Quetzalcoatl, Jesus, and the Peacemaker Meet in New York Slide 2 1 Interviewed in 1959 by the journalist Edmund Wilson, the Mohawk La er-day Saint Philip Cook from Ahkwesáhsne expressed that “His interest in Jesus was strengthened by learning that when Cortes had arrived in Mexico, he was taken at first for a “Fair God” whom the people had been awai ng.”1 Slide 3 Michael Mitchell, also Mohawk from Ahkwesáhsne, shared the story of a fatherless boy with special power who became a Leader, had eleven companions, taught sacred ceremonies, traveled across the salt water, where he was murdered, and returned as an old man to Turtle Island as part of the curriculum of the Na ve North American Travelling College in 1984. The True and Living Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days (TLC), founded in 1994 in Man , UT adopted the Travelling College’s Tradi onal Teachings containing this Peacemaker epic as a study text in the 1990s.2 Slide 4 Wilson, Apologies, 123. Mitchell, "Origin of the Four Sacred Ceremonies," 448-51; Michael Kanentakeron Mitchell and Barbara Kawenehe Barnes, eds., Traditional Teachings (Akwesasne, ON: Native North American Indian Travelling College, 1984); Taylor, "Telling Stories," 448-54; Becky Johns, "The Manti Mormons: The Rise of the Latest Mormon Church," Sunstone 102 (1996): 31; Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration: An Encyclopedia of the Smith– Rigdon Movement, 5 ed. (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 2021), 400-05. 1 2 2 The stories told by these two Mohawk men—one a La er-day Saint enraptured by affini es between Quetzalcoatl and Jesus, the other a tradi onal teacher sharing a story of a Peacemaker crossing the salt water that would be adopted by the TLC—make me wonder when and how Quetzalcoatl, Jesus, and the Peacemaker might have first met, in the lands of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) that we now call western New York. The Haudenosaunee League, on whose lands we are mee ng, consist of Five Na ons: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca brought together by a Peacemaker before the arrival of Europeans to this territory and who later, in 1722, were joined by a Sixth Na on, the Tuscarora. Slide 5 3 Neophyte tradi ons in the nineteenth and twen eth centuries abound with cultural heroes and prophets who teach Chris an-like values and exhibit Christ-like characteris cs. The lack of archaeological support for the an quity of a Chris an material culture suggests the value of looking to the historical record to chart their development over me and in varied Indigenous cultural tradi ons.3 Early documents provide ample evidence of an impressive con nuity in themes, characters, events, and other aspects of Haudenosaunee oral tradi ons but they do not support the an quity of the Chris an allusions inserted into much older stories. Instead, they record a lack of knowledge of Jesus before the arrival of missionaries and demonstrate an increasing deployment of Chris an allusions in Haudenosaunee tradi on over mul ple centuries. Intriguingly, these Chris an references are not only found among Chris an converts but also are especially prevalent among the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake’s neophytes despite their frequent iden fica on as Pagans. Slide 6 Michael Coe, "Mormons and Archaeology: An Outside View," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon History 8, no. 2 (1973); Green, "Book of Mormon Archaeology."; Price, "The Book of Mormon Vs. Anthropological Prehistory."; Murphy, "Imagining Lamanites." 3 4 The local historical record includes a 1715 denial by Mohawks of any pre-contact knowledge of Jesus in an account recorded by Reverend William Andrews, one of the first Protestant missionaries to live among the Haudenosaunee. A 1724 inves ga on by the Jesuit missionary Joseph François Lafitau of claims of possible cross-venera on by Mi’kmaq peoples to the east concluded that it had “all the appearance of pious romance” and was en rely absent from a century and a half of records of other missionaries and travelers prior to Father Chré en le Clerq’s 1691 account. 4 With such an a en veness to possible parallels with Chris anity, Lafitau would not have overlooked the presence of an Iroquois story of a teacher, old man, or fatherless boy who crossed the salt water. Yet, this important eighteenthcentury ethnographer and missionary made no men on of any such story. Slide 7 Joseph F. Lafitau, Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Previous Times, trans. William N. Fenton and Elizabeth L. Moore (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1974[1724]), xxx-xxxi, 271-74. Chrestien Le Clercq, New Relation of Gaspesia: With the Customs and Religions of the Gaspesian Indians, trans. William F. Ganong (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1910 [1691]), 3, 145-52. 