Lamanites

The Lamanites are a people described in the Book of Mormon as descendants of Laman, one of the sons of the prophet Lehi. According to the text, Lehi was instructed by God to leave Jerusalem shortly before its destruction by Babylon around 587 BC. Lehi and his family, including his sons Laman, Lemuel, Nephi, and Sam, traveled across the ocean to the Western Hemisphere. Much of the Book of Mormon narrative centers on the conflict between the descendants of Laman and those of Nephi, identified respectively as the Lamanites and the Nephites.¹

The Curse and Physical Mark

Within the account, Laman and Lemuel are depicted as rebellious, even plotting against their father and younger brother Nephi. As punishment for their wickedness, God placed a visible curse upon them. The Book of Mormon text of 2 Nephi 5:21–23 says that “a skin of blackness” came upon them “because of their iniquity,” so “that they might not be enticing unto my people.”² This distinction symbolized divine disfavor and served to separate the Lamanites from the Nephites. The book further records that throughout much of their history, “the dark-skinned Lamanites plagued the light-skinned Nephites” until finally the Lamanites destroyed their Nephite relatives at the battle of Hill Cumorah.³

Lamanite Identity and the Native Americans

The Book of Mormon presents the Lamanites as the ancestors of Native Americans, claiming that America’s Indigenous peoples were of Semitic descent. It also asserts that their curse could be removed through repentance. The original 1830 edition of 2 Nephi 30:6 predicted that the Lamanites would become “a white and a delightsome people.” In 1981, the LDS Church replaced “white” with “pure” to emphasize spiritual rather than physical transformation.⁴

However, advocates of the earlier reading note that the phrase “a white and a delightsome people” also appears elsewhere in the text. Joseph Smith himself reportedly used the expression in connection with intermarriage with the Lamanites. The 1840 edition of the Book of Mormon had temporarily used “pure,” yet later printings reverted to “white.” McKeever and Johnson explain that this reversion “perhaps is explained by the fact that 3 Nephi 2:15 … states that the Lamanites’ skin became white like unto the Nephites,” a change clearly referring to physical skin color rather than symbolic purity.⁵

References

1. Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson, Mormonism 101: Examining the Religion of the Latter-day Saints (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2015), 265–266.

2. McKeever and Johnson, Mormonism 101, 267.

3. Ibid.