By Jerald and Sandra Tanner

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In the book Archaeology and the Book of Mormon, pages 25-31, we discussed the Kinderhook plates. These plates were made to trick Joseph Smith. Smith claimed that he “translated a portion of them, and find they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the Ruler of heaven and earth” (History of the Church, vol. 5, page 372).

All of the plates were lost, but in 1962 the Improvement Era announced that one of them had been rediscovered. It was claimed that research revealed that false statements had been made concerning the Kinderhook plates and that the “plates are now back in their original category of genuine.” In 1965, however, George Lawrence, a Mormon physicist, examined the plate and found that “the dimensions, tolerances, composition and workmanship are consistent with the facilities of an 1843 blacksmith shop and with the fraud stories of the original participants.” Mr. Lawrence submitted his study to the BYU Archaeological Society, but since they seemed reluctant to print it he allowed us to make public some of his research (see Archaeology and the Book of Mormon, pages 28-29). Mormon scholars will eventually have to come to grips with this problem, and John A. Wittorf has made a move in this direction. Although he still wants to maintain Joseph Smith’s reputation as a translator, he cites George Lawrence’s study and discusses the implications if the plates are “ultimately demonstrated to be fraudulent”:

. . . a report of a physical examination of the plate in 1965 by George M. Lawrence, a Mormon physicist, contained the conclusion that:

“The plate is neither pure copper nor ordinary brass. It may be a low zinc brass or a bronze. The dimensions, tolerances, composition and workmanship are consistent with the facilities of an 1843 blacksmith shop and with the fraud stories of the original participants . . .”

In view of present archaeological evidence, neither brass nor bronze appears to have been known in North America until European times. It is thought that the first bronze in the New World was probably made in Bolivia about AD 700 . . . In light of the known use of metal in North America, brass or bronze plates in an Illinois mound, bound together with what was reported to be a rusted iron ring, should be regarded with suspicion. However, this would not preclude the possibility of their having been brought into North America from elsewhere. . . .

Joseph Smith’s behavior with regard to the Kinderhook Plates is quite interesting when viewed in perspective. He made no attempt to purchase these artifacts on behalf of the Church, as he did in the case of the papyri from which the Book of Abraham was translated; he forwarded no specific claims for the plates with respect to the Book of Mormon, although he evidently approved of John Taylor’s Times and Seasons editorial on the plates as evidence for the authenticity of the Book; and he left no indication that he was planning to utilize them for the production of another work of scripture as the Quincy Whig, with its headline “Material for Another Mormon Book,” apparently expected him to do.

Accepting the find as genuine, Joseph had facsimile drawings of the plates made, presumably for future study. The brevity of his translation of “a portion of the plates” precludes the possibility that—if the plates are ultimately demonstrated to be fraudulent—his abilities as a translator of ancient scripts and languages can be called into question. His interpretation may have resulted from the recognition of resemblances between several characters on the plates and those on the Egyptian papyri, with which he had been laboring. (Newsletter and Proceedings of the Society for Early Historic Archaeology, Brigham Young University, October 1970, page 7)

[Bold in quotations is added for emphasis and does not appear in originals.]

If Joseph Smith had not been murdered in June of 1844 it is very possible that he might have published a “translation” of the Kinderhook plates. On May 22, 1844, just a month before his death, the Warsaw Signal published the following statement about these plates:

Jo. had a facsimile taken, and engraved on wood, and it now appears from the statement of a writer in the St. Louse Gazette, that he is busy in translating them. The new work which Jo. is about to issue as a translation of these plates will be nothing more nor less than a sequel to the Book of Mormon; . . .

However this may be, we feel that Joseph Smith’s work on the plates casts serious doubt upon his ability as a translator of “ancient scripts and languages.” He definitely stated that he “translated a portion of them and find they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the Ruler of heaven and earth” (History of the Church, vol. 5, page 372).

Facsimiles of the Kinderhook plates from the History of the Church, vol. 5. Joseph
Smith claimed that he translated a portion of these plates, but they later proved to be
forgeries. New research indicates the characters were taken from a Chinese tea-chest.

Now in order to obtain this much information from the plates it would have been necessary to have translated quite a number of the characters, and a man who could make such a serious mistake with regard to the Kinderhook plates is just the type of man who would pretend to translate Egyptian papyri which he knew nothing about. Since Joseph Smith’s “translations” of both the Book of Abraham and the Kinderhook plates are concerned with descendants of Ham, it is obvious that he had the Negro question in mind.

Bruce Owens, another Mormon scholar, has been able to shed additional light on the Kinderhook plates. Mr. Owens wrote to Smithsonian Institution concerning these plates, and on November 14, 1968, he received a letter in which the following appeared:

In speaking of the Kinderhook plates, Mallery says (page 760), speaking about them, that they were “. . . reported to bear a close resemblance to Chinese. This resemblance seemed no to be extraordinary when it was ascertained that the plate had been engraved by the village blacksmith, copied from the lid of a Chinese tea-chest.” (Letter from George Metcalf of Smithsonian Institution, dated November 14, 1968)

Mr. Owens became interested in the idea that the characters might have been “copied from the lid of a Chinese tea-chest,” and submitted the facsimiles of the Kinderhook plates to scholars. On January 10, 1969, he received a letter from Charles T. Sylvester, of the Embassy of the United States of America, Taipei, Taiwan, which contained this information:

According to Professor Li Hsueh-chih of Academia Sinica and National Taiwan University the language on the inscriptions which you sent is that of the Lo tribe that lives in Yunnan Province in the southwest of mainland China. Unfortunately, Professor Li said that he could identify the writing but could not read the inscription . . .

On March 19, 1969, Bruce Owens received a letter from Kun Chang, Department of Oriental Languages, University of California, Berkeley. In this letter we find this statement: “The inscriptions enclosed seem to be the ideographs used by the Lolo tribes in Yunnan.” The Mormon Egyptologist Dee Jay Nelson also feels that “the script is indeed that of the Lo tribe” (Letter dated August 1,1969), but he has not been trained to actually read this language.

It is very likely that the men who made the Kinderhook plates had access to a tea-chest. According to Joseph Smith’s mother, her husband received a tea-chest before they moved to Palmyra:

. . . the only thing which had been brought for Mr. Smith from China was a small chest of tea, which had been delivered into his care, for my husband. (Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, Liverpool, 1853, page 50) . . .

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