The Hebrew origin of the American Indian had been postulated by writers since the colonial period. Well-known preachers, such as William Penn, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, and Jonathan Edwards, had all considered the American Indian to be a remnant of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel. The historian Hubert Howe Bancroft acknowledged that "the theory that the Americans are of Jewish origin has been discussed more minutely and at greater length than any other." Josiah Priest advocated that view in 1825 and later referred to forty-six authors who espoused similar views, adding that "the opinion that the American Indians are descendants of the Lost Ten Tribes is now a popular one and generally believed."

In A View of the Hebrews. Ethan Smith quotes the German explorer Baron von Humboldt, who held that: "Israel brought into this new continent a considerable degree of civilization; and the better part of them long laboured to maintain it. But others fell into the hunting and consequent savage state; whose barbarous hordes invaded their more civilized brethren, and eventually annihilated most of them" (p. 184). The story of the Nephites and Lamanites seems to follow this script.

The similarities between the Book of Mormon and A View of the Hebrews are pervasive. In the opening chapters, both authors write of the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of Israel, then predict the gathering of Israel in its own land. Isaiah is quoted extensively by both authors in support of this prediction. The Book of Mormon incorporates eighteen chapters of Isaiah nearly verbatim.

Whereas Ethan Smith traces the American Indians to "ten tribes of Israel" (p. 85), the Book of Mormon describes their Nephite ancestors as coming from mainly two tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh, along with some "Mulekites" from the tribe of Judah. The Book of Mormon Jaredites are not unlike Ethan Smith's "lost tribes." The tribes in both stories journeyed northward into a valley and crossed the sea to an uninhabited land — "where there never had man been" (Book of Mormon, Ether 2:5) vs. "where man never dwelt" (A View of the Hebrews, p. 75).

Both books told of inspired prophets among the ancient Americans, who were a highly civilized people. In each story, savage tribes destroyed their civilized brethren in a final great battle. Here, the Book of Mormon seems to follow the error of prevalent folklore, by presuming, like Ethan Smith, the use of iron and steel weapons in a stone age culture. The savage group had been "judged" (A View of the Hebrews) or "cursed" (Book of Mormon Lamanites) by God and had become idle hunters in the wilderness.

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," that "having lost the knowledge of reading it ... they buried it with an Indian Chief." He tells of some Hebrew parchments "dug up ... on Indian Hill (near Pittsfield, Massachusetts)...probably from an Indian grave" and speculates that this could have been once possessed by a "leading character in Israel" and could have been buried with him when he died. Similar ideas are found in the Nephite figure Mormon's description of burying sacred "records which had been handed down by our father," burying them up "in the Hill Cumorah" (Mormon 6:6).

Both authors identify the American Indians as the "stick of Joseph or Ephraim" (from the northern Ten Tribes of Israel) that is expected to be reunited with the "stick of Judah" (the Jews of the southern kingdom of Judah). (See Ezek. 37:16-17.) In 1830, advertising circulars portrayed the Book of Mormon as "the stick of Joseph taken from the hand of Ephraim."

Both texts advocated the mission of the American nation in the last days to gather these Indian remnants of the house of Israel and convert them to Christianity, thus fulfilling prophecy and bringing about the millennium.

After examining the numerous similarities between these two nineteenth-century works, Mormon historian and General Authority Brigham H. Roberts wrote:

Did Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews furnish structural material for Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon? It has been pointed out in these pages that there are many things in the former book that might well have suggested many major things in the other. Not a few things merely, one or two, or a half dozen, but many; and it is this fact of many things of similarity and the cumulative forces of them, that makes them so serious a menace to Joseph Smith's story of the Book of Mormon's origin.