Mosiah 10

New kingdom, days of peace. We built weapons and put guards everywhere to preserve the peace. This is how it always starts.

We did fine for twenty-two years. Those who weren’t making weapons or guarding the streets and borders were farming. Women mostly made babies and clothes.

When King Laman died, his son succeeded him and started to sketch war plans against us. And he propagandized his people against us more vigorously than ever.

I, meanwhile, had sent spies all around Shemlom to scout out their plans. Their armies had come up on the north side of Shilom, fully armed, heads shaved and naked except for their leather-strapped crotches.

With the scouts’ report in hand, we evacuated women and children into the woods. The men grabbed weapons and fell into various ranks by age. We prayed, which we were pretty sure the Lamanites did not. So we expected God to fight with us. And fight we did. They were like wild animals, revenge in their blood, recalling how our tribe, from Lehi’s boat till now, had scorned and mocked them.

Nephi and his family were always the good guys, they always the bad ones. It gets to you. Enough, they must have been thinking.

We heard later that they’d been propagandized about all the wrongs, even petty ones, in which Nephi and his family got special treatment from Lehi (or God). We had always asserted that was because Nephi was the most righteous of the bunch. But that didn’t help our cause, only enflamed it.

In short, Lamanites saw us all with targets on our heads and backs. They saw our possessions as a treasure chest whose lid the devil had lifted.

I personally blamed King Laman, though he never actually attacked us. But he had shown contempt for us for decades.

I had to explain all this to get my people to fight with the right degree of aggression. When you know it’s not about land or money so much as about way of life, you fight harder.

The short version: We slaughtered them. So many dead we skipped the counting. Life went back to normal.

That’s my report. I passed the crown to my son Noah. No more writing here from me. God bless the Nephites. Amen.