Melvin J.Ballard, in a talk delivered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, “Book of Mormon
Evidences,” discussed New World geography of the Book of Mormon in a way that
is contrary to that of those espoused
by Neville, Meldrum, and other proponents of the “Heartland Model.” Consider
the following representative comments which reveal Ballard believed the Book of
Mormon peoples inhabited portions of Central and South America, not the
Heartland:
It has been my privilege to see the great
collections in this country and Mexico, as well as those in the republics of
the Argentine, Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru . . . Long before these evidences were
ever known to men, Joseph Smith, in translating the Book of Mormon, recorded
that when the people reached this American continent they built temples after
the manner of Solomon’s Temple. In the findings of the republic of Mexico there
is gathered in that great museum among other things, what is known as the
Calendar Stone . . . I have seen, side by side, the alphabet of the Mayan
people and the alphabet of the Egyptian language so nearly alike, letter by
letter, that one is at once impressed with the thought that either the Mayans
borrowed their alphabet from the Egyptians or vice versa. And so men are
deciphering these inscriptions; for instance, Mr. Thompson who, for twenty
years was an American ambassador in Mexico, and explored the city of Chichen
Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula of Southern Mexico . . . It has been my privilege
to do missionary work among the Indians from Canada to South America. I have
never encountered a single tribe where the traditional story of the visit of
the fair God does not obtain. The temple of Quetzacoatl where I stood in the
valley of Mexico was erected to the fair God . . . This record declares that is
to go to the descendants of Father Lehi, the American Indian of either Central
or South America. There are s you know in Mexico more than 12,000,000 of them
who have Indian blood in their veins, and then in South America there are more
than 20,000,000 of them. The joy that I had in my contact with these people has
thrilled my soul because, if there ever has been a people in bondage in the
history of this world, they are the Indians of South America, Central America,
and Mexico. (Melvin J. Ballard: Crusader
for Righteousness [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft Publishers, 1966], 164, 166-67,
169, 172)