[1]. III. Nephi xi: 3-12.
[2]. Native Races, Bancroft, Vol. V., pp. 23, 24.
[3]. Such was the case with I Nephi and also Mosiah II. (Omni v: 12-22). Also King Benjamin, (Mosiah i: 2). In fact all the Nephite kings seem to have performed priestly functions; while under the Republic Alma was made president of the state and high priest of the Church, (Mosiah xxix: 42), and in the fifty-third year of the Republic Nephi, the son of Helaman, was, for a time, both president of the Republic and high priest of the Church. (Helaman iii: 37 and chapter iv.)
[4]. The Mexicans believed that Quetzalcohuatl united in his own person the character of king, priest and prophet. (Kingsborough, Vol. VI., p. 213). Prescott speaking of Montezuma says: "He had been elected to the regal dignity in preference to his brothers for his several qualification both as a ruler and a priest, a combination of offices sometimes found in the Mexican candidates, as it was, more frequently, in the Egyptian." (Conquest of Mexico, Vol. I., p. 215). The same author speaking of the Incas of Peru says: "As the representative of the sun he stood at the head of the priesthood and presided at the most important of the religious festivals." (Conquest of Peru, Vol. I., p. 41). In a note on this passage Mr. Prescott takes exception to what he calls the "sweeping assertion" of Carli to the effect that the royal and sacerdotal authority were blended together in Peru; yet in another passage Prescott himself compares the ancient Peruvian government with that of the Jews and says: "The Inca was both the law giver and the law. He was not merely the representative of divinity, or like the pope, its vicegerant, but he was divinity itself." (Conquest of Peru, Vol. I., p. 135). Tschudi emphatically states the union of king and priest in the Incas as follows: "Moreover, the monarchs of Peru, as children of the sun, and descendants, in a direct line, from Manco-Capac, were the high priests and oracles in religious matters. Thus uniting the legislative and executive power, the supreme command in war, absolute sovereignity in peace, and a venerated high priesthood in religious feasts, they exercised the highest power ever known to man—realized in their persons the famous union of the pope and the emperor, and more reasonably than Louis XIV., might have exclaimed: "I am the state!" (Peruvian Antiquities, Tschudi, pp. 74, 75).
[5]. Alma xlv: 18, 19.
[6]. III. Nephi i: 1-3.
[7]. Native Races, Vol. V., pp. 27, 28. Our author here follows Claviergo.
[8]. The chronology of legends, or even traditions, is very uncertain; and the variation of a few hundred years or so is not serious. The main point in the above case is that Votan came to America some hundreds of years B. C.
[9]. Of Lehi's family there were himself and wife, and four sons. Zoram, the servant of Laban; he married one of the daughters of Ishmael. Of Ishmael's family there was himself and wife, two married sons and five daughters. If, as it is supposed, the four sons of Lehi married the four daughters of Ishmael then there were nine families that formed the colony. Ishmael, however, died during the colony's wanderings in Arabia, and hence there were eight families that reached America in the Nephite colony. (For above facts see I. Nephi ii, vi, vii, xvi: 34).
[10]. I. Nephi ii.