Many people have the notion that American Indians are actually the "Lost Tribes" of Israel. This notion was made famous by the Mormons, of course, in the 1830's. Joseph Smith's put forth the idea that the Indians were the evil sons of Laman (Lamanites), pre-Columbian natives who nearly annihilated the good sons of Nephi. Only Mormon and his son Moroni left a record of this history (and buried it in 384 AD--which, after exhumed and 'translated by Smith,' became the Book of Mormon). These folk were descendents of the earlier Jaredites (who fled the Tower of Babel), who came to America via the Atlantic in remarkable round boats.

What many people do not know is that James Adair wrote his History of the American Indians in 1775. Adair was convinced that the Cherokee and Chickasaw Indians were Jewish, both by custom and language.

This theme was again exhibited in papers of the American Board Commission for Foreign Missions. (Indians were of course "foreign" to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant enterprise.) In 1831-37, on Rev. Buttrick offered another detailed study, comparing the Hebrew language with the Indian language. He laid out lists of similar words and sounds. This work is in the Harvard Houghton Library. I've held these papers in my hands. Call Numbers are: ABC:18.3.1, v.9 and ABC18.3.3,vol.3 Buttrick. [I may have some detail incorrect. I started graduate (Ph.D) work at Harvard in '82-'83, but was unable to continue. I have a lot of notes. I complete a book manuscript in '83, called The End of the World in Poe: The Sociological Elements of Adventism in Selected Works of Edgar Allan Poe.]

But what most people don't know is that early Jews in America also thought Indians were Jews, of the "Lost Tribes." The first Jews in this country were part of a Spanish land grant (1579) in what is now northern Mexico and Southwest Texas, and their earliest records indicate their thoughts that the Indians were of Jewish descent.

The famous Portuguese-Dutch Rabbi Manesseh ben Israel published his Hope of Israel in London in 1652. Rabbi ben Israel pushed the idea that since the Indians, as Jews, were the first inhabitants of America, Jews should then be readmitted to England. This was, of course, a political use of the Indian-Jew theory. Of course, two years before, 1650, English religionist thomas Thorowgood wrote Jews In America, to raise funds to support Christian missionaries to convert the Jews (American Indians) in America.

Well, it was Catholic Friar Juan de Torquemada, in Monarquia indiana (Seville, 1615) who first seriously advocated the idea that Indians were Jews. But the idea was not his. He references an even earlier manuscript, nearly one hundred years earlier, which he believed was the work of the famous Friar Bartolome de las Casas, the missionary to Cuba and the West Indies. Casas believed the Indian languages there were replete with Hebrew and Yiddish. He went on to list rather stunning similarities of custom, habit, and practice, which, of course, is all theoretical at this point.

So, the theory has been around since the early 16th century (1500's). And many Jews bought into it, early on. Mostly, however, their interest in the theory was to use it as a polemical tool in securing their own place in the world, which, at the time was quite insecure. In 1825, Mordecai Manuel Noah, a Jewish journalist, playwright, and subscriber to the Indian-Jew theory, tried starting a Zionist colony in New York, for Jews and American Indians.

German Jew Herman Bendell was appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1871, by President Grant. Grant wanted a Jew in that office because he didn't want the Indians to be forced into any religion (Christianity specifically), and he wanted someone to care about their physical well being more than their "souls." However, there isn't clarion evidence that Grant had any interest in the Indian-Jew "Lost Tribes" theory.

All I can say is this: in the Indian creation myths and tribal histories, I don't know of a single American Indian tribe that holds any idea that Indians came from anywhere but right here, on Red Earth America.

I also know that there are no "Lost Tribes" of Israel. That is a historical myth. The Jews that were taken captive in 722 BC were taken eastward, to Mesopotamia (Assyria) and Media (Persia, or, western Iran). Their tribes were not absorbed, nor did they lose their religious/cultural identity. I have presented papers on this at the biennial Iranian Studies Conference in Bethesda, MD, and some of this material is about to be published in journals. I will post the information when it is available.

That Jews and Indians had amicable relations from the beginning is certain. But this is due to the Jewish nack for cultural exchange, and the Indians' own love of trading. Yes, there are similarities in the two peoples, but, I don't think there's enough to claim blood kin.