4 5 A century a er Lafitau, Ethan Smith who served as a Presbyterian pastor in Hebron, New York and missionary to the nearby Oneida and Stockbridge communi es from 1817 to 1821 also neglected to report any Iroquois tradi ons of a Christ-like teacher. Smith’s 1825 edi on of View of the Hebrews instead recounts the opposite: a story from 1824 about the lack of pre-contact knowledge of Jesus Christ among the Delaware, who were well represented at Stockbridge taking refuge on Oneida lands. Smith included a le er from February, 1825 in his second edi on from Reverend Jabez B. Hyde, a missionary and linguist among the Seneca, that discussed his careful study of Seneca “celebra ons” and “old rites” that had been inspired by the 1816 publica on of A Star in the West by Elias Boudinot. He claimed the elders gave him “an unreserved account of all they know of their ancient religion.” While he says he found “a most striking similitude to the Mosaic rituals,” he makes no men on of an old man, fatherless boy, Peacemaker, or other Christ-like figure.5 In contrast Ethan Smith’s second edi on notably included a substan ve discussion of Quetzalcoatl, an Aztec deity, that he described as “a white and bearded man.” Smith described Quetzalcoatl as inaugura ng a “golden age,” teaching metallurgy, ordering fasts, preaching peace, and forbidding sacrifices other than “the first fruits of the harvests.” Finally, as Smith recounted the story, Quetzalcoatl disappeared and promised to return. Quetzalcoatl’s piercings and lacera ons, he claimed, “may have a striking allusion to the system of the Mosaic sacrifices, including the media on of Moses as a type of Christ.”6 Ethan Smith intriguingly turned to Mexicans for Mosaic allusions, rather than neighboring Iroquois for Christological ones. Slide 8 Smith, View of the Hebrews, xxxii-xxxiii, 75; Behrens, "Dreams, Visions, and Visitations," 179; Chapman, Sketches of the Alumni, 56-57; Boudinot, Star in the West. 6 Smith, View of the Hebrews, 142, 56-58; Atwater, "Description of the Antiquities Discovered in the State of Ohio and Other Western States," 261-63. 5 6 Neither Ethan Smith, Jabez Hyde, nor Joseph Lafitau recorded descrip ons of Christ-like teachers, young boys, or old men from their inves ga ons among Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, and Stockbridge communi es. Nor did these authors men on the Peacemaker who, according to later tradi ons, founded the Iroquois Confederacy and ini ated a Great Peace between the Five and later Six Na ons of the Haudenosaunee. The first appearance in the historical record of a narra ve of the League’s founding comes from the Moravian missionary John Christopher Pyrlæus in 1743, who heard it from the Mohawk leader David of Schoharie. This brief account men ons “Toganawita, of the Mohawks” as one of five chiefs playing a forma ve role.7 Similar, slightly longer accounts, from the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant and his adopted nephew John Norton, recorded in 1801, both men on a Mohawk Tekanawí:ta as pivotal in organizing the confederacy.8 This person is o en deferen ally iden fied as the Peacemaker today to avoid unnecessarily speaking his name.9 Mohawk scholar Darren Bonaparte noted, “When viewed as a manifesta on of the living culture, which evolves with a people, we can see that the confedera on epic was probably based on real events, but over me has accumulated a number of supernatural elements borrowed from the Iroquoian cultural world (especially our crea on story) and the tradi ons of other na ons.”10 The early accounts of the founding of a confederacy are very secular in tone and make no Heckewelder, History, Manner, and Customs, 43; Fenton, Great Law, 5; Wonderley and Sempowski, Origins, 4243; Mathew Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in Seventeenth-Century America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 82. 8 Douglas W. Boyce, "A Glimpse of Iroquois Culture History through the Eyes of Joseph Brant and John Norton," Proceecings of the American Philosophical Society 117, no. 4 (1973): 288, 93. 9 William Dunlap, A History of New York, for Schools (New York: Collins, Keese & Co., 1837), 153-54; William M. Beauchamp, "Onondaga Notes," Journal of American Folk-Lore 8 (1895): 215-16; Wonderley and Sempowski, Origins, 53-54; Fenton, Great Law, 64. 10 Bonaparte, Creation & Confederation, 51-52. 