The Book of Mormon was first advertised for sale by its twenty-three-year-old printer Egbert B. Grandin in his newspaper the Wayne Sentinel. After reproducing the book's title page, the advertisement simply ran: The above work, containing about 600 pages, large Duodecimo, is now for sale, wholesale and retail, at the Palmyra Bookstore, byHOWARD & GRANDIN.PALMYRA, March 26, 1830.1But while Grandin remained relatively subdued, around him and his unassuming print shop in Palmyra, New York, swirled controversy. In nearby Rochester, the Daily Advertiser and Telegraph denounced the new book with the booming headline: “BLASPHEMY – ‘BOOK OF MORMON,’ alias THE GOLDEN BIBLE.” The article thundered: “The ‘Book of Mormon’ has been placed in our hands. A viler imposition was never practised. It is an evidence of fraud, blasphemy and credulity, shocking to the Christian and moralist.”2 Not to be outdone in denouncing this new “humbug”—the standard pejorative for the book and its “author and proprietor” Joseph Smith Jr.—another Rochester paper, the Gem, excoriated the text as “partak[ing] largely of Salem Witchcraft-ism, and Jemima Wilkinson-ism, and is in point of blasphemy and imposition, the very summit.” So ludicrous was the fraud that the Gem could not even be bothered to accurately report the basic contents of the volume: “The book comes before the public under the general title of the ‘Book of Mormon,’ arranged under different heads, something as follows. The book of Mormon—containing the books of Nephi, Nimshi, Pukei, and Buckeye—and contains some four or five hundred pages. It comes out under the ‘testimony of three witnesses,’ and of ‘six witnesses,’ who say they ‘have seen and hefted the plates,’ that ‘they have the appearance of gold,’ and that divers and strange characters are ‘imprinted on them.’”3Writing under the pseudonym Obadiah Dogberry, the quarrelsome Abner Cole, who had previously pilfered extracts of the Book of Mormon while it was at press,4 heaped ridicule upon the text in the summer of 1830 with his satirical Book of Pukei.5 In Cole's scornful recasting, Smith was depicted as a money-digging huckster and the Book of Mormon as a superstitious farce; a contemptuous portrait that has persisted among many of Smith's skeptics to the present. “We are the decided advocates of civil and religious liberty,” Cole maintained after his attacks, “and where superstition itself can be considered (if ever it can) harmless, we shall not interfere.” However, the “golden Bible” strained religious tolerance to the breaking point. “When a cloak of religion, aided by a long beard is made use of for the vilest of purposes, and where a pretended messenger of heaven principly [sic] exerts his influence, on the superstitious and ignorant, for the sole purpose of seducing them from the path of virtue, it is time the wretch was unmasked and his hideous form exhibited for the inspection of an indignant public.”6This torrent of ridicule is what Smith and his early followers had to face eventually on an international scale as they continued to uphold and promote this “very strange [new] book”7 of scripture comparable to the Bible.8 “In contrast to Mormons, who regarded the Book of Mormon as evidence of Smith's prophetic call, anti-Mormons found it to be the glaring marker of his deception,” and expended no small amount of effort to demonstrate its fraudulence.9 Whether in the form of the theological juggernaut Alexander Campbell,10 the Ohio printer Eber D. Howe,11 the antagonistic pamphleteers Origen Bacheler and La Roy Sunderland,12 or the hardline sectarians Daniel P. Kidder and Henry Caswall,13 early Latter-day Saints encountered an imposing phalanx of hard-hitting publications unremittingly skeptical of the Book of Mormon and Smith's visionary claims. These and other publications not only cast aspersion on Smith's character and credibility, but also dismissed the authenticity of the Book of Mormon as a purported miraculous translation of an ancient record, offering instead naturalistic explanations for its existence and contents.14 These counter-explanations for the existence of the Book of MormonNotwithstanding this opposition, rather than wilting at these criticisms or walking back Joseph Smith's foundational truth claims, early converts to the Church of Christ vigorously defended the Book of Mormon in both the press and in proselyting efforts.16 They eagerly assembled different strands of evidence for the Book of Mormon's authenticity to deflect criticism and to reinforce the faith. One of the points repeatedly stressed by early church members was that faith could be placed in Smith's seership because the Book of Mormon's historical claims of advanced ancient civilisations in the New World found support from American antiquities. The reception of the Book of Mormon by its earliest believing readers included conscious attempts to assess and bolster its historicity.As Terryl Givens has already observed, early church members understood the