brasseur de Bourbourg translates this native Indian document thus:
“Mexican History.” 4 This is the beginning of the arrival of the Mexicans from the place called Aztlan. It was through the midst of the waters that they made their way to this place. There were four tribes. While enroute they rowed on the ships. On the way they built their ships at a place called, the cave of Quinevayan. From this place came eight tribes.
“Here was the development of smelting by fire. They came from their home toward the rising sun, from the place called, ’On the shore of the sea.’ For it was on the shore by the sea that the ore, smelted by the fire, was brought to this place, without being very heavy. On the way they smelted the ore by means of the heat of the water. On the way they built their ships, launching them in the water, at the place called, The Cave of the Earth, whence they embarked, at the same place from which came the eight ships made by the heat.”
This is an exceedingly interesting tradition, and, if the document that contains it is genuine, is as important as it is instructive. 5 But the comments by the learned abbe, particularly on rowed, are equally striking. He writes, p. 403:
"Aztlan, name given by the traditions to the country that was thought to be the primeval home of the Mexicans, and that I long believed to be Asia.
“They rowed, macevaya, translated ordinarily ’to dance,‘ ’to do penance,’ etc., but no where by the word row, that I have used here.”
As is apparent, several particulars in this document have a striking resemblance to certain historical facts recorded in the Book of Mormon. For instance:
1. Two immigrations seem to be indicated, one consisting of four, and one of eight tribes.
2. They came from the same place, or home, Aztlan (Asia), situated toward the rising sun, the east.
3. In a camp called, On the Shore of the Sea, they procured ore for ship-building. Compare Lehi on the shore of Irreantum (Ether 2:13 and 3:1, where we read about the Jaredites at the Camp Moriancumer, by the great sea which divideth the land. It was there that the leader of the little colony melted out of rocks he gathered on Mt. Shelem the sixteen stones he needed for purposes of illumination.
4. Enroute, the tradition says, the pilgrims rowed, or as Abbe’ Brasseur de Bourbourg explains against his own conviction, danced on the ships.
5. The document translated by the Abbe’ seems to have preserved features of the history of the Jaredites and the Lehites and joined both sets together into one tradition. This is what might be expected, since the Twenty-four Plates of the Jaredite historians and the records of the Nephites were kept together for centuries by the same custodians, in common depositories. That, too, is corroborative of the Book of Mormon.