Joseph's money-digging began in earnest with his discovery of a "seer stone" when he was digging a well for Mason Chase. Martin Harris stated that it came from twenty-four feet underground, and Joseph Capron testified that Joseph could see wondrous sights in it, "ghosts, infernal spirits, mountains of gold and silver." Joseph's wife once described this stone as "not exactly black but rather dark in color," though she admitted to none of the early uses to which it was put.

In later years Joseph frankly admitted in his church newspaper and also in his journal that he had been a money-digger, although, he wrote, it was not particularly profitable as he got "only fourteen dollars a month for it." * But that he indulged in all the hocus-pocus attributed to him by his neighbors he vigorously denied.

Crystal-gazing is an old profession and has beer an honored one. Egyptians stared into a pool of ink, the Greeks into a mirror, the Aztecs into a quartz crystal, and Europeans into a sword blade or glass of sherry — any translucent surface that made the eyes blur with long gazing. When Joseph Smith first began to use his seer or "peep" stone, he employed the folklore familiar to rural America. The details of his rituals and incantations are unimportant because they were commonplace, and Joseph gave up money-digging when he was twenty-one for a profession far more exciting.

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Mystified by his ability to translate the characters without even unwrapping the plates, merely by staring into his stone or stones (for she said later that he used the Urim and Thummim for the first 116 pages and the little dark seer stone for the remainder t) — [Emma] began to take down his dictation.

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David Whitmer, a young farmer from Fayette, New York, and a friend of Cowdery, paid them a visit and watched the process of translation with great wonder. "Joseph Smith," he said, "would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man."

For all the magic appliances at Joseph's disposal, the work progressed as unevenly as with the ordinary novelist. "At times," David Whitmer wrote, "when Brother Joseph would attempt to translate, he would look into the hat in which the stone was placed, he found he was spiritually blind and could not translate. He told us that his mind dwelt too much on earthly things, and various causes would make him incapable of proceeding with the translation. When in this condition he would go out and pray; and when he became sufficiently humble before God, he could then proceed with the translation." Martin Harris stated that when Joseph became weary of translating he went out and exercised by throwing stones out on the river.