Book of Mormon as, among other things, a signifier of Joseph Smith's prophetic legitimacy. “The history of the Book of Mormon's place in Mormonism and American religion generally has always been more connected to its status as signifier than signified, or its role as a sacred sign rather than its function as persuasive theology. The Book of Mormon is preeminently a concrete manifestation of sacred utterance, and thus an evidence of divine presence, before it is a repository of theological claims.”17 This is understandable since, as Givens has elsewhere noted, “In a particularly pronounced way, the meaning and value of the Book of Mormon as a religious text are tied to a specific set of historical claims.”18This point was not missed by the first generation of church members. Indeed, an important component to their acceptance of the Book of Mormon as scripture was that the text was, in their eyes, an authentic record of ancient America, which Smith would have been incapable of fabricating. The reminiscence of David Whitmer, one of the book's Three Witnesses, provides a useful example of how this paradigm operated in the minds of some early believers. “When we were first told to publish our statement, we felt sure the people would not believe it, for the Book told of a people who were refined and dwelt in large cities; but the Lord told us that He would make it known to the people, and people should discover the ruins of the lost cities and abundant evidence of the truth of what is written in the Book.”19 To show the variety of evidence early converts to Joseph Smith's restorationist movement offered for the Book of Mormon's historicity, I will highlight sources in this article that are representative of mainstream Latter-day Saint thinking on this subject from 1830 to 1844, and will discuss one important way in which the book was received among its first generation of faithful readers.William Wines Phelps was the first Latter-day Saint to publish a systematic effort to defend the historicity of the Book of Mormon.20 Phelps, a printer before his conversion, was called by revelation to be “a Printer unto the Church” in Independence, Jackson County, Missouri, on July 20, 1831.21 Phelps obligingly moved to Independence later that year and assumed his role as printer of Smith's revelations and editor of the church's first newspaper, The Evening and the Morning Star.22 The hyper-millenarian Phelps made his eschatological expectations clear at the outset of his publishing venture,23 wasting no time in attempting to establish the authenticity of the Book of Mormon as part of his efforts to prepare readers for Christ's imminent return. Besides offering biblical prooftexts for the inspiration of the record, the inaugural issue of the Star included his remarks: “Independent of bible proof on the subject before us, we have the remains of towns, cities, forts &c, which silently declare to the beholder: We were built by a civilized people.”24 What ruins did Phelps have in mind? In the ninth issue of the first volume of the Star he republished extracts from the London Literary Gazette reporting on the expedition of Juan Galindo (1802–1840)—the military governor of Petén, Guatemala (then part of the Federal Republic of Central America)—that uncovered sizable ruins and other antiquities. “We are glad to see the proof begin to come, of the original or ancient inhabitants of this continent,” wrote Phelps after quoting extracts from Galindo's dispatches. “It is good testimony in favor of the book of Mormon, and the book of Mormon is good testimony that such things as cities and civilization, ‘prior to the fourteenth century,’ existed in America.” Quoting Helaman 3:1–13 and 3 Nephi 9:5–12, Phelps did not hesitate to correlate “the people who lived upon this continent” described in the Book of Mormon with Galindo's discoveries in Central America.25Phelps cast his net wide as he trolled for historical evidence for the Book of Mormon. Besides discoveries in Central America, antiquities in North America were also used to support the book's historicity. In one instance, Phelps wrote of a local farmer in Rowan County, North Carolina, who found “a stone house . . . completely imbedded in the earth” that bore the marks of architectural sophistication. Elsewhere in Cincinnati, Ohio, “an artificial peach and pear, cut out of stone, with a complete imitation of the stem and blossom end” was excavated “which proved beyond the possibility of a doubt, that the skill of some human being had been exerted in imitation of nature's beautiful works.” For Phelps these examples were “not only proof . . . but . . . good proof, to those that want evidence, that the book of Mormon is true,” since the Book of Mormon described ancient peoples adept at “arts and sciences.”26“As to the Jaredites,” Phelps wrote in another article in August 1832, “no more is known than is contained in The Book of Ether.” Notwithstanding, Phelps affirmed: “God is great, and when we look abroad in