Students of the Book of Mormon will agree that these verses constitute one of the few difficult passages in that volume, as long as recognized authorities on early American culture insist that the aborigines of these continents had neither silk, nor oxen, cows, or sheep, except the wild mountain variety; and certainly no horses until the arrival of the Spaniards; and no elephants. There seems to be a serious discrepancy between the statement of Moroni and the findings of science. But we have no doubt that there is a satisfactory answer or explanation of the seeming contradiction, if it can be found, by which the difficulty may be removed. As to what that explanation is, we can, as yet, offer only a few suggestions.
Silks and fine linen. The Jaredites came from Asia, presumably across China, the reputed home of the silk industry. Just when that occupation began is uncertain. A Chinese tradition says that the wife of Emperor Hoan-ti started it in the year B.C. 2609. That would be before the time of Noah, in Ussher's chronology. As far as tradition goes, there is no reason for believing that silk was unknown to Jared and his Brother. If they did not have silk worms, or eggs of the mother insect, as well as swarms of bees (Ether 2:3), they more than likely had silk in the form of skeins, or woven fabrics, or both, in abundance.
However, the reading in our text is silks, in the plural. That is best understood as a collective noun, silk goods, analogous to, for instance, silver-ware, glassware, etc. If so understood, it means not only genuine silk, but any article resembling that material, soft, glossy, and elegant enough to be used as a substitute for it. That is the literal meaning of silks even today. Every one knows that our markets are flooded with elegant silks which are nothing better than the mercerized imitation of the genuine fabric. The spinners and weavers of the Jaredites would have produced such woven materials as soon as the country became settled for peaceful industrial pursuits.
Lehi and his family, who emigrated from Jerusalem about 600 B.C., must have known both the material and the Hebrew name for it (meshi, 2 And the conclusion appears reasonable, that Moroni, who was a student of Isaiah, and knew the traditions of his ancestors from Lehi, had knowledge of silk, as handed down from generation to generation. He might, therefore, naturally and very properly, have called the fine fabrics of the Jaredites, silk.
That the American Indians of later times were unsurpassed masters in the fine art of producing cloth of cotton or wool, will not be disputed by any well-informed Americanist.
Our text, as we understand it, does neither prove, nor disprove, the opinion that the Indians anciently had the genuine Chinese silk cloth. It leaves that question open for future discoveries. It does inform us that the Jaredites were acquainted with that kind of material, and that they became experts in manufacturing imitations of it.
Fine Linen. This may have been material a shade coarser than the silk, and yet fine, as compared to the linen in common use.
Cattle, Oxen, Cows, Sheep. Scholars who are committed to the theory that man in America, and elsewhere, gradually rose from a brute beginning to the level of savagery, then to that of barbarism, and finally, to the dizzy heights of civilization, must of necessity deny the occurrence of civilized pursuits among the American aborigines as far back as four thousand years ago. 3
But if we accept the Book of Moses as the word of the Lord, we cannot admit that the Jaredites came here as savages. They had a certain degree of civilization, in some respects more advanced then we moderns, in our haughty estimation of ourselves, care to express. They knew something about agriculture when they selected the fertile Plain of Shinar, in Mesopotamia as their home. They knew how to burn and make bricks and to build cities with towers. 4 They were astronomers, and they must have had some knowledge of geography to have been able to travel as they did. They had, above all, the religious knowledge that enabled them to hold communion with God and to receive revelations. That alone placed them well within the boundaries of civilization. And because they were a civilized race, the statement of Moroni, if correctly understood, is far from incredible.
When the Jaredites came here they found a variety of animals.
The musk ox. In the extreme north the musk ox roamed; an animal that still is of importance in the Arctic Regions.
The Caribou. Farther south, the American reindeer, commonly known as the caribou, must at that time have been plentiful. During historic times that animal has been found inhabiting the wooded districts of Canada and adjacent parts of the United States. In northern Europe the reindeer serve their owners, chiefly Laplanders, as both cows and horses. They give rich milk. They furnish meat, clothing, bones for tools, etc., and they are an invaluable means of speedy transportation. If the caribous of antiquity were anything like their now-known European kindred, and if Jaredite hunters succeeded in capturing and domesticating some, they would certainly have found them as valuable to their national prosperity as we do the cattle.
