The Kinderhook Plates: A Small Hoax with Large Implications
The Kinderhook Plates are not as famous as the gold plates of the Book of Mormon or the Egyptian papyri associated with the Book of Abraham. Yet they provide one of the clearest and most narrowly defined tests within Joseph Smith’s world of ancient records and inspired translation.
The question is not whether the plates were genuine. They were not. The more difficult question is what Joseph Smith did when a forged artifact, deliberately fashioned to resemble an ancient record, was placed before him.
The Discovery
On April 23, 1843, six small, bell-shaped brass plates were reportedly unearthed from a burial mound near Kinderhook, Illinois. Their surfaces were covered with unusual markings that appeared to be an ancient script. The plates soon attracted public attention and were taken to Nauvoo so that Joseph Smith might examine and possibly translate them.
The discovery appeared almost perfectly suited to the religious world of early Mormonism. Joseph Smith had already claimed to translate the Book of Mormon from inscribed metal plates and the Book of Abraham from Egyptian papyri. Another buried record, covered with mysterious characters, naturally generated excitement among some Latter-day Saints.
But the Kinderhook Plates were fraudulent.
Wilbur Fugate later admitted that he, Robert Wiley, and a local blacksmith had manufactured the plates, etched invented characters into them, and planted them in the mound shortly before their supposed discovery. In 1980, scientific examination of the one surviving plate found evidence of acid etching and nineteenth-century manufacture. The LDS Church’s present historical account consequently acknowledges that the plates were forged and were not ancient artifacts.
On that point, there is no serious historical dispute.
What Did Joseph Smith Do?
This question requires more care.
No completed translation of the Kinderhook Plates survives. Nothing derived from them was canonized, published as revelation, or included in Latter-day Saint scripture. Joseph Smith also left no surviving document in his own hand declaring that God had revealed their contents to him.
However, the contemporary evidence indicates that he did more than glance at them.
On May 1, 1843, William Clayton—Joseph Smith’s secretary and a close participant in Nauvoo affairs—wrote in his journal that “Prest J. has translated a portion.” Clayton reported that the plates contained the history of the man buried with them, whom Smith supposedly identified as a descendant of Ham through Pharaoh.
Six days later, Apostle Parley P. Pratt wrote that the plates contained the genealogy of an ancient Jaredite descending from Ham. Although Clayton and Pratt differed in some details, both associated the plates with an ancient figure descended from Ham. The Joseph Smith Papers editors therefore conclude that several sources indicate Smith made a brief attempt to translate them.
Joseph Smith’s journal for May 7 also records that men associated with the plates visited him and that he sent for a “Hebrew Bible & Lexicon,” apparently as part of his examination. Another contemporary account reported that the characters were compared with an “Egyptian alphabet.” These details suggest that some kind of linguistic comparison was taking place.
The later History of the Church placed the statement in Joseph Smith’s first-person voice: “I have translated a portion of them.” That wording must be used carefully. The history was compiled after the fact from journals and other documents, and this particular statement was derived from Clayton’s journal rather than from an autograph statement written by Smith himself.
The strongest evidence is therefore not that Joseph personally wrote a translation, but that a trusted contemporary secretary reported him as having translated a portion and communicated its supposed meaning.
The Strongest Latter-day Saint Explanation
A fair assessment must distinguish between ordinary translation and claimed revelation.
Latter-day Saint scholars Don Bradley and Mark Ashurst-McGee argue that Joseph Smith probably did not attempt to translate the plates by a seer stone, the Urim and Thummim, or direct revelation. Instead, they propose that he compared one of the forged symbols with a character in the collection commonly called the “Egyptian Alphabet” and attempted an ordinary, scholarly translation.
The resemblance between one prominent Kinderhook symbol and a character in the “Egyptian Alphabet” is real enough for their proposal to deserve consideration. The supposed meaning assigned to that character could also have supplied elements of the interpretation recorded by Clayton. Under this reconstruction, Joseph was not presenting a new revelation from God. He was acting as an enthusiastic but untrained student of ancient languages.
This distinction significantly limits what critics can responsibly claim.
There is no evidence that Joseph produced an entire Kinderhook scripture. There is no evidence that he announced a completed revelation from God. There is no record of him using a seer stone or claiming that the translation came by the same divine means invoked for the Book of Mormon. The Kinderhook episode should therefore not be described as though Joseph Smith canonized a lengthy fraudulent translation.
Historical criticism becomes weaker, not stronger, when it exaggerates.
What the Defense Does Not Resolve
The ordinary-translation explanation does not make the episode meaningless.
The surviving evidence still indicates that Joseph Smith accepted the plates as potentially authentic, treated their invented markings as meaningful ancient characters, and produced—or allowed others close to him to report—a historical interpretation of material that contained no ancient language at all.
Bradley and Ashurst-McGee, writing from a believing Latter-day Saint perspective, acknowledge that Smith was mistaken. He apparently misjudged the plates’ authenticity, regarded their characters as Egyptian, and believed that he had extracted meaning from at least one of them.
