I remember visiting the home of my youth, after several years away due to my mother moving, and myself going off to college. I drove the streets in an odd sort of awe. Everything was so SMALL.
There was the church next door to our house. The brick enclosure around the flagpole, where I had "run away from home" for ten minutes to, in my youth, was tiny - not the elegant, expansive future home where I was certain I could live. The walk to my school was short - not in distance, but in the houses lining the streets themselves. The houses didn't tower over my head like they once did. They were actually pretty modest and small.
Seeing the past with my new, adult eyes, I realized how my adventurous, poignant, pivotally important youth was, well... really really unexciting. As a child, I saw the bubble of my life as something remarkable and special. As an adult, I saw it for what it was - a neighborhood like any other neighborhood. For children everything is enormous. As an adult I had enough distance from the location to see it for what it really was.
After visiting Nauvoo, in my last entry, I realized I couldn't get enough of Mormon history sites. There was something fantastic about seeing these sites for myself - tying history together in my mind, and seeing how SMALL it was, in actuality. Hearing stories of miracles and angels and visions and prophets, everything gets so BIG - everything shown at its most flattering angles. Seeing it all for myself as an ex-Mormon adult, I saw it for what it really was. And I wanted more of that.
Enter Zelph's Mound.
The prophet once said that people who have crises of faith are "lazy learners and lax disciples." As one of those "lazy learners," I scoffed at the accusation. Zelph is a prime example of just how "lazy" my learning was - considering that most Mormons don't even know about Zelph.
In June 1834 Zion's Camp was making their way through Illinois, when some of the men came across a Indigenous American burial mound. Heber C Kimball and John Taylor recorded that the mound had three altars, one on top of the other, and that the ground was scattered with human bones. "General" Joseph Smith ordered the men to dig into the mound, and one foot below the surface, they found the bones of a man. (Some reports indicate that the man was 8 or 9 feet tall, given the size of his leg bones, which they took with them... I'm happy to not judge them too harshly on this. It was a different time, but yes. That would be desecration of a grave.)
They laid the bones out on a board, carefully, and Joseph Smith gave a speech, prophesying that the bones of the man belonged to a Lamanite general named Zelph, who was killed in battle 1500 years prior. More information about Zelph was given. Zelph fought alongside the prophet Onendagus. He was known from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains, and was a righteous Lamanite, so his skin was white... O_o
As someone who studied Book of Mormon archaeology for literal years, trying to make it fit, Zelph was important. Finding Zelph, to me, was additional proof that the Book of Mormon, a literal history, would have taken place in North America, not meso-America. Because of evidences like Zelph, I was happy to call myself a "one hill" girl. (One hill Cumorah - not in the camp that believed there was a Cumorah in upstate New York AND a Cumorah in South America.) The prophet himself had found a Lamanite in the heartland of North America. I read and listened to Wayne May extensively, and subscribed to his theories on the matter.
Obviously, I no longer do.
But also obviously, I had to see this place. So naturally we drove the hour and a half to walk the short hike with our family, my mother joining us for the trip.
It was difficult to find. Unlike most Mormon historic sites, which have large signs and plaques, and usually two dozen missionaries, this place had no signs at all. AT ALL. If you didn't know the history before you showed up, you wouldn't have known what you were looking at. The entrance to the trail was marked with overgrown weeds, and a literal tree fallen across the path.
But we were not to be deterred. I had done my research. There were mounds up there.
I took the lead, enthusiastically, and stepped face first into a spiderweb. A massive red orb-weaver. After that, we took the trail much more carefully, recognizing that this place was not frequented, and that no previous hikers had cleared the way ahead of us. We each swung large sticks in front of our faces to break any webs that may have been in our path, my brave Australian mother taking the lead. She ain't afraid of no spiders.
To our pleasant surprise, the trail led us directly to the top of the mound itself, as it continued it's half circle around. It was shocking to feel the earth under our feet - firm, surprisingly flat, and deliberate. But it wasn't entirely flat. The entire center of the mound had been removed, probably eight feet deep, like some wide volcanic pit in the center.
(See in the picture, my husband at one end of the mound, blue-shirted son down in the center, and the rest of us up on the other side.)
