In 1823, seven years before the Book of Mormon was published, Ethan Smith had written View of the Hebrews, a compilation of popular opinions about the origins of the American Indians, who supposedly descended from the Hebrew tribes. Some have claimed that this book was a source for the Book of Mormon. The book was circulated in the area where Joseph lived. Ethan Smith was a Congregational minister living in Poultney, Vermont, Oliver Cowdery’s home until 1825 when he moved west and met Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith’s own birthplace, Sharon, Vermont, was only 40 miles from Poultney. But View of the Hebrews, which was expanded in the 1825 edition, was also read widely in New York, where the Joseph Smith family moved. Several endorsements of the book from people living in New York were included in the second edition of the book, one from Eden, New York, a town as far west as Buffalo.

Ethan Smith had collected reports about the Hebrew origin of the Indians from missionaries and traders who had lived among them. This idea was also held by such well-known American religious leaders as Roger Williams, William Penn, Cotton Mather, and Jonathan Edwards, as well as authors James Adair, Charles Crawford, Elias Boudinot, and Josiah Priest. Priest had published two books supporting the thesis. In The Wonders of Nature and Providence Displayed (editions printed in 1825 and 1826) he concluded, after quoting some forty writers, that most ministers of New England and the Middle States believed the Indians were descendants of the Hebrews. Between 1833 and 1838 he published eight editions of the second book, American Antiquities.

Although there is no direct evidence that Joseph Smith ever read View of the Hebrews before the Book of Mormon was translated, in an 1842 article in the Times and Seasons he did use a quote from American Antiquities and an allusion to Ethan Smith as support for the validity of his own work. Certainly then, these ideas about the origin of the Indians were widely circulated during the time and at the place Joseph was translating the Book of Mormon.

There are at least five themes found in View of the Hebrews (1825 edition) which have parallels in the Book of Mormon.

1 Ethan Smith, like Joseph Smith, believed that the American Indians descended from the ancient Hebrews. But Ethan Smith concluded "from various authors and travelers among the Indians, the fact that the American Indians are the ten tribes of Israel" (p. 85). The Book of Mormon describes a people descended from only three tribes—Lehi’s descendants from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, two of the lost tribes, and Mulek’s descendants from the tribe of Judah. The opening chapters of both books deal with the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of Israel. Both books then describe the gathering and restoration of Israel to its own land. Ethan Smith quotes the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, which the Angel Moroni also recited to Joseph Smith on September 12, 1828 (History of the Church, Vol. I, p. 12). The migrations of Ethan Smith’s "lost tribes" are not unlike those of the Book of Mormon Jaredites. Both groups journeyed north into a valley—the valley of the Euphrates for the "lost tribes" and the valley of Nimrod for the Jaredites. Both finally crossed the sea—the lost tribes in a year and a half, the Jaredites in 344 days—to an uninhabited land "where man never dwelt" (tribes) or "into that quarter where there never had man been (Jaredites, Ether 2:15).

2 In both books savage tribes destroyed their civilized brethren in a final great battle.—The savage group had been judged or cursed by God and become "idle hunters" in the "wilderness.." Other parallels are mentioned (see sidebar).

3 In both accounts, sacred records, handed down from generation to generation, were buried in a hill and then found years later. Ethan Smith related an Indian tradition "that the book which the white people have was once theirs" (p. 115), that "having lost the knowledge of reading it... they buried it with an Indian Chief" (p. 223). He tells of some Hebrew parchments "dug up... on Indian Hill .... probably from an Indian grave" (pp. 217-218) and speculates that some ancient Hebrew writing, once possessed by "a leading character in Israel," could have been buried with him when he died. "Some people afterward removing that earth, discover this fragment .... Something like this may possibly have occurred to favour of our Indians being of Israel" (pp. 217-218). 2 Similar ideas are found in Mormon’s description of burying sacred "records which had been handed clown by our father," burying them up "in the Hill Cumorah" (Mormon 6:6).

4 Both the View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon identify the American Indians as the "stick of Joseph or Ephraim," the tribe of Joseph, which will be reunited with the stick of Judah, the Jews, as prophesied by Ezekiel (chapter 37). Ten tribes of Israel (the stick of Joseph) were carried into captivity by the Assyrians in 722 B.C.; the Jews in the Southern Kingdom (the stick of Judah) were exiled by the Babylonians in 587 B.C. Ezekiel 37 described the reunion of these two houses of Abraham (Smith, pp. 52-54; D&C 2.7:5).

5 Both books inform Americans that they should convert the Indians to their Hebraic scriptural heritage. The Book of Mormon quotes Isaiah and prophesies that "God will raise up a mighty nation among the Gentiles" (1 Nephi 22:7), which shall carry a message "unto the remnant of our seed..., wherefore they shall be gathered together to the lands of their inheritance" (2 Nephi 30:3, 5; 1 Nephi 22:12). View of the Hebrews states that it is "probable that the Christian people of the United States of America are the subjects of that address" (Of Isaiah 18; Smith p. 228). Ethan Smith exhorts: "Look at the origins of those degraded natives of your continent .... teach thern their ancient history; their former blessings; their being cast away; and the promises of their return .... Go thou nation highly distinguished in the last days; save the remnant of my people" (pp. 249-250).