the earth, and take a glimpse through the long avenue of departed years, we can not only discover the traces in artificial curiosities, and common works, and small hills, mountain caves, and extensive prairies, where the Jaredites filled the measure of their time, but, as they were a very large race of men, whenever we hear that uncommon large bones have been dug up from the earth, we may conclude, That was the skeleton of a Jaredite.” Phelps linked the purported discovery of abnormally large skeletal remains with the “large and mighty” Jaredites (Ether 15:26; 1:34) that “must have had the unmolested control and use of America, near 1500 years.”27While antiquities could be used to vindicate the Book of Mormon in Phelps's thinking, the book could also be used to resolve debated contemporary issues. For Phelps, the speculation surrounding the origins of the Native Americans was just one matter answered by the book.28 “That wonderful conjecture, which left a blank as to the origin, or forefathers of the American Indians, was done away by the book of Mormon,” reasoned Phelps in 1833.29 The book's value for the printer was not only in its doctrinal teachings or as a sign of Joseph Smith's divine calling; it also offered anthropological insight into issues that plagued contemporary authorities.Few personalities shaped early Latter-day Saint thought more than the brothers Orson and Parley Parker Pratt. Scholars have deemed Orson “the most prolific and perhaps influential early apologist for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,”30 while Parley has been lauded as, “after Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, the most influential figure in shaping early Mormon history, culture, and theology.”31 Having been called by Smith to the original Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1835, the Pratt brothers took their roles as vocal defenders and expounders of the Book of Mormon earnestly. As Terryl L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow have explained, “The Book of Mormon fired [Parley's] religious imagination both as a harbinger of millennial events and for proclaiming American Indians to be the descendants in part of an Israelite civilization.”32 The same can manifestly be said of his brother Orson.For example, in 1838 Parley published a lengthy reply to La Roy Sunderland, “a revivalist preacher and social reformer” who railed against Latter-day Saint missionary successes in his newspaper Zion's Watchman.33 In his Mormonism Unveiled, Parley argued that Sunderland's critiques willfully misrepresented the Book of Mormon. “Mr. La Roy Sunderland has lied concerning the truth of Heaven, the fulness of the Gospel; and has blasphemed against the word of God.”34 But while Parley may have been overly defensive in the face of sectarian criticism, he was also attuned to close readings of the Book of Mormon and mined the book for prophetic inspiration. “The Book of Mormon contains many Prophecies, yet future, with names, places and dates so definite, that a child may understand. Indeed it is one of the peculiar characteristics of the Book of Mormon, that its predictions are plain, simple, definite, literal, positive, and very express, as to the time of their fulfilment.”35Parley also pioneered a staple of later Latter-day Saint apologetic tactics by directly acknowledging and responding to claimed anachronisms and contradictions in the Book of Mormon. “Mr. S. also says, ‘[the Book of Mormon] speaks of a Compass, five or six hundred years before Christ.’ But he does not tell us the fact, as the Book does, in relation to the invention of this Compass.” Parley continued: The Book says it was prepared by the hand of the Lord; but perhaps Mr. S. thinks the Lord could not have invented a Compass in that early age of Arts and Sciences: but some scientific men profess to trace the knowledge of the compass back to very early ages. Indeed, some show reasons for believing it was invented in Egypt, in the days of her glory—but be this as it may; our God is just as good at mechanical inventions, architecture, tayloring, smithing, stone working, &c. &c., as at any other business.36Parley's answers to these objections set an early trajectory for how twenty-first-century Latter-day Saint apologists typically respond by invoking precedent from antiquity and insisting not to rule out divine intervention.When he wasn't sparring with opponents, Parley focused his attention on proselyting and using the Book of Mormon in his missionary toolkit. In his hugely influential A Voice of Warning, first published in 1837, he provided a description of its origin and a defense of its authenticity.37 For Parley, the Book of Mormon contained “the history of the ancient inhabitants of America, who were a branch of the house of Israel, of the tribe of Joseph; of whom the Indians are still a remnant.”38 This led to his crucial argument “that America is a promised land to the seed of Joseph.”39 To prove this, he appealed to