The Kinderhook Plates Hoax
In 1843, an excavation into an Indian mound discovered charred human bones and an artifact of 6 bell shaped plates. As the plates were covered in hieroglyphics on both sides the plates were sent to Joseph Smith for translation. Unbeknownst to Joseph, these plates were a forged artifact created by three men testing the validity of Joseph’s ability as a seer and translator. William Clayton, Joseph’s private secretary recorded that Joseph began translating the plates. Joseph also records the event in the History of the Church:
“I have translated a portion of [the plates] 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.”
Joseph’s summary of the content of the Kinderhook plates demonstrates that either he thought that they were genuine or that he saw an opportunity to reinforce LDS doctrine using these artifacts. For more than a century, the LDS church officially took the position that the prophet and seer Joseph Smith declared that the Kinderhook plates were genuine and physical evidence of Israelites in the Americas. However, in 1980 the plates were tested scientifically and proven to be a modern creation and a hoax. In addition, one of the men that created the hoax, Wilbur Fugate, admitted in a letter in 1879 that:
“Wiley and I made the hieroglyphics by making impressions on beeswax and filling them with acid and putting it on the plates. When they were finished we put them together with rust made of nitric acid, old iron and lead, and bound them with a piece of hoop iron, covering them completely with rust”
Learn More:
- Wikipedia – Kinderhook Plates
- Archive.org – Improvement Era – The Kinderhook plates
- MormonThink – Kinderhook Plates
- LDS.org – Engsign Article- Kinderhook Plates Brought to Joseph Smith Appear to Be a Nineteenth-Century Hoax
- Fair Mormon – Joseph Smith and the Kinderhook plates
- CES Letter – Kinderhook Plates
Image Credits – Church History Library, Salt Lake City | Letter from the Chicago Historical Society, 2005 | History of the Church, 1909