Of all the documents that might be studied to help answer these questions, eleven are particularly noteworthy. These are documents that were generated during Joseph Smith’s lifetime, and that Joseph at least allowed, in one way or another, to be associated with his name in significant ways. They thus differ from the second-hand and reminiscent accounts—like those associated with the well-known” Zelph” story—which Joseph never could have reviewed, or accounts which, like the well-known statement in Frederick G. Williams’ handwriting about Lehi landing in Chile, cannot clearly be linked to Joseph.3 Five of these documents that carry Joseph’s name in some way are part of a series of articles published in the Times and Seasons when Joseph was the editor of the paper. Joseph’s 1839 history fits into this category as well, as does a letter of Oliver Cowdery originally published in the Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate in 1834 and later incorporated into Joseph’s history. The remaining four documents are letters, the surviving copies of which have Joseph’s name appended as author. These include a 1833 letter to N. C. Saxton, editor of a newspaper in Rochester, New York; an 1834 letter to Emma, written while Joseph was traveling from Kirtland to Missouri with Zion’s Camp; an 1841 letter to John Bernhisel regarding John L. Stephens’ book Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan; and the famous “Wentworth Letter” of 1842. While some of these sources treat Book of Mormon geography in only the vaguest generalities, others make very specific claims on the topic.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the general view or model of Book of Mormon geography that emerges from a careful review of these eleven documents. I do this not in an effort to identify Joseph’s particular views on the topic (which I believe is impossible to determine; see below), but to better understand the picture of Book of Mormon geography that was generated as Joseph and his close associates worked to fulfill his responsibilities as newspaper editor, correspondent, historian, and defender of the faith. A review of these documents also helps us understand what Church members were reading on the topic in Church-sponsored publications, where the most explicit of them were published. I argue that while these particular documents paint a picture of an extensive geography for Book of Mormon events, none of them, either separately or in the aggregate, necessarily suggest the fully hemispheric view of the book’s geography that Sorenson suggests most Church members held.4 Nor can any of them, or any combination of them, be interpreted to support the idea that the author(s), and perhaps Joseph Smith himself, necessarily envisioned a limited Mesoamerican geography for the book’s events, as John Clark has recently suggested.5 At least one of them, in fact, clearly indicates on its own, without being viewed in the context of the others, a belief in a geography extending from Central America up into the Ohio River Valley. This same document and similar documents, written less than two years before Joseph’s death, may also require us to qualify Terryl Givens’ suggestion that the “efforts of Joseph and his brethren to identify Book of Mormon lands would increasingly focus southward” over time.6 Rather than a hemispheric or limited geography, or some sort of development from one to the other, the view of Book of Mormon geography contained in this particular subset of documents is one that has Book of Mormon peoples, during at least part of their histories, inhabiting parts (although not necessarily all) of the eastern United States; the final battles of the Nephites and Jaredites taking place in upstate New York; and the centers for both the Nephite and Jaredite civilizations being located somewhere in Central America. South America is largely, if not completely, out of the picture, while sites thousands of miles apart in Central and North America are very much in.

. . .

To think, however, that the phrase “this continent” in these documents necessarily meant “North America” to early nineteenth century Americans, or that “America” or “this country” meant the “United States,” would be a mistake. Nor would those reading these documents necessarily have understood “Indian” as many do today. For Joseph and his contemporaries, “continent” typically meant “a great extent of land, not disjoined or interrupted by a sea; a connected tract of land of great extent; as the Eastern and Western continent.”13 In at least one of the letters cited above, in fact, “this continent” is indeed juxtaposed with “the eastern continent,” reflecting this hemispheric approach to the word rather than the more narrow definition most people would give it today.14 Similarly, “America,” was considered “one of the great continents, . . . extend[ing] from the eightieth degree of North, to the fifty-fourth degree of South Latitude”—that is, all of North and South America combined. True, “[f]rom Darien to the North, the continent [was] called North America, and to the South, it [was] called South America,” but the singular noun makes it clear that “America” alone included everything from Point Barrow to the Cape of Good Hope.15 “Country,” too, carried the same ambiguity, which explains how either Joseph or John Taylor, writing from Nauvoo in 1841, could praise John Lloyd Stephens’ book on Central American ruins as “the most correct luminous & comprihensive . . . of all the histories that have been written pertaining to the antiquities of this country.”16 “Indian,” defined as “any native of the American continent,” incorporated the imprecision already inherent in “continent” and “America.”17 Even the phrase “our western tribes of Indians” does little to clear things up, given how broadly “west” and “western” were, and continue to be, used.

. . .

Conclusion

The documents reviewed in this paper suggest an understanding of Book of Mormon geography lying somewhere between a fully hemispheric model, on the one hand, and a limited model on the other. According to this view, which we might dub a “limited hemispheric” or “northern hemispheric” view, Book of Mormon peoples, during at least part of their histories, inhabited parts (although not necessarily all) of the eastern United States; the final battles of the Nephites and Jaredites took place in upstate New York; and the centers for both the Nephite and Jaredite civilizations were located somewhere in Central America. South America appears only once—barely—in a reference to Lehi and his party landing “a little south” of Panama. While none of the documents, alone, contains all the elements of this view, none are at odds with it—that is, each is consistent with the larger view that emerges when all are considered together.

Whether any single individual(s), including Joseph Smith, actually subscribed to this view is impossible to say, as it is fully developed only when comparing documents produced over the course of several years with the help of several people. Through these documents’ common association with Joseph Smith’s name, however, and the wide dissemination of their most explicit claims through Church-sponsored publications, they suggest a possible corrective to claims that early Church members widely subscribed to a fully hemispheric model of Book of Mormon geography, and that Joseph and his associates eventually came to believe in a limited Mesoamerican geography for Book of Mormon events. These documents also suggest that Joseph’s and his associates’ growing interest in Central America over time represented an expansion of their view of Book of Mormon geography rather than a fundamental shift in their focus.