translation, but more of a community prank. Fugate himself stated the purpose was, "simply for a joke" on the local community of Latter Day Saints, and one of his sons said that rather than being an elaborate trap for Smith, it was "a little plan by which to startle the natives." Purported discovery On April 16, 1843, Wiley began to dig a deep shaft in the center of an Indian mound near the village. It was reported in the Quincy Whig that the reason for Wiley's sudden interest in archaeology was that he had dreamed for three nights in a row that there was treasure buried beneath the mound. At first, he undertook the excavation alone, and reached a depth of about ten feet (3 m) before he abandoned the work, finding it too laborious an undertaking. On April 23, he returned with a group of ten or twelve companions to assist him. They soon reached a bed of limestone, apparently charred by fire. Another two feet (60 cm) down, they discovered human bones, also charred, and "six plates of brass of a bell shape, each having a hole near the small end, and a ring through them all, and clasped with two clasps". A member of the excavation team, W. P. Harris, took the plates home, washed them, and treated them with sulphuric acid. Once they were clean, they were found to be covered in strange characters resembling hieroglyphics. The plates were briefly exhibited in the city, and then sent on to Joseph Smith, the founder of the nascent Latter Day Saint movement. Smith had previously said that on September 22, 1823, an angel led him to a set of buried golden plates written in reformed Egyptian, from which he said he translated the Book of Mormon. The finders of the Kinderhook plates and the general public were keen to know if Smith would be able to decipher the symbols on the Kinderhook plates as well. The Times and Seasons, a Latter-Day Saint publication, claimed that the existence of the Kinderhook plates lent further credibility to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Parley Pratt wrote that the plates contained Egyptian engravings and "the genealogy of one of the ancient Jaredites back to Ham the son of Noah." Smith's response Smith's private secretary, William Clayton, recorded that upon receiving the plates, Smith sent for his "Hebrew Bible & Lexicon",