biblical prophecy that he felt spoke of the Book of Mormon and superimposed his interpretation onto his view of the ethnic landscape of America.Parley added: “Can any one tell whether the Indians of America are of Israel, unless the Lord should reveal it? [The Book of Mormon] reveals the origin of the American Indians which was before a mystery.”41 Like Phelps before him, Parley saw that the importance of the Book of Mormon was in what it offered to the world, as well as in the vindication seen in the recovery of ancient American antiquities or biblical prophecies.Parley added to these arguments two years later in the second edition of A Voice of Warning by referring to “circumstantial evidence from American Antiquities, and from the traditions of Natives” that bolstered the Book of Mormon's historicity and thereby its inspiration.42 Citing contemporary authorities such as Elias Boudinot43 and Josiah Priest44 and correlating the ruins of North and Central America with the destruction of the Nephites described in the Book of Mormon,45 Parley declared that the book “definitely [answers] how and when the[se] American Antiquities became buried.”46 Especially impressive to him were the “ruins of the city of Otolum [Palenque, Yucatan], discovered in North America,” which he drew attention to by reproducing Priest's description of the discovery.47 These and other “equally wonderful” ruins in Mexico the apostle celebrated as “just commencing to arouse the attention of the schools of Europe, who hitherto have denied that America could boast of her antiquities.”48Discoveries of Indian ruins in Ohio also drew Parley's attention,49 and the results of archaeological progress “in many other parts of North and South America” offered confirmation of the “extraordinary and wonderful account of events, which transpired in this country during the crucifiction [sic] of Messiah” as described in the Book of Mormon.50 For Parley, the groundbreaking discoveries of antiquarians supplied ample evidence for the Book of Mormon that he used to great rhetorical effect. “We now close this subject,” he concluded, “by saying to all people, that if they wish information on the Antiquities of America; if they wish historical, prophetical, or doctrinal information of the highest importance, let them carefully read the Book of Mormon.”51 In Parley's mind the prophetic inspiration of the Book of Mormon was closely linked to its historicity that now received powerful vindication with the recovery of pre-Columbian American antiquity.Like his brother, Orson Pratt became an expounder on the Book of Mormon early in his ecclesiastical career. In 1840 he published his missionary pamphlet A[n] Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions.52 The tract “proved to be one of the more influential Mormon tracts to come out of this period,” and Joseph Smith used it in two of his own histories published in 1842 and 1844.53 Besides providing a contemporary report of Smith's early visions, Orson also explained the origins of the Book of Mormon and commented on the book's geographical setting in the Americas. Orson “superimposed his understanding of Book of Mormon geography onto the Western Hemisphere by placing the Nephites in South America and the Jaredites in North America. Pratt's association of Book of Mormon peoples with the history of all of North and South America matched common understanding of early Latter-day Saints.”54Of the Book of Mormon, Orson wrote, “In this important and most interesting book, we can read the history of ancient America, from its early settlement by a colony who came from the tower of Babel, at the confusion of languages, to the beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era.” He continued: By these Records we are informed, that America, in ancient times, has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first, or more ancient race, came directly from the great tower, being called Jaredites. The second race came directly from the city of Jerusalem, about six hundred years before Christ, being Israelites, principally the descendants of Joseph. The first nation, or Jaredites, were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inheritance of the country. The principal nation of the second race, fell in battle towards the close of the fourth century. The remaining remnant, having dwindled into an uncivilized state, still continue to inhabit the land, although divided into a “multitude of nations,” and are called by Europeans the “American Indians.”55Besides merely summarizing the contents of the Book of Mormon, Orson located specific Book of Mormon events in different parts of the Americas. Lehi and his family, for instance, “landed upon the western coast of South America” before “emigrat[ing] towards the northern parts of South America, leaving the wicked nation [the Lamanites] in possession of the middle and southern parts of the same.”56 Orson and others had taught this geography years before it appeared in his