Who and Where Are the Lamanites?
” (p. 15). In this article, he explains that the term “Lamanite” initially referred to the descendants of Laman, but shortly afterwards took on a broader term in which “the name Lamanite referred to a religious/political faction whose distinguishing feature was its opposition to the church. (See Jacob 1:13-14.)” He continues: Lineage became an increasingly minor factor, and later there are many examples of Lamanites becoming Nephites and Nephites becoming Lamanites. For nearly 200 years after the coming of Christ to the Americas, there were no Lamanites “nor any manner of -ites; but they were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.” (4 Ne. 1:17.) Soon, however, a part of the people fell away and took upon them the name of Lamanites; “therefore there began to be Lamanites again in the land.” (4 Ne. 1:20.) Clearly, Lamanite in this case again refers to the state of righteousness of a political/religious group, presumably a composite of the descendants of many of
Ensign, Dec. 1975, 15 To produce a map that shows where the Lamanites of the world are located today, the mapmaker must first decide exactly what a Lamanite is. This turns out to be no small task, because the term Lamanite is used in several different senses in the scriptures to describe a particular racial lineage, a political/religious group, a covenant people, etc. However, the Old and New Testaments and the Book of Mormon, viewed together in one limited sense as a partial record of the peopling of the earth, provide a useful context in which to view this problem. Click to View Larger Format Descendants of the Book of Mormon peoples (Population density) The history of the peopling of the earth is really a history of the scattering of the descendants of Noah, who is sometimes referred to as the second father of mankind. This general scattering began soon after the Flood when the sons of Noah and their children began to spread forth in their lands, after their nations (see Gen. 10:5,
