An exploration into the world and mindsets behind viewing Native Americans as potential members of the ten "lost tribes" of Israel.

The author thoroughly analyzes the authors and books which advanced the idea from the 1600s until the early 1900s. She begins with Thorowgood and explains the reasoning: he speaks in terms of potentiality and possibility more than certainty, and does so in a well-intentioned way to exhort his fellow Reformed to take the Gospel to the Native Americans. She continues with Adair, Ethan Smith, Boudinot, and Apess, all of whom advance the idea even though many consider it folly. Apess is of special note as a Native himself and a Methodist.

She then takes on the Book of Mormon, showing how it discounts the idea of Native Americans as part of the "ten tribes" while extending hope for the prospect that the "ten tribes" will be found elsewhere as well as explaining how the idea of Natives as the "lost tribes" of Israel lost currency when speculation about the tribes and purported connections between Jesus and the Americas became the hallmarks of Mormonism.

She then explores two fictional narratives, one that featured a preacher convinced Native Americans were Israelites, and another which would suggest Native Americans interacted with the "lost tribes" on their way to the "verge" to reach the interior of the earth. She concludes with a consideration of looking into DNA evidence.

In all of this she is not just interested in the idea of Native Americans representing the "lost tribes" of Israel, but also what it said about those who advanced the ideas: how they viewed Natives, the marginalization of Natives, white supremacy and colonialism and all that it entails.

This is truly a deep dive with a lot of interpretation. It's a bit unnecessarily clunky and overly explicit, and has the voice of a scholar. But it is an interesting picture into a unique strain of thought in American Christendom.