American Indians. See BOOK OF MORMON, JAREDITES, JEWS, MEDICINE MEN, MULEKITES, NEPHITES AND LAMANITES, TRIBES OF ISRAEL. When Columbus discovered America, the native inhabitants, the American Indians as they were soon to be designated, were a people of mixed blood and origin. Chiefly they were Lamanites, but such remnants of the Nephite nation as had not been destroyed had, of course, mingled with the Lamanites. (I Ne. 13:30; 2 Ne. 3:1-3; 9:53; Alma 45:13-14; D. & C. 3:16-19.) Thus the Indians were Jews by nationality (D. & C. 57:4), their forefathers having come out from Jerusalem, from the kingdom of Judah. (2 Ne. 33:8-10.)

Thus also they were of the House of Israel. Lehi was of the tribe of Manasseh (Alma 10:3), Ishmael of the tribe of Ephraim, and Mulek of the tribe of Judah. (Hela. 8:20-22.) We have no knowledge of the tribal affiliation of Zoram, and it is possible that other tribes may have been represented in the colony that accompanied Mulek. It was primarily the tribes of Benjamin and Judah which made up the kingdom of Judah, but there may have been a sprinkling of all the tribes intermingled with them.

The American Indians, however, as Columbus found them also had other blood than that of Israel in their veins. It is possible that isolated remnants of the Jaredites may have lived through the period of destruction in which millions of their fellows perished. It is quite apparent that groups of orientals found their way over the Bering Strait and gradually moved southward to mix with the Indian peoples. We have records of a colony of Scandinavians attempting to set up a settlement in America some 500 years before Columbus. There are archeological indications that an unspecified number of groups of people probably found their way from the old to the new world in pre-Columbian times. Out of all these groups would have come the American Indians as they were discovered in the 15th century.

Since the days of the Spanish conquests and colonizations of Mexico and South America, there has been further dilution of the pure Lamanitish blood. But with it all, for the great majority of the descendants of the original inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere, the dominant blood lineage is that of Israel. The Indians are repeatedly called Lamanites in the revelations to the Prophet, and the promise is that in due course they "shall blossom as the rose" (D. & C. 49:24), that is, become again a white and delightsome people as were their ancestors a great many generations ago.