After and were called on a mission to preach to the American Indians in September 1830, several other expressed a desire to see the fulfillment of God’s purposes among “the remnants of the house of Joseph—the residing in the west.” JS inquired “of the Lord respecting the propriety of sending som[e] of the Elders among them,” resulting in the following revelation for and .

With his longstanding interest in the American Indians, no doubt welcomed the call. He had set out for from in the fall of 1826, when he was nineteen, with plans to preach to the Indians. He later recalled his youthful thoughts: “I will win the confidence of the red man; I will learn his language; I will tell him of Jesus; I will read to him the Scriptures; I will teach him the arts of peace; to hate war, to love his neighbor, to fear and love God.” However, Pratt did not then follow through with his plan. Instead, he built a small log hut some thirty miles west of , Ohio, and spent the winter in reading and study, especially of the Bible. The following summer he returned to New York, married Thankful Halsey, and went back to Ohio with his new bride. In 1829, Pratt, who was a Baptist, was influenced by , a restorationist preacher affiliated with . Attracted by the Campbellites’ efforts to recreate the primitive church of the New Testament and by their expectation of Christ’s second coming, Pratt decided to become an itinerant preacher of their message. In the summer of 1830, Pratt and his wife left Ohio for their “native place,” Columbia County, New York, where he planned to preach. En route by canal boat, Pratt responded to what he felt were spiritual promptings and disembarked at Newark, near , leaving his wife to travel on alone. Pratt encountered a Baptist deacon who loaned him a copy of the Book of Mormon; he soon “knew and comprehended that the book was true.” Pratt then traveled to the Palmyra area, where he met . Shortly after, the two traveled to , where Pratt was into the and ordained an . He then continued on to Columbia County to rejoin his wife and proselytize friends and family.

soon learned of the call and had received to preach to the Lamanites. Not long after, the revelation featured here called Pratt, along with , to accompany them. Peterson, a resident of Macedon, New York, was a founding elder of the Church of Christ and received an elder’s license on 9 June 1830.

Unlike other revelations from this period, this revelation was not recorded in Revelation Book 1. It is possible that took the only copy with him when he left on his mission, making it unavailable for inclusion when was compiling the relevant portion of the book. When this revelation was later recorded in Revelation Book 2 (the source for the text presented here), it included the notation “ Oct 1830.” Though the precise date of the revelation was not recorded, it was likely dictated shortly before 17 October, when Pratt and the other missionaries assigned to preach to the Lamanites signed a covenant to follow as he led them in their missionary labors.