The Bison. Farther south the bison, or American buffalo, was grazing, in immense herds, on the plains between the Mississippi and the Rockies, from Canada to New Mexico. The buffalos, or rather bisons, are indigenous to America. As close relatives of the ox family they may properly be regarded as cattle. They certainly were useful animals. They provided juicy meat, including the pemmican, indispensible to hunters and explorers. They gave fat and tallow for various uses; skins for leather, clothing, tent covers, canoes, etc., and hair of which to manufacture material for cloth. The Jaredites may have kept small herds of them for domestic purposes, as we now do on reservations in several places, in order to save the species from extinction. Such herds would account for the oxen and cows mentioned in the Book of Ether.
Sheep. The Jaredites may not have had the merino, as bred and developed in later times in Spain, France and the United States. But they must have come across the Rocky Mountain sheep, generally known as the Bighorn. Varieties of this animal inhabited the western mountain regions from Alaska and the shores of the Bering Sea in the north to Mexico in the south. To what extent the Jaredites utilized these animals we do not know, but they must have been known by this enterprising people.
Under "Mexico" in Encyclopedia Britannica, the author relates that one of the ancient Aztecs, in a prayer, called the attention of his god, Tezcatlipoca, to the fact that the had sacrificed a sheep to the deity. The author thought that Spanish influence was in evidence in the use of the word "sheep," but Mr. Denison, who quotes the Britannica article, says the Aztecs appear to have had a name for sheep always, and that in the prayer mentioned a wild sheep may have been meant. He also mentions that bones of the Canadian sheep have been found in Arizona ruins. 5
The Peccary. This animal, resembling the swine family, is about three feet long, with fewer teeth than the boar or pig. One variety has been found from Arkansas in the north to Patagonia in the South. A larger variety is said to be found in Central America and South America as far south as Brazil. Peccaries may have been the "swine" of the Jaredites. That would account satisfactorily for the name in our text.
However, that the Jaredite people, Semitic descendants, had swine is surprising. During the Mosaic dispensation those kind of animals were unclean, because they do not ruminate, Noah, the father of Shem, knew this division of living creatures to be a divine arrangement, for the Lord commanded the patriarch to save both clean and unclean beasts from destruction in the flood (8), which, undoubtedly, was patterned after a previous patriarchal statute, the mention of swine among the edible animals of the Jaredites is unexpected.
But, probably, these pilgrims from Asia, during their wanderings through uninhabited deserts, could not always select their food with strict regard to legal rules of fitness. Probably they were under the necessity, frequently, to live on whatever they could find. Thus, the regulations observed when they lived in settled communities, may have been set aside by the force that is said to "know no law," and when they, finally, after years of traveling, formed settlements in the new country, some laws and rules, once deemed important, may never again have been enforced, even if they were not entirely forgotten. Such cases might be found even in the history of the immigrations into the United States in our own day.
Goats. The Rocky Mountain goat is an animal about the size of a large sheep. It has a coat of long, soft and warm, white hair, and an undercoat of fine wool. Domesticated, the goat is a useful animal. The wild species live in family groups on high mountain sides, where only experienced mountaineers can follow them. Jaredites had evidently captured some of them.
Many other kinds of Animals. Among these may be mentioned the deer, the moose or American elk, the bear, the beaver. The Jaredites must have found these and many other useful species. There were, besides, birds, migratory as well as permanent inhabitants of forests and canyons; fish in the streams and lakes and in the waters of the oceans, and shellfish and mussels in great abundance, as shown by the shellheaps on the coasts around the American continents, and in some places inland. Dogs are not mentioned among the assets of the people, but they must have had those faithful friends of man. They may even have brought dogs with them from their home land.
Horses. As a contribution to the discussion of Jaredite culture, it may be mentioned that press dispatches dated June 13, 1936, announced the discovery, by explorers, of a cave under a ledge in the mountains near Albuquerque, New Mexico, in which there were a hearth of stone, a flint tool and bones of prehistoric animals, such as horses, camels and mastodons, which, scientists say, disappeared from this continent thousands of years ago. A conservative conclusion from these and similar finds is, according to Dr. D. D. Brand, head of the anthropology department of the University of New Mexico, that so-called pleistocene animals; that is to say, animals that lived during the glacial period, may actually have continued their existence for some time after the withdrawal of the great ice sheets which marked the end of the pleistocene period. If this logical conclusion obtains confirmation, we may suppose that some of the horses of the previous ages survived and were found by man during historic times. The Jaredites may on that theory, have had horses. The equines, as other early living creatures, may not have become totally extinct until after the dawn of historic times. The Jaredites, we know, destroyed their own culture during historic times, and came near enough to exterminating each other. Some domesticated animals may have shared their fate. On March 21, 1938, the Associated Press announced that explorers in Death Valley had come across footprints of camels, pigs, one-toed horses and wading birds. Not even a guess was offered concerning the probable remoteness of the time at which those marks were placed where now found.
