This [the discoverer of the parchment] was Joseph Merrick, Esq., a highly respectable character in the church of Pittsfield, and in the county, as the minister of the place informed. . . .

The following is an extract of a letter sent to Mr. Merrick by Mr. Lamed, upon this subject:

“‘Sir; — I have examined the parchment manuscripts, which you had the goodness to give me. After some time and with much difficulty and assistance I have ascertained their meaning, which is as follows; (I have numbered the manuscripts.)

No. 1 is translated by Deut. vi: 4-9 verses inclusive.

No. 2, by Deut. xi: 13-21 verses inclusive.

No. 3, Exod. xiii: 11-16 verses inclusive.

I am, etc. [Signed] “SYLVESTER LARNED.”a

a“ View of the Hebrews; or the Tribes of Israel in America, pp. 219, 220. The above account is also quoted by Josiah Priest American Antiquities, pp. 68, 69. Also by Bancroft, Native Races, Vol. V, pp. 93, 94.

. . .

About the only work to which Joseph Smith could possibly have had access before the publication of the Book of Mormon would have been:

First, the publications of the “American Antequarian Society, Translations and Collections,” published in the “Archaeoligia Americana,” Worcester, Massachusetts, 1820; but this information was so fragmentary in character that it could not possibly have supplied the historical incidents of the Book of Mormon, or the customs of its peoples.

Second, the little work of Ethan Smith published in Vermont — second edition 1825 — in which the author holds the native American Indian tribes to be descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. In fact his work bears the title, “View of the Hebrews; or the Tribes of Israel in America.”

. . .

Speculating upon this very subject in connection with the desirability for knowledge respecting the ancient inhabitants of America, Ethan Smith, in his “View of the Hebrews; or the Tribes of Israel in America,” says, most emphatically:

“We are to expect no new revelation from heaven, and the days of miracles are thought to be past. We probably must look for just such evidence to exhibit to the world that people so long lost [as the ten Tribes of Israel], as is in fact exhibited by the natives of America."d

d View of the Hebrew, 2nd Edition, (1825) pp. 168-9.

. . .

Ethan Smith, in his work we have several times quoted, advances the theory that the native Indains were the “’Ten Lost Tribes of Israel,” the very title of his book— “View of the Hebrews; or the Tribes of Israel in America” — is the evidence of his holding that theory.