The search for gold, a gnawing confusion over religion, and the moundbuilding of paleo-Indians formed three central components of Joseph Smith's psyche. Smith read in the Palmyra Reflector that during the excavation of the Erie Canal, workmen found several brass plates along with skeletons and pottery fragments. Smith began to invent theories about the Indian mounds, even imagining details about Indian clothing, cities, religion, and ways of making war. In 1823, a Vermont preacher named Ethan Smith published a book called View of the Hebrews; or the Ten Tribes of Israel in America. The volume was a compilation of folk and scholarly belief that Native Americans were remnants of the Lost Tribes. Cotton Mather and William Penn were among the many adherents to this intriguing notion. Given Joseph Smith's interests, he was no doubt aware of View of the Hebrews, or at least the theory it espoused.

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To Mormons, first there was the Old Testament, then the New Testament, and finally the Book of Mormon, which is subtitled "Another Testament of Jesus Christ." Smith had woven together all the threads of his turbulent life into one marvelous, all-embracing story. In 1976, Mormon historian Fawn Brodie wrote: "Thus where Views of the Hebrews was just bad scholarship, the Book of Mormon was highly original and imaginative fiction" (Brodie, 12). Ms. Brodie was promptly excommunicated.