In the April 1, 1846, issue of The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star (volume 7, no. 7), p. 110, an excerpt from pp. 182-83 of Barbara Anne Simon's 1836 The Ten Tribes of Israel Historically Identified with the Aborigines of the Western Hemisphere under the heading of “Evidence for the Book of Mormon.” What is interesting is that the editor, Thomas Ward, believed that the book provided evidence for the Book of Mormon, not in America’s Heartland, but in Central America:
“The fact of the
Mexicans recording, both in their paintings and songs, the Deluge, the building
of the tower of Babel, the confusion of tongues, and the dispersion, &c.,
being generally admitted by the Spanish writers on America, it is almost
unnecessary to the authority of any particular author, to prove what no one will
deny; since Gomara, in his history of the Indians, describing the
conference of Nicaragua with Gil Goncales and the Calezeasters,
introduces this chief as putting a variety of questions to the Spaniards. The
first of which was, “whether they were acquainted with the Deluge,” and others
no less curious, showing that the Indians were not unaccustomed to abstruse
speculation, and that besides the knowledge of many traditions contained in the
Old Testament, they possessed some information respecting the New. It may be
interesting to insert the entire passage of Gomara, giving an account of
this conference. “Nicaragua, who was so acute and skilled in the
knowledge of the tires and antiquities of his own countrymen, had a long conference
with Gil Goncales, and the ecclesiastic. He inquired if the Christians
were acquainted with the great Deluge which had swallowed up the earth, men and
animals, &c.; and whether the earth was to be revolutionized, (trastornar)
or the firmament to remove? When and how the sun, moon, and stars would
be deprived of their light? What was the honour and reverence due to the triune
God, &c., where should go after death, and what would be their occupation,
&c.
