5. Warfare.

The Book of Mormon recounts a long succession of wars among the various divisions of the people who lived anciently in America. Indeed, the Book declares that warfare at length became so bloody that whole peoples were exterminated. It is interesting to note that modern American archaeology tells practically the same story.

"There appear to have been very hotly contested religious disputes; constant wars broke out between the sectarians following the God Votan and those who worshipped Quetzalcoatl, and the vanquished on either side perished under horrible tortures, or were compelled to fly their country." (Nadaillac, p. 274.)

"An American archaeologist, Professor Walters, has made a scientific investigation of this (in the Choctaw Indian country, when the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railway was built through it) burying ground. He found it to cover thirty acres and estimates that it contained 75,000 skeletons of men slain in battle. They were buried in sand, and according to the statements of Professor Walters, as given recently in the New York Sun, there were two distinct strata of earth formations above the sand." (Mill. Star, Vol. 60:85.)

"In Piedras Negras and Menche-Yaxchilan especially monuments are to be found of bound and captive warriors--unpleasantly bound and unpleasantly treated. These are northern outposts, and probably mark the occasional raiding and subjugation of un-Mayan enemies. * * * The Archaic civilizations of the Old World were for long peaceful civilizations. Organized warfare rose with the rise of powerful groups of nobility inside the framework of the state who came to resent the central power of Sun King and Sun King's priests. Or it rose through contact of the Archaic civilizations with outer fringings of peoples whom they neither subdued nor civilized, but raided and despoiled. In time these outer peoples retaliated by arming themselves with the weapons and methods of the civilized Archaics and triumphantly invaded their territory. * * * The weight of evidence seems to conjure up a picture of an Empire in its early phases an Empire only culturally; politically, it was divided into many small states; later still these states may have been united, forcibly united, under some central power, perhaps a league of Peten cities. Later still, that league fell apart, and political hegemony ceased around the time when the dated inscriptions ceased to be carved." (Mitchell, pp. 130, 131, 133.)

"But even during this Toltec period hunting tribes, both of Nahua and other blood, were pursuing their game in the forests and mountains. Despised by their more civilized, corn-eating brethren, they were known as barbarians, dogs, Chicimecs, 'suckers of blood,' from the custom attributed to them of drinking blood and eating raw flesh." (Bancroft, 2:344.)

Destruction seems also to have followed at times in the wake of earthquakes, the effects of which are readily discernible. This also confirms statements in the Book of Mormon.