Book of Mormon/Lamanites/Curse/Red skin

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Questions

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Some critics claim that the Book of Mormon describes the Lamanites as "cursed" with a "red skin."

To see citations to the critical sources for these claims, click here

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Answer

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Fawn Brodie originated this claim, but does so without attribution or evidence. There is no mention of "red skin" in the Book of Mormon. Other authors who make this claim are clearly parroting Brodie, often without attribution. For example, Sally Denton makes this claim in a chapter which she liberally quotes Brodie's book No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, yet Denton does not attribute this particular claim to Brodie. The result is that we have one critical author citing another critical author's erroneous, unsupported assertion as fact.

This criticism does raise an interesting problem, however, for the critics—if Joseph Smith was (as they claim) writing a "history of the Indians," why did he never refer to their red skins? This was the common way in which they were described by 19th-century Americans. Yet, that characterization is completely absent from the Book of Mormon.