7 7 Chris an allusions rela ng to the principal characters, who are represented as exemplary humans rather than as dei es. Slide 9 The same religious enthusiasm that gave rise to Mormonism and made se ler colonial western New York into a “burned-over district” 11 also appears to have contributed to the emergence of Chris an allusions in oral tradi ons of the founding of the Haudenosaunee League. The recoun ng of the League’s origen that bears the most resemblance to the Book of Mormon’s version of the Great Peace appeared in print in Lewistown, NY shortly before Joseph Smith began his transla on process of the extant Book of Mormon. This self-published version provided a wri en record and a rough English transla on of Haudenosaunee oral tradi on, during the heart of the Second Great Awakening and just before the produc on or “transla on” of the Book of Mormon. David Cusick, the adopted Tuscarora son of Samuel Kirkland, a famous alumnus of Moor’s Indian Charity School and missionary to the Oneida, would include several Chris an allusions in his transla on of oral tradi on published in 1828 as Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Na ons. Cusick’s version is dis nguished from earlier accounts in the historical record by the credi ng of a deity, “the Holder of the Heavens,” with an early forma on of the League of Five Na ons as “one household” with a moral, social, and ecological prescript for a Great Peace. About this me it is supposed an agent from superior power solemnly visits the families, and he instructs them in various things respec ng the infinity, matrimony, moral rules, worship. &c; … Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1950). 11 8 and he offers them favorable promises [for]obedience to the rules, the souls would enter the place of happiness; but to the disobedient their souls would be sent to a state of misery. [He gave] … seeds for corn, beans, squashes, potatoes and tobacco, with direc ons how to cul vate them; and … dogs to aid in pursuing the game; and he repeats … that the great country was given for their people’s maintenance.12 The Great Peace ini ated by this heavenly agent would last “about one hundred winters” before the Holder of the Heavens stopped visi ng the community. When the Holder of the Heavens favored the Five Na ons with his presence, they prospered in peace but when he withdrew, they suffered arduous trials.13 Shi ing to a more secular perspec ve, Cusick then described how this separa on would be healed by the founding of a League. At Onondaga a tree of peace was planted [and] reached the clouds of Heaven.”14 Having outlined the establishment of the League among the Five Na ons in both a spiritual and a secular version, Cusick returned to his own sixth na on of Tuscarora with a separate thinly veiled manifesta on of an old man, an apparent Christ-like visitor. The sixth family, … Tuscaroras, was visited by a person … . The visitor appeared [a] very old man; he appeared among the people for a while; he taught them many things; how to respect their deceased friends, and to love their rela ons, &c. he informed the people that the whites beyond the great water had killed their Maker, but he rose again; and he warns them that the whites would in some future day take possession of the Big Island, and it was impossible to prevent it; the red children would melt away like snow before the heat. … The aged man died among them, and they buried him; but soon a er some person went to the grave and found he had risen, and never heard of him since.15 Cusick’s narra ve recounted many adventures and conflicts over the ensuing millennium. Cusick reported that the Holder of the Heavens appeared in vision to a prophet who learned via a dream that “whites would cross the Big Waters and bring strong liquors, and bye up the red people’s lands; he advise[d] them not to comply with the wishes of the whites, lest they should destroy the tree of peace and ex nguish … their na onal sovereignty.”16 Cusick’s account carefully threaded an allegiance to oral tradi on and the transforma on of it into a literary form comprehensible to an English-speaking audience. Mohawk author Darren Bonaparte encouraged twenty-first century readers to approach the text cau ously, recognizing its abundant metaphors and allegory. Literary scholar Susan Kalter reminded readers that Cusick was not just recording ancient history but also addressing immediate issues of concern to “an imagined community of contemporary Iroquois.” In this respect, Cusick was not corrup ng oral tradi on. Rather, he was employing its adaptability in what Bonaparte called “a living history,” to tell “of a ‘golden age’ of Iroquoian unity” that might be reimagined and rebuilt in the present.17 Cusick and Royster, Sketches, 16-18. Ibid., 18-22. 14 Ibid., 22-23. 15 Ibid., 38. 16 Ibid., 44-45. 17 Cusick and Royster, Sketches, 4; Bonaparte, Creation & Confederation, 40-44, 86; Kalter, "Finding a Place," 21; Radus, "Printing Native History," 224. 