pamphlet. The Catholic Telegraph reported in 1832 that Orson and missionary companion Lyman Johnson taught “six hundred years before Christ a certain prophet called Lehi went out to declare and promulgate the prophecies to come; he came across the water into South America.”57 Similarly, the Fredonia Censor reported in the same year that “a couple of young men styling themselves Mormonites,” evidently Orson and Johnson while serving in the Eastern States beginning in February 1832, were teaching “a prophet of the name of Lehi . . . with another family who accompanied him, built themselves a ship and landed on the coast of South America.”58 Even earlier, the Observer and Telegraph reported Oliver Cowdery as even more precisely locating Lehi's landing spot as the coast of Chile,59 an understanding that permeated Latter-day Saint thought throughout the rest of the nineteenth century and was eventually even attributed to Joseph Smith.60Regardless of wherever Lehi may have landed, Orson's geographical views published in A[n] Interesting Account reflect the widely held assumption of early Latter-day Saints that the span of North and South America saw the unfolding of Book of Mormon events and marked one of the earliest attempts in print to situate it in a real-world setting. Orson's publication would also act as a sort of prelude to the game-changing book that found its way into the hands of Joseph Smith in late 1841.In September 1841, John M. Bernhisel sent Joseph Smith a gift “as a small testimony of [his] gratitude to [Smith] as a Prophet of the Lord.”61 One month later, Wilford Woodruff delivered the gift—the two volume set Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.62 “The two-volume work by John Lloyd Stephens, with illustrations by Frederick Catherwood, describes the two explorers’ experiences and discoveries in 1839 and 1840 as they traveled through the region. It was widely praised in the American press for their interesting description of pre-Columbian ruins and their excellent illustrations, which pointed to a level of civilization in the region previously unanticipated by most Americans.”63 A June 1841 Times and Seasons editorial had already heralded Incidents of Travel as proving “beyond controversy that, on this vast continent, once flourished a mighty people, skilled in the arts and sciences, and whose splendor would not be eclipsed by any of the nations of Antiquity.”64 The paper deemed the evidence offered in the book “more proofs of the Book of Mormon.”Several months before that, the church's Millennial Star had also published notice of the new discoveries of Stephens and Catherwood alongside the Testimony of the Three Witnesses as “further proof positive of the Book of Mormon.”65 Latter-day Saint missionary Charles Thompson had also positively cited the volumes, arguing for the inspired truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.66 The New York American Advocate reported in October of 1841 on the activities of a “Mormon preacher” in the area who “immortalized” Stephens “and the figures described by him at Palenqua” in his proselytizing. So enthusiastically was this nameless missionary hyping the discoveries in Incidents of Travel that the paper quipped, “Mr. Stephens will soon become, no doubt, one of ‘the latter day saints,’ if not now one!”67 Before delivering the volumes, courier Woodruff himself spent some time reading them and recorded in his journal, “I felt truly interested in this work for it brought to light a flood of testimony in proof of the book of Mormon.”68On November 16, Smith acknowledged Bernhisel's “kind present” and felt “under many obligations for this mark of [his] esteem & friendship.” Smith “read the volumnes with the greatest interest & pleasure,” noting how “it unfolds & developes many things that are of great importance to this generation & corresponds with & supports the testimony of the Book of Mormon. [O]f all histories that have been written pertaining to the antiquities of this country, it is the most correct luminous & comprihensive.”69 It is understandable why Smith and others would be excited. Incidents of Travel offered nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints information that corroborated how they read the Book of Mormon and understood its historical and geographical setting.70 Above all, now they had what appeared to be outstanding vindication of their beleaguered book of scripture that had endured over a decade of ridicule and skepticism.While “there is little evidence that Joseph actively sought out relics to bolster his truth claims after the Book of Mormon was published,” he nevertheless “commented on such items when they were brought to his attention by others.” Years before receiving Incidents of Travel, for instance, Smith had identified the remains of a Lamanite warrior in Illinois.71 As explained by Mark Alan Wright: “When Native American artifacts were brought to his attention, Joseph would virtually always attempt to sacralize