Secret Groups

The Book of Mormon also makes reference to a “secret society” or to “secret combinations” at four periods in Jaredite and Nephite history. Those terms are not used in contemporary discourse among Mesoamericanist scholars; nevertheless, characteristics of organizations that did exist agree at a number of points with the nature and modus operandi of secret institutions in Book of Mormon societies. According to Mormon’s record and Ether’s account, as well as general sociological and historical studies of this phenomenon, this class of social groups or movements would have attracted adherents who were frustrated by limited chances for social mobility in the conventional social structure.

Social scientists and historical researchers have found that these units tend to arise in times of societal stress. Societies of aggrieved parties would be organized to evade established norms as they sought power by subversive and sometimes violent means. Commonly they recruited followers with promises of power, wealth, and sensual satisfaction. Initiates had to rise through successive levels of membership. Early on in their history, these institutions promise to alleviate grievances of the masses, but participants who rise to higher levels of the “inner knowledge” learn that that is mainly propaganda. “The constant rule of the secret societies is that the real authors never show themselves,” nor are their objectives transparent.

Among the Nephites, the schemers “commit[ted] secret murders and . . . rob[bed] . . . and plunder[ed]” (Helaman 6:17). They entered into covenants and oaths to protect one another from discovery or punishment by the law. They had “their signs, yea, their secret signs, and their secret words . . . And whosoever of . . . their band should reveal . . . their wickedness . . . [was] tried . . . according to the laws” of their own organization (vv. 21-24). Such groups had not only a social but ideological rationale that was expressed through “idols” and “their own [cultic] ways” (v. 31). Giddianhi, a leader of this “band of robbers” (3 Nephi 3:1) in the first century AD, offered to the Nephite chief judge partnership in his society of Nephite rulers would surrender “your cities, your lands, and your possessions” (3 Nephi 3:6) to his army-sized cohort. He claimed that his secret society was “of ancient date” (v. 9) and that they were only trying to “recover their rights and government” that they claimed had been unjustly denied them (v. 10). Yet despite a flattering propaganda front, their chief concern was the accumulation of wealth and power (Helaman 6:17, 39).

Certain Mesoamerican correspondences come to mind. Among the Aztecs, the pochteca consisted of merchants organized to be notably autonomous from, yet cooperative with, the political elite. They were structured in a complex hierarchy of ranks; a series of rites of passages were necessary for an individual to rise to be an esteemed or powerful member of this merchant guilt. These promotions required the accumulation of sufficient wealth form distant, high-yield trading ventures to pay for a series of initiatory feasts. Carlson thought the militaries shown in the famous murals of Cacaxtla were of the Olmeca-Xicalanca (no relationship to the ancient Olmec), who were well known in Mexican tradition—a body of “multiethnic, multilingual Mayanized ‘Mexicans’ from the Gulf Coast region—ruled by pochteca-style merchant elite” and organized in “guilds.” In short, they appear to have been an army controlled by exploiters who had taken over a subject people-just as Giddianhi did with the help of certain ambitious Lamanites and hoped to do as well with the Nephites.

The pochteca phenomenon had a long history in Mesoamerica. Brown was confident that Teotihuacán merchant guilds that engaged in trade with Kaminalijuyu in the Early/Middle Classic period had all the characteristics of their later Aztec counterparts. Santley believed that Teotihuacán merchants formed a distinct societal entity with their own guildlike organization, complete with a distinct cult and rules of entry and conduct. Others think the pattern began centuries earlier among the Olmec.

Secrecy-based predatory groups in Mesoamerica of course took varied forms. One example was the nuhalistas. According to the 16th-century Spanish priest Bernardino de Sahagún, they were “people like the assassins [a secret society of the Near East that took its name form use of the hashish drug], daring and accustomed to kill, they carried on their persons pieces of jaguar skin . . . to make them powerful, brave and fearsome.” To obtain their power, one had to be trained in black magic after undergoing severe initiation. The jaguar was especially employed as a guardian spirit, being considered lazy, cunning, and pleasure loving as well as the most terrifying beast to its enemies. This brings to mind the jaguar shown on Relief 4 at Chalcatzingo, Morelos, where it is shown attacking a hapless human victim. Bennyhoff saw “secret societies” in the early “Chalcatzingan tradition” of the first millennium BC, apparently based on the fact that masks began to be used them. Sometimes hallucinogenic substances were used to induce visions of an animal guardian spirit. According to one researcher, in colonial Spanish times the nahualistas continued a pre-Columbian pattern in which they “formed a coherent association extending over most of southern Mexico and Guatemala,” and members were classified under different degrees or levels, each advancement demanding further initiation rites and revelations of new secret knowledge to the initiate.

There are other Mesoamerican institutions that may be compared to the Nephite/Jaredite secret societies in certain ways. Some scholars believe that Aztec military orders, such as the “Eagle Warriors,” were military solidarities foreshadowed by earlier tightly knit groups of warriors, perhaps in the period of Teotihuacán.

Since the inner motives—the incentive engines—of such groups were kept largely secret, it is unlikely that we will learn much more about their nature and history than we know now, but it seems that the Book of Mormon’s picture of secret organizations tends to agree in significant ways with one or more Mesoamerican social models.