Editing Curelom and cumom (section)

==Apologetic interpretation==
According to [[Latter-day Saint]] belief, [[Joseph Smith]] translated the Book of Mormon from an ancient language. In this line of thinking, the words ''curelom'' and ''cumom'' were [[transliteration|transliterated]] instead of translated, meaning that while the ancient word is roughly transmitted, the actual animal intended is ambiguous. The context may imply beasts of burden. Some members of [[the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]] have speculated about what the terms refer to, including:

*An as yet undiscovered, probably extinct species.
*Some other [[North America|North]]/[[South America]]n animal species with which Smith was unfamiliar with including possible beasts of burden such as the [[llama]], [[tapir]], [[guanaco]], or other possibly useful creatures like the [[alpaca]], [[vicuña]], [[jaguar]], or [[New World monkey|monkey]].

*[[Mastodon]]s, [[mammoth]]s, or [[gomphothere]]s. Early Latter-day Saint [[apostle (Latter Day Saints)|apostle]] [[Orson Pratt]] might have identified cureloms as mammoths, though the context is unclear as to whether he is talking about cureloms ''and'' mammoths or cureloms ''as'' mammoths. If he means cureloms and mammoths separately, then he is not specifically saying that mammoths existed on the American continent at that time, seeing as all the animals are meant as hypothetical examples of what the Jaredites ''might'' have brought in their barges. 
::''"Now to prepare them against these contingencies, and that they might, have fresh air for the benefit of the elephants, cureloms or mammoths and many other animals, that perhaps were in them, as well as the human beings they contained, the Lord told them how to construct them in order to receive air, that when they were on the top of the water, whichever side up their vessels happened to be, it mattered not; they were so constructed that they could ride safely, though bottom upwards and they could open their air holes that happened to be uppermost"'' (Orson Pratt, ''[[Journal of Discourses]]'' 12:340).<ref>{{harvtxt|Pratt|1868|pp=339–340}}.</ref>