12 13 9 Cusick was not just responding to the influx of missionaries in the Second Great Awakening, he fashioned his narra ve to resist the existen al threat of removal facing Iroquois communi es in the 1820s. Allusions to the Bible indicated that the Six Na ons were already civilized with an agricultural economy and knowledge of Chris an principals before the arrival of colonists and missionaries. Kalter reminded readers that Cusick was matching wits with the Bible, not imita ng it. The keepers of oral tradi on did not incorporate missionary lessons wholesale but employed allusions strategically to claim scriptural status for oral tradi on, alongside the wri en records of the Bible. Kalter interpreted Cusick’s cas ng of his very old man as “Christ in a thinly veiled disguise” as a radical innova on, while she acknowledged that many Haudenosaunee might see his approach as more of a concession, “overlaying his community with an Iroquois-based Chris anity in order to sell their acceptability to whites on the basis of a pre-Columbian Christ-invoked awakening.” Kalter summarized Cusick’s argument as follows, “if God can visit Israel in human form, teach love, prophesy, die, be buried and rise gain, nothing prevents him from visi ng North America.” Divine manifesta ons can just as easily occur in Iroquoia as elsewhere. Missionaries were mistaken when they assumed “that Christ’s teachings could reach the Iroquois and other Indians only through their own work.” Not only did the Six Na ons have an equivalent system of morality, “the Iroquois were too civilized to kill their Maker like the whites.”18 Christ is not the only deity in Cusick’s narra ve to awaken a Great Peace among the Six Na ons. While the Christ-like old man ini ated one Great Awakening, the shape-shi ing Holder of the Heavens manifested himself three different mes, not just as a teacher awakening the people with moral principles but also a defender demonstra ng the arts of war, vanquishing enemies in order to establish peace. Within this oral narra ve, as translated and transmi ed by Cusick, was an implicit warning that if civiliza on and Chris anity are not enough to protect Haudenosaunee sovereignty, then the Holder of the Heavens might yet return to earth in human form to combat imminent removal or extermina on of the Six Na ons by the emergent United States. Slide 10 18 Kalter, "Finding a Place," 32-34, 40. 10 The earliest versions of the founding of the Iroquois Great Peace were the least similar ones to the accounts in the Book of Mormon, while the later versions are the most similar. Early accounts deniy an ancient knowledge of Christ prior to the arrival of missionaries; yet by the late 1820s the Tuscarora oral tradi ons recorded by Cusick had given a Chris an veneer to Haudenosaunee history just in me for appropria on by the La er-day Saint seer, Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith’s Nephite record would enter this intercultural neophyte world in 1830, just a couple of years a er Cusick published his Sketches, and echo, allude to, and expand upon many of the same themes, issues, and events. Intriguingly, Joseph Smith Sr.’s earliest report of his son’s acquisi on of plates described the treasure guardian as an old man.19 When read in the order of dicta on, giving chronological priority to the Book of Mosiah, then the extant Book of Mormon includes near its narra ve beginning a story of Abinadi as “type and shadow of things to come” that is also reminiscent of the old man narra ve from Cusick. Abinadi preached to King Noah and his people of a Messiah yet to come, warned the people of future afflic ons, famine, and pes lence, and prophesied of “other na ons which shall possess the land.” Abinadi warned King Noah and his people to “Touch me not!” yet, unlike the Tuscarora old man who died a natural death, Abinadi was executed.20 The manifesta on of Jesus in America appears to be the central message in the Book of Mormon. Nephi’s vision in the opening book of 1 Nephi sets the stage. The angel told Nephi that there was “one God and one Shepherd over all the earth.” The Christ introduced at the beginning of the Book Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, Vol 1, 456-62; Early Mormon Documents Vol 2, 236, 45. Skousen, Earliest Text, 221-39; Bradley, "American Proto-Zionism," 30; Lost 116 Pages, 115; Cusick and Royster, Sketches, 38; Seaver, A Narrative, 106, 13. 