The Book of Mormon peoples have been portrayed as migrating societies, beginning with the time Lehi and his family fled into the wilderness from Jerusalem and eventually made their way to the New World.
Members of Lehi's family continued their migrations after they reached their land of promise. To separate themselves from the wicked Laman and Lemuel and their cohorts, for example, Nephi and his righteous followers took their tents and went to another area. (2 Ne. 5:5.)Even though the Nephites eventually built cities, they continued to wander or migrate. At least one reference mentions that an entire population departed into the wilderness and "disappeared." (Mosiah 22:2.)
From the time Mosiah was directed to take his followers to Zarahemla (about 130 B.C.), that land was the basic center of Nephite civilization until about 57 B.C., when there began to be a massive drift of population. It was the "great northern migration," and Nephites and Lamanites alike began moving to the land northward.
In An Approach to the Book of Mormon, Hugh Nibley wrote: "The fact . . . that the Nephites insisted on thinking of themselves throughout their history as wanderers in a strange land can only mean that they were wanderers, and that they did feel themselves lost in a land which was far more sparsely populated than their original home."
Of the northward migrations, Nibley wrote:
"In the same year in which Hagoth sent off his first great ship to the north (Alma 63:5), a company of `. . . five thousand and four hundred men, with their wives and their children, departed out of the land of Zarahemla into the land which was northward.' (Alma 63:4.)
"This was but the beginning of a continuing trend of large-scale migration into the north countries. Because of troubles and dissension a really great movement took place a few years later when `. . . an exceedingly great many . . . went forth unto the land northward to inherit the land. And they did travel to an exceedingly great distance, insomuch that they came to large bodies of water and many rivers.' (Hel. 3:3-4.)
"This is obviously not to be confused with the northern land of lakes from which Moroni barred access to the people of Morianton in a relatively small-scale military action. (Alma 50:25-35.)
"When distance is described as `exceedingly great' by a people to whom long marches and strenuous campaigns in the wilderness were the established rule, we can be sure that it was at least the equivalent of the migrations of some of our Indian tribes in modern times, which sometimes ran to thousands of miles."
Nibley further observed: "Once the Book of Mormon people break out of the land of Zarahemla, there is no telling how far they go: Since they have all the time in the world we have no right to limit their wanderings and settlements by our own standards of foot-travel."
