Amoron was a Nephite who lived during the final, tumultuous period of warfare between the Nephites and Lamanites, approximately around AD 400–421. His role was notably connected to providing intelligence to the Nephite military leader Mormon. Amoron reported on sensitive details regarding the treatment of Nephite prisoners by the Lamanites after an engagement at the tower of Sherrizah. His account was of such importance that it was included in the correspondences between Mormon and his son Moroni, which are preserved in the Book of Mormon.
The nature of his report was particularly harrowing, as it described acts of extreme cruelty. Amoron conveyed that the Lamanite captors had not only slain the husbands and fathers of the captured Nephite families but had also resorted to the inhumane practice of feeding the women and children with the flesh of their own slain relatives (Moroni 9:8). This barbaric mistreatment indicated the severe degeneration of societal norms and the heightened desperation or wickedness that had come to characterize the closing chapter of Nephite history.
The contents shared by Amoron underscore the brutality and moral collapse of the period leading up to the final battles that would result in the Nephite nation’s ultimate downfall. His reports to Mormon provided a crucial yet distressing perspective on the conflict’s severe impact on both the prisoners and the moral fabric of the societies involved.