Limited Geography Model - South American Setting

South American Setting

A commonly held belief among the LDS for many years was that Lehi's group landed on the coast of Chile. This is supported by a record written in 1836 by Frederick G. Williams which suggests that Joseph Smith once stated that Lehi "landed on the continent of South America, in Chile, thirty degrees, south latitude." In the mid-1970s, several books were published by LDS researchers that proposed this geographical model (Priddis 1975).

A booklet published in 1882 by Franklin D. Richards made the claim that this information had been received by revelation through Joseph Smith.

LEHI'S TRAVELS.—Revelation to Joseph the Seer. The course that Lehi and his company traveled from Jerusalem to the place of their destination: They traveled nearly a south, southeast direction until they came to the nineteenth degree of north latitude; then, nearly east to the Sea of Arabia, then sailed in a southeast direction, and landed on the continent of South America, in Chili, thirty degrees south latitude.

Challengers of the limited geography model use this statement, along with the teachings of early Mormon missionaries supporting the idea of a landing in Chile, as evidence that the widespread belief in the hemispheric geography model was based upon a revelation through Joseph Smith, and that any information to the contrary constitutes “apologetic denial" (Vogel 2004, p. 629 note 18). In addition, the story of Zelph is used to support the idea the Joseph Smith promoted a hemispheric geography for the Book of Mormon. LDS scholars point out that in the earlier document authored by Frederick G. Williams, that the words "Lehi's Travels" and "Revelation to Joseph the Seer" do not appear in this text as they do in the subsequent 1882 publication (Roper 2004).

A paper authored by LDS affiliated research group FARMS notes that the document authored by Frederick G. Williams “does not attribute the statement to Joseph Smith and, although Richards follows closely the Williams account, he gives no source for the statement or the title. There is no known earlier historical evidence associating this specific statement with Joseph Smith."

The claim of a landfall in Chile may have actually originated with Orson Pratt, who often included the Chile landing hypothesis in his writings and said that “this view was actually based upon his own inference from the Book of Mormon text" (Roper 2004). In a talk given in 1872, Pratt described Lehi’s group as “landing on the western coast of what is now called South America. As near as we can judge from the description of the country contained in this record the first landing place was in Chili, not far from where the city of Valparaiso now stands” (Pratt 1872, p. 325). Pratt's opinions were incorporated into the geographical footnotes that he added into the 1879 edition of the Book of Mormon (Sorenson & Roper 2002).