As my LDS readers are aware, a significant portion of The Book of Mormon is a history of the many wars between the Nephite people and their enemies, collectively referred to as the Lamanites. Consequently, there are references to various weapons, armor, and battlefield tactics. Thus it caught my attention when I came across a couple videos recently concerning Iroquois armor, helmets, and shields, and which discuss how they would form up in military order. The author has tested his armor and it proves effective against the Pre-Colombian weapons even though it was formed from slats of wood bound by cording. But you can see why the Native Americans were so anxious to form military alliances with the early European settlers who had firearms capable of piercing the native armor. According to the author, with the advent of firearms in North America, the Native forces quickly abandoned their armor.
Unfortunately, information on the armor is limited: a few written descriptions, a single woodcut based on a sketch, and a couple examples in museums made well after the fact. So, much of the author's recreation also includes a lot of experimentation.
The first video describes the historical references and the authors' experiments with reproducing the armor. In the second video, he demonstrates putting on and taking off the armor, as well as exercises to demonstrate its mobility. Although not shown, he describes some tests against Pre-Colombian weapons.
The two most complete descriptions are found in Alma. ln Alma 43:19, “Moroni had prepared his people with breastplates and with arm-shields, yea, and also shields to defend their heads, and also they were dressed with thick clothing.” On another occasion, Moroni “fastened on his head-plate, and his breastplate, and his shields, and girded on his armor about his loins” (Alma 46:13)
Hamblin ignores the comment about Mormon "gird[ing] on his armor about his loin," apparently taking it as a general reference to putting on the armor rather than a reference to specific armor for the waist and lower body. But as we see from the video above (as well as other historical examples), troops generally wore armor specific to that region of by body.
In any event, there are a few other notable points from Hamblins article. First, he found eight distinct terms for armor mentioned in the Book of Mormon: breastplate (11 times), shields (10 times), armor (9 times), 8 head-plates (7 times), arm-shields (2 times), animal skins (2 times), thick clothing (2 times), and bucklers (1 time).
Second, he notes that metal armor must have been extremely rare or non-existent among the Nephites. For instance, although there are many references to armor being made of "plates," there is only a single reference to metal armor: a passage in Mosiah 8:10. As you will remember, King Limhi had sent an expedition to search for the city of Zarahemla, but instead they came across the remains of the Jaradite civilization, at that time utterly destroyed. Hamblins notes that their discoveries included “breastplates, which are large, and they are of brass and of copper, and are perfectly sound” (Mosiah 8:10). The fact that the narrative goes out of its way to describe the material of the armor suggests that it was, at least to the Nephites, very unusual. Moreover, Hamblins also observes that "from all the things they discovered, Limhi’s expedition chose to return with only three items: the twenty-four gold plates of Ether, brass and copper breastplates, and some rusted pieces of swords, implying that they were scavenging for metal and that metal was therefore something unusual and rare — even a piece of rusting metal was worth recovering."
If not metal, than what? Hamblin suggests that the use of the term plates and the descriptions of how they would sometimes fail (described as splitting in the case of head plates) suggests that some other hard material was used: probably bone or, as with the Iroquois armor, wood, worn over thick clothing.
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