The people of Zeniff were the Nephites who followed Zeniff up from Zarahemla to repossess the land of their fathers. Their leader being “over-zealous to inherit the land,” the company was smitten with famine and sore afflictions on the journey, “for we were slow to remember the Lord our God” (Mosiah 9:3). King Laman covenanted that they might possess the lands of Lehi-Nephi and Shilom, commanding his own people to vacate the cities — a cunning grant, made “that he might bring them into bondage” (Mosiah 9:6-7, 10-12).
The colony repaired the walls of both cities, tilled the ground with corn, wheat, barley, neas, and sheum, and began to multiply and prosper (Mosiah 9:8-9). In the thirteenth year a numerous host of Lamanites fell upon them as they watered their flocks south of Shilom (Mosiah 9:14). Armed with every weapon they could invent, and crying mightily to the Lord in remembrance of the deliverance of their fathers, they slew three thousand and forty-three in a day and a night, mourning two hundred and seventy-nine of their own (Mosiah 9:16-19).
Under the son of king Laman war came again: hiding their women and children in the wilderness, with aged Zeniff himself at their head, they contended face to face and drove the Lamanites out of the land with a slaughter so great they did not number the slain (Mosiah 10:9-20). When Zeniff conferred the kingdom on Noah, this same colony became the people of Noah.