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In this episode of Hebrew Voices #192 - Early Mormonism on Trial, Nehemia welcomes back Dan Vogel to discuss the uncovering of Joseph Smith’s court hearing documents, his background digging for treasure using seer stones, and the influence of folk magic on early Mormonism.

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Dan: Only the apologists that seem to have come from another century. They’re the old apologists. They’re the bad apologists, the apologists that really…

Nehemia: I don’t feel like I, as an outsider, should make a judgment about who are the good and bad apologists, but…

Dan: Oh, I will.

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Nehemia: I’m back with Dan Vogel, the greatest living historian of early Mormon history, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating there. At least that’s my view on it.

Dan: Joseph Smith didn’t answer any of that. Never answered his relatives, never answered the neighbors, never disputed the magic or money digging or seer stone or anything. Never said a word. All he did is publish his own version.

Nehemia: Well, I think he made a statement about how, “Well, if I was a money digger, I wasn’t a very successful one, because I only made $14.” Didn’t he say something like that?

Dan: Yeah, and the only time he ever mentions money digging is to imply that he was nothing but a digger.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm. Tell us about the money digging. So, we alluded to it a few hours back.

Dan: He only dug… “I dug, and I talked to the guy out of doing it anymore, and we quit,” you know.

Nehemia: So, money digging… the audience who isn’t familiar with this will have no idea what that is. Tell us about money digging. Let’s go. And this has to do with the Mound Builder Myth, doesn’t it?

Dan: No, not so much. Yes and no. But there were treasures from the Indians that they don’t…

Nehemia: There were actual treasures from Indians…

Dan: That were hidden. They believed like there was a golden throne…

Nehemia: Did anybody ever find gold? Let’s find out…

Dan: No.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: Nobody ever found anything, really

Nehemia: Okay, so, there is this whole culture of, every time there’s a hill, they believe it’s manmade… and that’s why I connect it to the Mound Builder Myth. And then there’s gold in that hill, and so people are going back over 100 years… before Joseph Smith, we have, I think, Thomas Jefferson or somebody… Or maybe not 100 years, but decades before, he’s describing how people are out in the countryside and they’re digging holes, wasting their time, looking for treasures.

Dan: Yeah. Benjamin Franklin.

Nehemia: Benjamin Franklin, okay.

Dan: Yeah. Jefferson dug in the mountains, and…

Nehemia: I meant Benjamin Franklin, sorry.

Dan: He’s an archaeologist, kind of. But Benjamin Franklin, yeah, he talked about people consulting astrologers for the best time to dig for money. And they would look for various things, and seers… Joe Smith wasn’t the only one putting a stone in his head. They were more than you think, anyway. In his own neighborhood, there were several people that had stones. There was Sally Chase, who was the main seeress, a neighbor of his, that had a green stone, that would look in her stone. There was William Stafford down about a mile south of their farm. He had a seer stone also, and one of his sons had a seer stone. There was Samuel Lawrence. Samuel Lawrence was one of the major seers in the area that actually went up on the hill with Joseph Smith and said he saw the plates in his stone. So, there were seers around; Joe Smith wasn’t an oddity. But it was a competition, that… I argue that he was trying to win. This was his major goal in life at this time, was to be the best seer in Manchester.

Nehemia: Okay. So, there’s this whole culture, they believe that the Native Americans, what they call the Indians, have buried treasures in the ground. Actually, some of them have to do with the pirate, I forget his name, that he buried stuff.

Dan: Well, there’s Captain Kidd, Bluebeard…

Nehemia: Okay. So, that could be a pirate buried… So, either one of the pirates buried stuff in the ground, or the Indians buri