NOTES.
1. Diversity of Literary Style in the Book of Mormon.—"There is a marked difference in the literary style of Nephi and some of the other earlier prophets from that of Mormon and Moroni. Mormon and his son are more direct and take fewer words to express their ideas than did the earlier writers; at least their manner is, to most readers, the more pleasing. Amos, the son of Jacob, has also a style peculiar to himself. There is another noticeable fact that when original records or discourses, such as the record of Limhi, the sermons of Alma, Amulek, etc., the epistles of Helaman, and others, are introduced into Mormon's abridgment, words and expressions are used that appear nowhere else in the Book of Mormon. This diversity of style, expression, and wording is a very pleasing incidental testimony to the truth of the claim made for the Book of Mormon,—that it is a compilation of the work of many writers."—From Lectures on the Book of Mormon, by Elder George Reynolds.
2. Mexican Date of the Deluge.—In speaking of the time of the Deluge as given by the Mexican author, Ixtilxochitl, Elder George Reynolds says:—"There is a remarkable agreement between this writer's statements and the Book of Genesis. The time from the Fall to the Flood only differs sixty, possibly only five years, if the following statement in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants (cvii, 49) regarding Enoch lengthens the chronology: "And he saw the Lord, and he walked with him, and was before his face continually; and he walked with God 365 years, making him 430 years old when he was translated." The same statement is made in the Pearl of Great Price, Moses vii, 67.—From lecture on External Evidences of the Book of Mormon, by Elder George Reynolds.
3. Ancient Civilization in America.—"That a civilization once flourished in these regions [Central America and Mexico] much higher than any the Spanish conquerors found upon their arrival, there can be no doubt. By far the most important work that has been done among the remains of the old Maya civilization has been carried on by the Peabody Museum of Harvard College, through a series of expeditions it has sent to the buried city now called Copan, in Spanish Honduras. In a beautiful valley near the borderland of Guatemala, surrounded by steep mountains and watered by a winding river, the hoary city lies wrapped in the sleep of ages. The ruins at Copan, although in a more advanced state of destruction than those of the Maya cities of Yucatan, have a general similarity to the latter in the design of the buildings, and in the sculptures, while the characters in the inscriptions are essentially the same. It would seem, therefore, that Copan was a city of the Mayas; but if so it must have been one of their most ancient settlements, fallen into decay long before the cities of Yucatan reached their prime. The Maya civilization was totally distinct from the Aztec or Mexican; it was an older and also a much higher civilization."—Henry C. Walsh, in article, Copan—a City of the Dead, Harper's Weekly, October, 1897.
Baldwin in his valuable work "Ancient America" incorporates the conclusions announced by Bradford in regard to the ancient occupants of North America, as follows:—
"That they were all of the same origin, branches of the same race, and possessed of similar customs and institutions.
"That they were populous, and occupied a great extent of territory.
"That they had arrived at a considerable degree of civilization, were associated in large communities, and lived in extensive cities.
"That they possessed the use of many of the metals, such as lead, copper, gold, and silver, and probably the art of working in them.
"That they sculptured in stone, and sometimes used that material in the construction of their edifices.
"That they had the knowledge of the arch of receding steps; of the art of pottery, producing urns and utensils formed with taste, and constructed upon the principles of chemical composition; and the art of brick-making.
"That they worked the salt springs, and manufactured salt.
"That they were an agricultural people, living under the influence and protection of regular forms of governments.
"That they possessed a decided system of religion, and a mythology connected with astronomy, which, with its sister science, geometry, was in the hands of the priesthood.
"That they were skilled in the art of fortification.
"That the epoch of their original settlement in the United States is of great antiquity; and that the only indications of their origin to be gathered from the locality of their ruined monuments, point toward Mexico."—Baldwin, Ancient America, p. 56.
4. American Traditions concerning the Deluge.—"Don Francisco Munoz de la Vega, the Bishop of that diocese (Chiapas), certifies in the prologue to his 'Diocesan Constitutions,' declaring that an ancient manuscript of the primitive Indians of that province, who had learned the art of writing, was in his record office, who retained the constant tradition that the father and founder of their nation was named Teponahuale, which signifies lord of the hollow piece of wood; and that he was present at the building of the Great Wall, for so they named the Tower of Babel; and beheld with his own eyes the confusion of language; after which event, God, the Creator, commanded him to come to these extensive regions, and to divide them amongst mankind."—Lord Kingsborough, Mexican Antiquities, vol. viii, p. 25.
"It is found in the histories of the Toltecs that this age and first world, as they call it, lasted 1,716 years: that men were destroyed by tremendous rains and lightnings from the sky, and even all the land, without the exception of anything, and the highest mountains, were covered up and submerged in water fifteen cubits (caxtolmolatli); and here they added other fables of how men came to multiply from the few who escaped from this destruction in a 'toptlipetlocali;' that this word nearly signifies a close chest; and how, after men had multiplied, they erected a very high 'zacuali,' which is to-day a tower of great height, in order to take refuge in it should the second world (age) be destroyed. Presently their languages were confused, and, not being able to understand each other, they went to different parts of the earth."—The same, vol. ix, p. 321.
