Elephants

Elephants appear in the Jaredite record as part of an unusually varied animal world. The account lists them alongside horses, asses, cattle, sheep, swine, goats, and other creatures, placing them within the material environment of human societies rather than treating them as isolated wonders. Their mention is brief, but it enlarges the scale of the world described and identifies elephants as animals known to the people of the record.

Identity and Description

The record names elephants together with “cureloms and cumoms,” a group of animals whose names are distinctive to the Jaredite account. Unlike the more familiar livestock listed nearby, elephants are presented as extraordinary in size and presence, yet the text does not detach them from ordinary subsistence. It explicitly says that the animals were useful to human beings, “more especially the elephants and cureloms and cumoms.” Their defining narrative trait is therefore not merely rarity but exceptional usefulness.

Place in Jaredite Society

The elephants are mentioned in a passage describing the abundance of animal life available to the Jaredite people. Oxen and cows, sheep, swine, and goats are associated with food, while horses and asses belong to the broader inventory of domesticated or serviceable animals. The inclusion of elephants in the same catalog suggests a society capable of recognizing and employing a wide range of creatures. The passage does not explain the exact tasks elephants performed, but its emphasis on their usefulness gives them a practical place in the economy of the human community.

Narrative Function

Although elephants do not act as individual characters and receive no independent episode, their appearance has a larger descriptive effect. The list moves from common herd animals to horses, asses, elephants, and the unfamiliar cureloms and cumoms, creating a widening sense of abundance and difference. Elephants help make the Jaredite world feel expansive: the record is not confined to the animals most familiar to its narrators but preserves an image of a land populated by creatures of many kinds and capacities.

Significance

The brief reference to elephants joins natural history to the record’s account of human settlement. Animals are presented as participants in the conditions that make communal life possible, especially through food and other forms of usefulness. At the same time, the passage grants elephants a significance beyond simple resource value by singling them out, with the cureloms and cumoms, for special usefulness. Their presence thus marks both the abundance of the Jaredite environment and the text’s habit of viewing the nonhuman world through its relationship to human survival and prosperity.