ORIGIN BEFORE THE CHRISTIAN ERA.
The Book of Mormon states that about 600 years before the birth of Christ a small colony of the Hebrew race left Jerusalem and was led by the Lord to the shores of America. This colony was composed, on the commencement of its journey, of two heads of families, Lehi and Ishmael, their wives and children, and a man named Zoram. They observed the law of Moses, and took with them a record of their forefathers, containing the five books of Moses, giving an account of the creation of the world, of Adam and Eve, and also of the Jews from the beginning down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah. This record was engraved on plates of brass. The youngest of the four sons of Lehi, Nephi by name, was the leading spirit in the company. He also commenced a record of their doing, which he engraved upon plates of metal in the language of the Egyptians, and in what their descendants called reformed Egyptian characters. (See I Nephi, also Mosiah 1: 4, and Mormon 9: 32-33).
That the origin of the American Indians dates back to some period before the Christian era is testified to by a number of archaeologists. Professor Waterman, of Boston, Massachusetts, in a lecture delivered in the Fine Arts Academy, Bristol, in 1849, speaking of the time the forefathers of the Indians went to America, says:
"When and whence, then, did they come? Albert Galatin, one of the profoundest philologists of the age, concluded that, so far as language afforded any clue, the time of their arrival could not have been long after the dispersion of the human family. Dr. Morton, after a series of investigations of many of the human crania found in the sepulchral mounds concluded that they must have dated back at least 2000 or 3000 years. It would not seem that all the family to which they belonged came with them, as they were but representatives of a people still in existence in the Old World, or who had become extinct since they emigrated. This people could not have been created in Africa, for its inhabitants were widely dissimilar to those of America; nor in Europe, which was without a native people agreeing at all with American races: then to Asia alone could they look for the origin of the American."
Not only does the above quotation express the opinion of scholars that the race referred to originated before the Christian era, but that it originated in Asia, which agrees with the statements in the Book of Mormon.
The following is taken from the Abbé Don Lorenzo Hervas' Letter to the Abbé Clavigero upon the Mexican Calendar, translated by Cullen and published in England in 1787:
"This Calendar has not been the discovery of the Mexicans, but a communication from some more enlightened people; and as the last are not to be found in America, we must seek for them elsewhere, in Asia or in Egypt. This supposition is confirmed by your affirmation, that the Mexicans had their Calendar from the Toltecas (originating from Asia), whose year, according to Boturini, was exactly adjusted by the course of the sun, more than a hundred years before the Christian era."
Dr. Wendell Mees, of Ithaca, New York, in an article published in a Scandinavian paper, Verdens Gang, sets forth his views in regard to the origin of the Aztecs, or ancient inhabitants of Mexico. He is of the belief that they went over to America "as early as the fourth century before Christ."