Tents, tents, tents. Tents are everywhere in the Book of Mormon narrative, from Nephi’s earliest account to Mormon’s last record written a thousand years later (1 Ne. 2:4; Morm. 6:4). As would be expected, tents were carried on journeys: Lehi and his family leaving the land of Jerusalem and traveling to the place they called Bountiful (1 Ne. 2:4); Nephi’s journey to the land of Nephi (2 Ne. 5:7); Zeniff’s journey back to the land of Nephi (Mosiah 7:5; 9:4); Alma’s journey to land of Helem and later to the land of Zarahemla (Mosiah 18:34; 23:5; 24:20); and Ammon’s exodus from the land of Nephi with his Lamanite converts, the Anti-Lehi-Nephites (Alma 27:25). People listened from their tents to king Benjamin’s address (Mosiah 2:5). Military campaigns required tents: The army of Alma in the valley of Gideon (Alma 2:20); the army of Teancum fighting on the borders of the land Bountiful (Alma 51:32, 34) and numerous other military campaigns (Alma 58:13, 17, 25; 62:18).

The frontier movement of tens of thousands of Nephites and Lamanites to the land of Desolation in 55 B.C. required continuous living in tents as a supplement to their building homes of timber and cement (Hel. 3:9). At the final battle between the Lamanites and the Nephites, some 230,000 Nephites gathered—pitching their vast sea of “tents around about the hill Cumorah” to ominously await the more numerous Lamanites marching towards them (Morm. 6:4–15). Mormon records that the “more idle part of the Lamanites lived in the wilderness, and dwelt in tents; and they were spread through the wilderness on the west, in the land of Nephi; yea, and also on the west of the land of Zarahemla, in the borders by the seashore, and on the west in the land of Nephi, in the place of their fathers’ first inheritance, and thus bordering along by the seashore” (Alma 22:28; see also, Enos 1:20). These three areas of Lamanite tent dwelling appear to have stretched for hundreds of miles along the western seashore of the major lands of Nephi and Zarahemla. When the Jaredites arrived at “that great sea which divideth the lands … they pitched their tents; and they called the name of the place Moriancumer; and they dwelt in tents, and dwelt in tents upon the seashore for the space of four years” (Ether 2:13). (See "Camping on the Shores of the Great Sea" in our topic article, Jared, his Brother and their Friends—A Geographical Analysis of the Book of Ether).

According to their record, the Book of Mormon people—Jaredites, Lamanites and Nephites—were highly mobile societies well accustomed to tent living. Tents were ubiquitous, and the continuous dwelling choice of many. The preference for tent dwellings was a natural complement, and the common cultural response, to the open Mediterranean and semiarid landscapes, vegetation and climates of the Biblical lands and Baja California. These tents most likely were assembled from goat and other animal skins attached to wood frames and held down with ropes and stakes, similar to the construction of tents in the lands of the Bible, even to this day. Some tent coverings would have been spun and woven from goat’s hair. Tents, however, do not fit well as common and continuous dwelling choices in the more humid areas of Meso-America, especially within the less-open and entwined foliage of rain-forested areas.