Israelites in the Americas: the colonizers' own testimony

SUMMARYIsraelites in the Americas: the colonizers' own testimony (Nov 3, 2026). Tito: "tons and tons of receipts to grab."
RECORD, Spanish writers: Diego de Landa (Relación, about 1566) and Diego Durán (History of the Indies of New Spain, 1581) discussed the Israelite theory; Gregorio García, Origen de los Indios (1607), the first full treatment, cited customs, language and circumcision in Yucatán; Diego Andrés Rocha (1687) said a broken Hebrew was spoken in Cuba and Jamaica.
RECORD, the Quito testimony: Antonio de Montezinos (Aaron Levi) said that about 1641, near Quito, he met people who practiced Jewish ceremonies, recited the Shema and named themselves of the tribe of Reuben; in 1644 in Amsterdam he told Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, who published it in The Hope of Israel (1650), and Thorowgood printed it too.
RECORD, English writers: Edward Winslow (1649) said some Native life followed Mosaic law; Thomas Thorowgood, Iewes in America (1650); Hamon L'Estrange answered with Americans no Iewes (1651).
RECORD, William Penn (1683, letter to the Free Society of Traders): "ready to believe them of the Jewish Race, I mean, of the stock of the Ten Tribes"; seeing them, "a man would think himself in Duke's-place or Berry-street in London," the city's Jewish quarter.
RECORD, Americans: James Adair, History of the American Indians (1775), after about 40 years among the Chickasaw and Cherokee; Benjamin Rush (1803) told Lewis to record Native and Jewish parallels; Elias Boudinot, president of the Continental Congress, A Star in the West (1816); the Cherokee editor of the Cherokee Phoenix (1828), Gallegina Watie, took the name Elias Boudinot from him; Ethan Smith, View of the Hebrews (1823/1825); Mordecai Noah's Ararat refuge plan on Grand Island, NY (1825) and his Discourse (1837); Lord Kingsborough's Antiquities of Mexico (1830–48), which argued for Israelite origins and left him in debtors' prison; the Book of Mormon (1830).
RECORD, 1492: Columbus sailed on Aug 3, 1492, as the Alhambra Decree drove the Jews from Spain; his interpreter Luis de Torres, a converso, was taken for his Hebrew and Arabic.
DISPUTED, the stones: Bat Creek (P052, P177), the Newark Holy Stones (Ohio, 1860), the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone (New Mexico).
RECORD, the counterweight: published DNA studies have found no Israelite ancestry in Native American peoples; the LDS church changed "principal ancestors" to "among the ancestors" (2007)

PATTERNfor 300 years the colonizers' own writers looked at the people of the Americas and saw Israel: their customs, their law, their faces. Then the theory was used as a claim on the land (P170)

LENS (WW9)the line runs the other way: Israel's story was carried from here, not to here. OPEN, needs deep research: who set the DNA reference panels (Rule 14), the full Montezinos sworn statement, Adair's Chickasaw word lists, Rocha's Cuba and Jamaica claim.