Jewish Indian theory (or Hebraic Indian theory, or Jewish Amerindian theory) is the erroneous idea that some or all of the lost tribes of Israel had travelled to the Americas and that all or some of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas are of Israelite descent or were influenced by still-lost Jewish populations. The theory was popular in the late seventeenth century, and had a lasting legacy through its influence on Mormon belief.
History
The belief that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas are of Israelite descent dates back to the fifteenth century. The discovery of the populated New World seemed to challenge Europeans' theories of human origins, with the question of how the origins of Indigenous peoples in the Americas fitted into scriptural history. Various ideas arose, including possible relationships to Egyptians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Vikings, Tartars, the Chinese people or Atlantis. However, the most popular idea to emerge was that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas were the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. This theory thus neatly answered both the question of the Indigenous peoples' origins and what had happened to the lost tribes. The theory existed in a wider debate about whether peoples of the world had a monogenic origin in Adam or whether they had a polygenic origin, deriving from different creations.
Spanish writings
The theory was discussed by Spanish writers in the sixteenth century, including Diego de Landa in his Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (The Relation of the Things of the Yucatan), written around 1566, and Diego Durán's History of the Indies of New Spain (1581). The first work to address the theory systematically came in 1607: The Origin of the Indians of the New World by Dominican Gregorio García. García argued based on supposed similarities in appearance, custom (including idolatry) and language (including the frequency of glottals) that the lost tribes of Israel travelled to the Americas alongside other migrations, including of Carthaginians and Phoenicians and people from China, Tartary and Atlantis. The book also makes etymological arguments: for example, García asserted that "Mex-" in "Mexico" was based on the Hebrew term "Messiah".
García argued that circumcision was common among Indigenous peoples of the Americas, particularly in the Yucatán. García suggested that the lost tribes must have reached the Americas from eastern Asia via what is now called the Bering strait. In contrast, the French archbishop Gilbert Génébrard argued in 1587 that they travelled via Greenland.
Diego Andres Rocha also argued for the idea in Tratado Unico y Singular del Origen de los Indios (1687), with claims including that a broken Hebrew is spoken in Cuba and Jamaica. He argued that the Spanish first populated the Americas shortly after the Flood, with the lost tribes coming much later, via the Bering Strait.
In England and the Netherlands in the mid-seventeenth century
More generally, the theory came to prominence in England and northwestern Europe in the 1650s, during a period of messianic millenarianism, notably, it came to prominence in England during the rule of Oliver Cromwell. This occurred at a time when no Jews were officially living in England. The English may have been predisposed to accept the theory because of early British Israelism, the theory that sought to prove the existence of a connection between the lost tribes and the English. The theory was not just of historical concern: it carried concomitant eschatological implications as the return of the lost tribes and conversion of the entire Jewish nation would herald the Second Coming of Jesus.
A key early publication in England was Edward Winslow's The Glorious Progress of the Gospel Amongst the Indians in New England (1649), which claimed some elements of Native American life followed Mosaic laws. The publication urged further action to convert Native Americans to Christianity.
Another important work was written by Thomas Thorowgood (or Thoroughgood): Iewes in America, published 1650, re-issued in 1652 as Digitus Dei: New Discoveryes. This presented a detailed defense of the theory, including a focus on supposed linguistic similarities with Hebrew and on the use of circumcision. Thorowgood and Winslow shared millenalist beliefs.
Hamon L'Estrange published a rebuttal of the theory in 1651, titled Americans no Iewes, which Thorowgood also argued against in his 1660 work titled Jews in America (a new work despite the similarity in name to the 1650's work Iewes in America).