Asses. We need not say a great deal about those useful creatures here. The Jaredites had the animals known in the wild state as asses, and, domesticated, as donkeys, even if we do not know how they got them.
To those who insist that donkeys were unknown in America during the early years of the Jaredites, we offer the suggestion that the small horses may have reminded them of the asses of their own country. The two branches of the equine family are closely related and resemble each other very much. This resemblance may have suggested the name for the small horses. In that case, the asses would be the same as our "ponies."
Elephants. While Dr. John A. Widtsoe, the Apostle, was presiding over the European mission, he received a clipping from the Sheffield, England, "Weekly Telegram," of Nov. 4, 1933, in which the statement was made that there were pictures of elephants among Maya pictographs, which must have been carved by Asiatics who knew the Asiatic elephant. The paper asked, "How did these people cross the ocean? Was a native boat journey of two thousand miles possible?"
Well, a Chinese historian, writing in the 7th century of our era, states that a Chinese expedition long ago discovered a country 20,000 li 7 is generally supposed to be Kamchatka, and Fusang the northwest coast of America, California or Mexico. The story is, of course, not accepted as true. It has a great many fantastic details. But it is by no means impossible that, hidden among the embellishments, there is a modicum of historic facts. And they may point to the possibility of migrations over eastern Asia of people who carried to America the knowledge of both elephants, horses and other animals. About three thousand years ago, during the time of King Solomon, the oceans were highways, on which Hebrew and Phoenician navigators may have reached America and visited the islands on their perilous course.
Marquis de Nadaillac says that among the ornaments of a certain wall at Uxmal, an ancient Maya city, were details supposed to be elephant-trunks. This, he says, would be a curious fact, if true. For the elephant was certainly not living in America at the time of the erection of the monuments of Uxmal.
It all depends. The Mayas, according to some authorities, entered Yucatan during the 6th century A.D., from Guatemala, Mexico and British Honduras. If the ornaments in question are of a later date, the elephants may have been extinct when the frieze of which they form a detail was fashioned. But even in that case, Maya artists would have known elephants by hearsay, just as educated people in our day know something about mastodons and dinosaurs, although they may never have seen one, not even in a museum. But if the structures of Uxmal, which for centuries have been only ruins, are pre-Mayan, elephants may still have inhabited favorable localities in America, when those buildings were new. Giants from prehistoric times may still have swung their long muscular noses, their "big sticks," fuzzily warning enemies of danger.
The Mastodon. This extinct animal is known to have survived into the historical period. According to Mr. M. R. Harrison, curator of the Los Angeles Museum, the earliest inhabitants of California, the "Folsom" people, hunted both bisons and mammoths, the latter being also known as extinct elephants. Obsidian spearheads and knives, we are informed, have been found among bones of those extinct animals on the shores of a pond in Clear Lake Park, where the people mentioned seem to have had a favorite camp.
Cureloms. We note that the animals enumerated are divided into three classes:
(1) Cattle, oxen, cows, sheep, swine and goats, and also many other kinds "were useful for the food of man."
(2) Horses, asses, elephants, cureloms and cumoms "were useful unto man," but not for food.
(3) Elephants, cureloms and cumoms were "more especially" useful.
The elephant is a marvelously intelligent creature, and if the question is of transportation, or the carrying of burdens, or even of military service in primitive warfare, he cannot be surpassed, when properly trained. But what of the cureloms and cumoms?
There is a Hebrew verb, "garal," meaning to roll forth, or, roll off (a burden, for instance). The Semitic or Jaredite ancestor of that word may have been, "karal," having the same meaning. Curel or Kurel can have been formed from karal, to denote an animal with a characteristically rolling motion, such as the camel has. The sounds represented by g and k are interchangeable, or the letters are. The motion of the camel, the "ship of the desert," is peculiar. When walking, he lifts both feet simultaneously, first on one side and then the other, causing a rolling motion unpleasant to those not accustomed to it. The "om" in curel-om we consider a plural termination, as "im" in the Hebrew. Curel-om would, according to this conjecture, mean camels. The South American llama belongs to the camel family. The curel-om of the Jaredites may have been relatives of those proud-looking and useful creatures if not their ancestors.
Cumoms. If we eliminate the American plural "s" and understand the "om" to be equivalent to the Hebrew plural "im," the word in the singular would be "cum." But the Hebrew "kum" means to rise up, to stand up. 9 because of these peculiarities. Their skins would certainly be "more especially" useful in areas where the summers are hot but the winters cold.