The identity of the mound builders of the Ohio Valley, those subsequently referred to as Hopewell, after a farm where some of their artifacts were found, has long been a mystery. Yet by studying recent DNA markers it has now been determined that the Hopewell descended in part from people who moved into Ohio from Illinois and from New York, and their very close relatives living in lower Ontario who the scriptures say all became Lamanites.  However, DNA evidence and pottery types suggest the majority came from lower Ontario, those classed as Proto-Algonquins, espeically the Ojibway.

    The story of the Hopewell can best be explained in the book "We Are Israel," for a number of races and merchant kings gave rise to the Hopewell trade network which floursihed in eastern North America between 50 B.C. -350 A.D., far too big a story for this limited space. Those who moved north from Florida, for instance, providing the Hopewell with a fluorescence which elevated it far above its former glory. Unfortunately, while the Nephites back in Zarahemla worshiped one supreme God, the Mound Builders became a sun-worshiping people whose elitist society was partically responsible for the downfall of the Nephite nation.

     Between the first century before Christ to the third century A.D., the Hopewell spread from its main cultural and ceremonial center in Ohio and Illinois into a variety of small, trading sub-centers found throughout the eastern United States, including parts of southern Michigan and Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky,

     Thus, the people of the Hopewell tradition made up a wide-spread kingdom rivaling any around the world. Although each region was somewhat different, it is commonly believed that they were all living under one grand system of institutions, with the little band of Nephites in New York, those who had not joined the Hopewell, still clinging tenaciously to their worship of Christ, and doing their best to stay out of the hands of the Lamanites who wanted to kill them, and the Hopewell who wanted to convert them to their sun-worshiping ways and thus destroy their souls. In fact, those in Zarahemla went so far as to distinguish themselves by a new name, that being the sons and daughters of Christ. In his address to his people King Benjamin said: “ . . . I shall give this people a name, that thereby they may be distinguished above all the people which the Lord God hath brought out of the land of Jerusalem; and this I do because they have been a diligent people in keeping the commandments of the Lord.” (Mosiah 1:11.)

     When the Hopewell civilization fell around 350 A.D., a considerable number of Nephites were among their numbers, with all the evidence pointing to the last remnants of that society fleeing the land and heading southward toward Mexico. John Baldwin, in Ancient America said: “It has been said, not without reason, that the civilization found in Mexico by Spanish conquerors consisted, to a large extent, fragments from the wreck that befell the American civilization of antiquity.”[1]

     These moved southward in time, tribe pressing upon tribe, as ocean wave presses on ocean wave towards the shore; and doubles this movement of population southward after the disaster at Cumorah , accounts for those universal traditions found among the natives of Mexico and Central America of successive migrations from the north of powerful tribes or races who so much affected the political history of those countries. As these tribes from the north reached the old centers of population and civilization they revived settled orders of governments, fastened themselves upon the weaker inhabitants as their rulers, compelled industry among the lower orders, gave encouragement to the arts that minister to their ease and vanity, encouraged learning at least among the sacerdotal orders, and received the credit of founding a new order of civilization, when in reality, it was but a partial reviving of a former civilization, upon which they fastened the dark and loathsome Lamanite superstitious idolatry with its horrors of human sacrifice and cannibalism. [2]