Whoever that man was, I doubt he expected the place of his burial to be so thoroughly investigated to the point that it was seriously damaged.
"Zelph" was a part of the Havana Hopewell culture. The Hopewells traveled extensively, and in future excavations of other mounds in the area, artifacts were discovered from throughout the east. In Zelph's Mound - officially known as the Naples-Russell Mound #8 - an eagle pipe was found.
The Hopewells were active from 100 BC - 500 AD. (Wayne May would enthusiastically say, "See! The timeline fits!") The Havana Hopewells would eventually go on to form the Mississippian culture, which would build Cahokia, which is a popular tourist destination to this day, with massive, well-preserved and documented mounds just across the river from St. Louis.
I'm from Utah, and spent my youth exploring petroglyphs with my family throughout the state. But I can honestly say that I am not very familiar with eastern tribes and cultures. I am doing my best, though. Because my heart mourns for these people, and the land that we stole from them.
Researching their roots, THEIR stories, it is hard to see how few of their traditions and histories remain. I had a HUGE "come to Jesus" when it came to Indigenous American culture, and my own Mormon upbringing, when it came to appropriation.
Mormons are really bad at appropriating. Just look at how they view Judaism. Mormons assign themselves tribes of Israel in patriarchal blessings. They, like most Christians, take Jewish celebrations and rituals, and assign Christian imagery and theology to them, without consideration for the historical relevance or accuracy involved.
"Zelph," I believe, was appropriated. White men took another person's life, and made of it something that fit their narrative, and suited their own faith-promoting needs, with no respect to the actual story.
Indigenous Americans were not white. The Havana Hopewell were NOT white. Whiteness has nothing to do with "righteousness."
"Onendagus," the prophet warrior that Zelph allegedly fought alongside, is a name more likely ripped off of the actual Onondaga Tribe of New York - which Joseph Smith would have been familiar with.
Standing at the top of the mound, I tried to pay my respects. Theirs was a story that was lost and exchanged with some white man's telling. I don't know who this man was that was buried, with an arrowhead lodged in his ribcage, but he was respected, and it wasn't because he was a white Lamanite.
Indigenous Americans have their own cultures, and their own stories. They have their own gods, and their own customs. To me, Joseph Smith's appropriation of Indigenous Americans began with the Book of Mormon. Much of that book is plagiarized from the King James Bible, and, I was surprised to learn, some of the most touching stories of the book were plagiarized from the Indigenous Americans themselves.
The Onondaga tribe I mentioned earlier are a part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which was one of the earliest recorded participatory democracies. (The arrows gripped in the claw of the bald eagle, on our own country's emblem, represent this confederacy of five tribes, and the strength of those tribes when bound together.) Sometime between 1142 and 1450 AD, this Confederacy was formed. The leaders of the five tribes, together, buried their weapons of war, an act memorialized in the sacred Haudenosaunee Wampum belt to this day.
The story of the people of Ammon, or Anti-Nephi-Lehis burying their weapons of war was one of the most touching stories from the Book of Mormon for me. You can debate which came first - the chicken or the egg, the wampum belt or the Anti-Nephi-Lehis - but for me, it was beautiful to rediscover this favorite story had a basis in reality. And that reality was just as important, if not more important, than the story told to me from the Book of Mormon.
The Indigenous Americans were not Jewish, as was claimed in the Book or Mormon or the contemporary View of the Hebrews. They were their own people, with their own gods and power. They didn't need prophets like Nephi, or Mormon. They had Handsome Lake, The Peacemaker and Hiawatha, Tenskwatawa, and more. They didn't and don't need someone else's culture or story forced onto them. We should be listening to them telling us their own stories.
The drive back for home we questioned if the people who lived down the road from this mound knew what they were living next to. Did Mormons journey, like we had, and embarrassingly wax long in telling the locals about the great white Lamanite buried nearby? Do archaeologists widen their eyes in patient, comical disbelief when told about how the Hopewell had swords and horses, and battles in upstate New York with thousands of dead unaccounted for in the historical record? Oh, and they were Jewish. So look for those clues too. But they were pretty Christian Jews, even from the beginning, so look for those clues as well.
It's easier to respect the Indigenous Americans for what and who they are. They are The People. And they have their own stories to tell.