them by placing them within the context of scriptural peoples or places—generally, the very scriptures he claimed to bring to light. The artifacts and the scriptures had a symbiotic relationship in his mind; the scriptures provided the history of the objects and the objects proved the history of the scriptures.”72After assuming editorship of the Times and Seasons in March 1842,73 Smith highlighted the importance of Incidents of Travel and other works of American anthropology for the Book of Mormon.74 Between May and October of 1842, no less than seven editorials (some signed, some not) appeared that appealed to American antiquities in efforts to bolster the historicity of the Book of Mormon.75 The editorials repurposed artifacts and monuments from both North and Central America. “Joseph Smith never showed any interest in creating a geographic model for the Book of Mormon; any and all artifacts from virtually anywhere in the Americas were treated equally as evidence for the book's divine authenticity.”76As Smith and his clerks were eagerly publishing this evidence for Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo, Parley Pratt was doing the same for Latter-day Saints in England. In March 1842, the Millennial Star published extracts of Incidents of Travel “for the purpose of giving our readers some ideas of the antiquities of the Nephites—of their ancient cities, temples, monuments, towers, fortifications, and inscriptions now in ruin amid the solitude of an almost impenetrable forest.”77 Pratt exclaimed, “What a satisfaction [the discoveries were] for the lovers of intelligence.” For Pratt, Stephens and Catherwood were inspired by God to make their discoveries (even if they were incapable of realizing the full implications of what they had uncovered). Incidents of Travel confirmed the hemispheric geography for Book of Mormon events that Pratt shared with his brother Orson78 and furnished extraordinary evidence for the book's claims.An unsigned September 1842 Times and Seasons editorial commented similarly how: “It will be seen that the proof of the Nephites and Lamanites dwelling on this continent, according to the account in the Book of Mormon, is developing itself in a more satisfactory way than the most sanguine believer in that revelation, could have anticipated. It certainly affords us a gratification that the world of mankind does not enjoy, to give publicity to such important developments of the remains and ruins of those mighty people.” The awesome ruins depicted in Incidents of Travel satisfactorily demonstrated to the author that “the Lord has a hand in bringing to pass his strange act, and proving the Book of Mormon true in the eyes of all the people.” “It will be as it ever has been,” the editorial concluded, “the world will prove Joseph Smith a true prophet by circumstantial evidence, in experiments, as they did Moses and Elijah.”80 Smith shared this optimistic attitude. His November 1841 letter to Bernhisel shows that he valued Incidents of Travel as confirmation of the claims made in the Book of Mormon. Even if one assigns the authorship of the Times and Seasons editorials to collaborators or ghostwriters,81 “until October 1842 the newspaper bore Smith's name, which implied that he took editorial responsibility and thus endorsed all published content.”82 The fact that Smith neither censured nor distanced himself from any of these published reports during his time as editor is likewise significant, since on at least two other occasions he did so when he found content objectionable.83That was not the only occasion when the Latter-day Saints in the early 1840s took notice of Incidents of Travel and used it for apologetic purposes. As previously mentioned, Charles Thompson appealed to Incidents of Travel in his sustained argument for the Book of Mormon's authenticity, citing the work as “more evidence in proof of the Book of Mormon.”84 As with his fellow apologists and evangelists Phelps and the Pratt brothers, Thompson sought to establish the book's authenticity by first, showing how the book fulfilled biblical prophecy, and second, by demonstrating how its historical claims found confirmation among newly discovered American antiquities.85 From his survey of Josiah Priest, Stephens and Catherwood, and other sources, as well as from his own biblical prooftexting, Thompson felt that he had secured an “abundance of proof from recent discoveries, American Antiquities and prophecy, that the history contained in the Book of Mormon is true.”86In September 1842, the Times and Seasons reported on the missionary efforts of Elder George J. Adams who was proselytizing in Boston and throughout Massachusetts. As part of his proselyting, Adams had delivered a series of lectures in Boston. The first lecture discussed “the subject of the Book of Mormon.” Besides the usual biblical prooftexts, Adams also “introduced an account of many American antiquities together with the discoveries lately made by Mr. Stevens that all g