As the decades linked themselves into centuries the breach between Nephites and Lamanites became wider, the enmity fiercer, and the disparity in customs and culture greater; though for brief and exceptional periods there was truce between them. The Nephites maintained a relatively high standard of civilized activity, while the Lamanites became a degenerate people, of nomadic and predatory life, devoted mostly to warfare and the chase; and as a mark of Divine displeasure they were cursed with a dark ruddy skin. Many and bloody were the wars they waged against their more peaceable contemporaries. Nevertheless the Nephites developed and throve in proportion to their varying degrees of allegiance to the laws of God as made known by the succession of prophets whom the Lord raised up among them; and their departures from the ways of righteousness were followed by the disciplinary suffering incident to Lamanite victories, which were permitted to afflict them at intervals. They fled before their aggressive foes, moving northward and eastward; so that in the course of centuries they swept over a large part of the area now embraced by Mexico and the United States. The Gospel of salvation was taught and the fundamental ordinances were administered among the Nephites; and the resurrected Lord, Jesus Christ, ministered among them in Person, and declared them to be the sheep of that other fold to which He had referred while preaching to the Jews. See John 10:16. About 420 A. D., the Nephites, having fallen into wickedness all the more convicting because of their intellectual superiority, were utterly destroyed as a nation by their hereditary enemies. The exterminating conflict was fought in the vicinity of Palmyra, in the present State of New York. The savage but victorious Lamanites have lived on as the degraded race of red men, whom Columbus found in the land on the occasion of his re-discovery of the Western Continent. Such is the origin of the American Indians. They are of Israelitish descent, belonging to the House of Joseph who was sold into Egypt. From the time of Lehi's exodus from Jerusalem down to the end of Nephite history, a circumstantial record was kept by scribes set apart to the work. That record has been restored to human knowledge, and the translated part has been given to the world as the Book of Mormon. The announcement of such a discovery as that of the plates of Mormon, and of such an achievement as the translation of the records into English, could not fail to attract the attention of both layman and scholar. But the announcement was treated with contempt and vigorous denunciation.