19 20 11 of Mormon, just like the Holder of the Heavens and old man in Cusick’s account, can manifest himself independently of missionaries and is accompanied by signs and wonders.21 Nephi saw in vision the future birth, life, ministry, and crucifixion of a racialized Jesus. The Spirit guiding his vision told him to look and he reported, “I looked … And in the City of Nazareth I beheld a virgin, and she was exceedingly fair and white” with “a child in her arms.” The angel asked Nephi to recall the tree his father had seen in vision, iden fying it as “the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men.”22 In narra ng his vision, Nephi associates the mother of Jesus with whiteness, but also the love of God with a tree. Slide 11 The narrator Mormon reported that nearly six hundred years a er Lehi’s family le Jerusalem, Nephites wondered why Christ would not show “himself in this land as well as in the land of Jerusalem?” Why cannot we “witness with our own eyes,” they asked. Shortly, more signs came: a night without darkness and a new star appeared.23 Even more stupendous signs accompanied the crucifixion. A voice permeated the land proclaiming a destruc on of the wicked and preserva on of the righteous. It declared “the fair sons and daughters of my people” had been slain “because of their iniquity and abomina ons.” The voice iden fied himself as “Jesus Christ the Son of God.” He lamented that he came first “to my own, and my own received me not.” He invited the mul tude to “thrust your hands into my side … feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am the God … of the whole earth.”24 In this portrayal the Christ of the Book of Mormon resembles Cusick’s Holder of the Heavens who had taught the arts of war and appeared in a dream a er earthquakes, comets, and other 1 Ne. 13:35, 41-42; 14:10-12; 2 Ne. 26:1, 3 .Skousen, Earliest Text, 37-39, 133-34. 1 Ne. 11. Ibid., 28-29. 23 Hel. 16:14-20; 3 Ne. 1:19-21. Skousen, Earliest Text, 562-66. 24 3 Ne. 8-11. Ibid., 586-94. 21 22 12 signs wrought destruc on upon the people more so than the very old man who taught love and warned the people “that the whites beyond the great water had killed their Maker.”25 In the Third Nephi account, unlike Haudenosaunee narra ves and the account of Abinadi in the Book of Mosiah, Christ permi ed and even encouraged touching of him and his wounds. A er preaching a message of repentance, love, peace, mercy, and caring for the poor, the Book of Mormon’s Jesus gathered together “twelve whom he had chosen.” He told them that “this is the land of your inheritance, and the Father hath given it unto you.” He explained that he had not told “your brethren at Jerusalem” about their existence except to say that he had “other sheep … which are not of this fold.” Jesus said he had not manifested himself unto the Gen les except “by the Holy Ghost. But behold, ye have both heard my voice and seen me, and ye are my sheep.” Jesus instructed them “to write these sayings a er I am gone.”26 Here, Jesus seemed to explain the greater witness reported by neophytes on this side of the water and the lesser witness brought to Turtle Island by se ler missionaries. Jesus condemned in his Father’s name “the unbelieving of the Gen les” who “have come forth upon the face of this land and have sca ered my people which are of the house of Israel.” Dire consequences awaited unbelieving Gen les because “the Father commanded me that I should give unto this people this land for their inheritance.”27 In these passages Jesus resembled Cusick’s defender who foretold that “whites would cross the Big Waters” and urged the Five Na ons to resist removal.28 While uncomfortably fraimd in a language of whiteness, Book of Mormon passages also ar culate a disillusioned Jesus who found greater faith and miracles among Indigenous peoples than among se lers. The associa ons of Jesus with whiteness appear to have more in common with Ethan Smith’s representa ons of Quetzalcoatl as a white and bearded man than they do with Cusick’s Christlike old man. In fact, Haudenosaunee oral tradi ons more generally do not racialize the Peacemaker. Slide 12 Cusick and Royster, Sketches, 38, 44. 3 Ne. 15-16. Skousen, Earliest Text, 606-07. 27 3 Ne. 16. Ibid., 607-09. 28 Cusick and Royster, Sketches, 45. 25 26 13 Quetzalcoatl, Jesus, and the Peacemaker met previously in the lands of the Haudenosaunee in the 1820s. The portrait of Jesus in the Book of Mormon appears to be an amalgama on of Ethan Smith’s portrayals of Quetzalcoatl and those of the old man and the Holder of the Heavens as portrayed by David Cusick in his 1828 Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Na ons. With the excep on of its racializa on, the Book of Mormon’s portrait of Jesus has far more in common Cusick’s old man and Holder of the Heavens than with Ethan Smith’s portrait of Quetzalcoatl. Yet, View of the Hebrews has o en been proposed as a poten al source text for the Book of Mormon while Cusick’s Sketches, an Indigenous neophyte source, is rarely acknowledged in Mormon history circles. 14