"The most important among the American traditions are the Mexican, for they appear to have been definitely fixed by symbolic and mnemonic paintings before any contact with Europeans. According to these documents, the Noah of the Mexican cataclysm was Coxcox, called by certain people Teocipactli or Tezpi. He had saved himself, together with his wife Xochiquetzal, in a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft made of cypress-wood (Cypressus disticha). Paintings retracing the deluge of Coxcox have been discovered among the Aztecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs, Tlascaltecs, and Mechoacaneses. The tradition of the latter is still more strikingly in conformity with the story as we have it in Genesis, and in Chaldean sources. It tells how Tezpi embarked in a spacious vessel with his wife, his children, and several animals, and grain, whose preservation was essential to the subsistence of the human race. When the great god Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should retire, Tezpi sent a vulture from the bark. The bird, feeding on the carcases with which the earth was laden, did not return. Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the humming bird only came back, with a leafy branch in its beak. Then Tezpi, seeing that the country began to vegetate, left his bark on the mountain of Colhuacan."—Donnelly's Atlantis, p. 99.
The tradition of a Deluge "was the received notion, under some form or other, of the most civilized people in the Old World, and of the barbarians of the New. The Aztecs combined with this some particular circumstances of a more arbitrary character, resembling the accounts of the east. They believed that two persons survived the Deluge, a man named Coxcox and his wife. Their heads are represented in ancient painting, together with a boat floating on the waters at the foot of a mountain. A dove is also depicted, with a hieroglyphical emblem of language in his mouth, which he is distributing to the children of Coxcox, who were born dumb. The neighboring people of Michoacan, inhabiting the same high plains of the Andes, had a still further tradition, that the boat in which Tegpi, their Noah, escaped, was filled with various kinds of animals and birds. After some time a vulture was sent out from it, but remained feeding on the dead bodies of the giants which had been left on the earth as the waters subsided. The little humming bird, huitzitzilin, was then sent forth, and returned with a twig in his mouth. The coincidence of both these accounts with the Hebrew and Chaldean narratives is obvious."—Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, pp. 463-64.
5. Mexican Tradition concerning the Savior.—"The story of the life of the Mexican divinity, Quetzalcoatl, closely resembles that of the Savior; so closely, indeed, that we can come to no other conclusion than that Quetzalcoatl and Christ are the same being. But the history of the former has been handed down to us through an impure Lamanitish source, which has sadly disfigured and perverted the original incidents and teachings of the Savior's life and ministry. Regarding this god, Humboldt writes, 'How truly surprising is it to find that the Mexicans, who seem to have been unacquainted with the doctrine of the migration of the soul and the Metempsychosis should have believed in the incarnation of the only Son of the supreme God, Tomacateuctli. For Mexican mythology, speaking of no other Son of God except Quetzalcoatl, who was born of Chimelman, the virgin of Tula (without man), by His breath alone, by which may be signified His word or will, when it was announced to Chimelman, by the celestial messenger whom He despatched to inform her that she should conceive a son, it must be presumed this was Quetzalcoatl, who was the only son. Other authors might be adduced to show that the Mexicans believe that this Quetzalcoatl was both God and man; that He had, previously to His incarnation, existed from eternity, and that He had been the Creator both of the world and man; and that He had descended to reform the world by endurance, and being King of Tula, was crucified for the sins of mankind, etc., as is plainly declared in the tradition of Yucatan, and mysteriously represented in the Mexican paintings.'"—Pres. John Taylor, Mediation and Atonement, p. 201.
7. Survival of the Hebrew Language among American Tribes.—"It is claimed that such survivals are numerous in the religious songs and ceremonies of many of the tribes. A number of writers who visited or resided among the tribes of the northern continent, assert that the words Yehovah, Yah, Ale, and Hallelujah, could be distinctly heard in these exercises. Laet and Escarbotus assure us that they often heard the South American Indians repeat the sacred word Hallelujah."—Elder George Reynolds, The Language of the Book of Mormon.
8. "The Origin of the Pre-Columbian Civilization of America."—Under this title an instructive article by G. Elliot Smith appeared in Science vol. xliv, pp. 190-195 (August 11, 1916). As to the interest accorded to the subject, the author says: "In the whole range of ethnological discussion perhaps no theme has evoked livelier controversies and excited more widespread interest than the problems involved in the mysteries of the wonderful civilization that revealed itself to the astonished Spaniards on their first arrival in America.
"During the last century, which can be regarded as covering the whole period of scientific investigation in anthropology, the opinions of those who have devoted attention to such inquiries have undergone the strangest fluctuations. If one delves into the anthropological journals of forty or fifty years ago they will be found to abound in careful studies on the part of many of the leading ethnologists of the time, demonstrating, apparently in a convincing and unquestionable manner, the spread of curious customs or beliefs from the Old World to the New." The writer decries the fallacy of assuming that similarities in customs and culture of widely separated peoples can be explained on any other basis than that of a common origin, and proceeds as follows: "Why then, it will be asked, in the face of the overwhelming mass of definite and well-authenticated evidence clearly pointing to the sources in the Old World from which American civilization sprung, do so many ethnologists refuse to accept the clear and obvious meaning of the facts and resort to such childish subterfuges as I have mentioned? Putting aside the influence of Darwin's work, the misunderstanding of which, as Huxley remarked, 'led shallow persons to talk nonsense in the name of anthropological science,' the main factor in blinding so many investigators to appreciate the significance of the data they themselves so laboriously collect results from a defect incidental to the nature of their researches.... The failure to recognize the fact, recently demonstrated so convincingly by Dr. Rivers, that useful arts are often lost is another, and perhaps the chief, difficulty that has stood in the way of an adequate appreciation of the history of the spread of civilization." Dr. Smith presents an impressive array of evidence pointing to the Old World and specifically to Egypt, as the source of many of the customs by which the American aborigines are distinguished. The article is accompanied by a map showing probable routes of travel from the Old World to the New, and two landing places on the west coast, one in Mexico and another near the boundary common to Peru and Chile, from which places the immigrants spread.