That is not the same as proving deliberate fraud. It is possible for an intelligent and sincere person to be deceived by an apparently ancient artifact. Nineteenth-century knowledge of American archaeology and ancient scripts was limited, and Joseph Smith never claimed omniscience in every ordinary judgment.
Yet Joseph Smith was not known merely as an amateur antiquarian. His religious authority was inseparably connected to extraordinary claims about ancient languages, buried records, lost histories, and translation. When presented with meaningless symbols deliberately created as a test, he apparently did not recognize them as meaningless. Instead, he seems to have drawn a false historical conclusion from them.
The problem is therefore more precise than “a false prophet translated false plates.”
The historical evidence suggests that Joseph Smith confidently misread a forged artifact within the very field—ancient records and languages—in which his prophetic career claimed exceptional authority.
How Much Does the Episode Prove?
The Kinderhook Plates do not, by themselves, disprove every claim Joseph Smith ever made. They do not carry the same evidential weight as the Book of Abraham, where a substantial canonized text and surviving Egyptian materials can be examined. Nor do they prove that Smith knowingly invented a translation while pretending to receive revelation.
Their value is narrower.
They demonstrate that Joseph Smith could be attracted to an ancient-looking object, could misidentify fabricated markings as meaningful characters, and could arrive at an erroneous interpretation without detecting the deception. The episode therefore weakens overly expansive claims about his discernment and competence as a translator of ancient records.
It also belongs within the cumulative evaluation of Joseph Smith’s prophetic authority. Each question—the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, the First Vision accounts, plural marriage, and the Kinderhook Plates—must be examined on its own evidence. The case should not be strengthened through careless accumulation, as though every controversy proved every other one. But neither should a repeated pattern be ignored merely because no individual episode settles the entire question.
The Kinderhook Plates are not the strongest case against Joseph Smith. They are a corroborating warning sign.
The Apostolic Alternative
From an Orthodox Christian perspective, the contrast with the apostolic faith is significant.
Christianity does not depend upon a nineteenth-century prophet privately recovering a lost Gospel from inaccessible records. The apostolic proclamation was public: Jesus Christ was crucified under Pontius Pilate, buried, and proclaimed risen among communities that preserved, copied, read, preached, and defended the apostolic testimony.
The Church’s faith was not reconstructed after eighteen centuries of disappearance. It was received as a sacred inheritance: handed down in Scripture, confessed in worship, defended against heresy, and preserved within the life of the Church.
This does not remove the need for historical investigation. Christians should test claims carefully rather than accepting them merely because they are religious. Scripture itself commands believers to “test the spirits” and commends those who examine teachings rather than receiving them uncritically (1 John 4:1; Acts 17:11).
But the Christian hope rests ultimately upon Christ—not upon mysterious symbols, inaccessible artifacts, or the linguistic claims of a solitary modern seer.
Reflection
The Kinderhook Plates are a small episode, but small episodes sometimes expose the structure of a much larger claim.
They remind us that spiritual confidence is not a substitute for truth, and that sincerity does not transform error into revelation. Claims of prophecy must be tested. Claims of translation must be examined. Religious authority must never be protected by lowering the standard of evidence whenever the evidence becomes uncomfortable.
At the same time, Christian discernment should remain disciplined. We need not exaggerate the Kinderhook case. Joseph Smith did not produce a canonized book from the plates, and the evidence does not establish that he invoked direct revelation. The truth is sufficiently serious without embellishment.
The forged plates did not reveal an ancient civilization. They revealed the danger of mistaking the appearance of antiquity for genuine apostolic truth.
Christ offers something better: not a hidden Gospel waiting to be recovered, but the faith once delivered, publicly proclaimed, and preserved in the communion of His Church.
Sources
Primary and documentary sources
- William Clayton, Journal, May 1, 1843, Church History Library; discussed in the Joseph Smith Papers.
- Joseph Smith, Journal, May 7, 1843, in Journal, December 1842–June 1844.
- Parley P. Pratt to John Van Cott, May 7, 1843, Church History Library.
- “Ancient Records,” Times and Seasons, May 1, 1843.
- A Brief Account of the Discovery of the Brass Plates Recently Taken from a Mound Near Kinderhook, Nauvoo, June 24, 1843.
- Wilbur Fugate to James T. Cobb, June 30, 1879.
Modern studies and institutional resources
- “Kinderhook Plates,” Church History Topics, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
- Stanley B. Kimball, “Kinderhook Plates Brought to Joseph Smith Appear to Be a Nineteenth-Century Hoax,” Ensign, August 1981, 66–74.
- Don Bradley and Mark Ashurst-McGee, “Joseph Smith and the Kinderhook Plates.”
- Joseph Smith Papers, historical introduction to the Letter from David Orr, June 14, 1843.
- Jason Frederick Peters, “The Kinderhook Plates: Examining a Nineteenth-Century Hoax,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 96, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 130–145.