Book of Mormon/Lamanites/Curse/Red skin

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Criticism

The Book of Mormon describes the Lamanites as "cursed" with a "red skin."

Source(s) of the Criticism

• Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 43. ( Index of claims )

Response

Fawn Brodie made this claim, but does so without attribution or evidence. There is no mention of "red skin" in the Book of Mormon.

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.

Endnotes

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