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Mountain Meadows Massacre: After 150 years, ire toward LDS Church persists
By Jessica Ravitz
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 09/11/2007 06:57:40 AM MDT
MOUNTAIN MEADOWS - A recently discovered part of Parley Pearce's family history is laid out before him in the broad expanse of a valley floor that is Mountain Meadows.
It was here amid the sage and scrub, 150 years ago today, that one of his ancestors, a member of a local Mormon militia, participated in the killing of 120 Arkansas emigrants who were traveling by wagon train to California. Descendants of the victims, the 17 survivors (all children 7 and younger) and the perpetrators, as well as others, will stand together this morning to remember the Mountain Meadows Massacre - perhaps Utah's, and the LDS Church's, darkest chapter and one that has fueled historical debate, descendant infighting, conspiracy theories about cover-ups and, at times, fragile detentes.
"I thought with a name like mine, I might get lynched down here," says Pearce, 57, of Walla Walla, Wash., who decided to brave the trip so he could learn more about his family's past, good and bad. "You can't go back and change history, but it's important to know the truth."
The only thing as complicated and contested as nailing down exactly what happened before, during and after the bloodbath in this valley - then a common stop along the Old Spanish Trail - is determining the future of the grave site monument.
Situated off Highway 18, about an hour's drive southwest of Cedar City, stands the grave site monument where
Pearce and others will gather today for a memorial service. The large rock pyramid-like structure, which measures about 15 feet tall and is encircled by a protective wall, was built and is maintained by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns this part of the land.
That fact alone rankles Phil Bolinger, president of the Arkansas-based Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation Inc. (MMMF, one of three organizations representing descendants), because he, like many victim and survivor descendants, sees then-LDS prophet Brigham Young - and, by extension, the church - as culpable for the crime.
Quoting an often-used analogy, he asks, "How do you think the Kennedy family would feel if the Lee Harvey Oswald family was in charge of the Kennedy grave?"
Bolinger's organization wants third-party intercession, namely federal stewardship of the grave site, an issue MMMF members and guests discussed at length during a Monday morning roundtable discussion.
Only then, they say, can the story of their ancestors, and the remains of those who died in Mountain Meadows, be protected.
The bodies of the dead were left where they fell. Captains Reuben T. Campbell and Charles Brewer, along with their men from Camp Floyd, Utah, reportedly arrived a year or so later. They gathered and buried, in three separate sites, some of the remains in the northern valley, where the massacre took place. Of those sites, at least two are unmarked and all three are believed to be on privately owned land.
When Brevet Major James H. Carleton of Ft. Tejon, Calif., entered the meadows in 1859, he and his troops found bones strewn across the southern valley. They gathered partial remains of about 36 individuals, in the area where the original siege of the emigrants took place days before the massacre, and buried them beneath a large stone cairn. That structure, and the actual rocks used, would become
the model and materials for today's monument.
In the years that followed, the cairn crumbled, was torn down, moved and rebuilt 11 times, says Marian Jacklin, who oversees historical issues for Dixie National Forest, which manages much of the federal land in the area.
Along the way, different plaques adorned it. A 1932 bronze marker placed blame squarely on John D. Lee, the one Mormon militiaman convicted of the murders, who was executed in 1877 at Mountain Meadows while sitting on his coffin. By mid-September 1990, with the approval of the LDS Church (which had been deeded the land in the 1970s), the Lee family members removed that marker and replaced it with a new plaque that spoke of a massacre but offered no explanation of who was behind the killings.
That plaque appeared in conjunction with the placement of another monument about a mile up, atop Dan Sill Hill overlooking the valley. Etched in granite imported from Arkansas are the names of the 120 victims and 17 survivors. There are signs offering a historical overview (placing blame on Mormon settlers and Indians, which has been refuted by some historians and members of the Paiute Nation), a map depicting the path of the emigrants, and a metal viewfinder to help visitors pinpoint where the massacre occurred. All of this is neither owned by the LDS Church nor on the land the emigrants traveled. Instead, this monument is on federal land, is managed by Dixie National Forest and was built under the direction of the Mountain Meadows Association (MMA), the oldest descendant's organization, Jacklin says.
The experience of pulling this together showed how loaded this chapter in history remains.
"Back in '89, there were 27 different accounts of what happened at Mountain Meadows, and it's just gone from there," she says. "It's still very volatile. . . . The emotions are right there on the edge."
So it goes at the rock cairn, too.
LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley visited the site in October 1998, saw the then-deteriorating cairn and determined it was time to refurbish it.
On Aug. 3, 1999, under the supervision of several MMA members and archaeologists from Brigham Young University (who had reportedly accessed the land so as to avoid disturbing burial grounds), workers digging a trench unearthed, with a backhoe, the remains of about 29 individuals. The bones, as is common practice when human remains are found, were sent to BYU and the University of Utah
for analysis.
Initial studies by then-U. anthropologist Shannon Novak showed that wounds were not consistent with LDS Church historical accounts that had placed blame on Paiute Indians. But before she and others could complete their work, then-Gov. Mike. Leavitt (a descendant of some massacre perpetrators) intervened, issuing an order to stop the evaluation and return the bones to the grave site so that they could be reinterred in time for the Sept. 11, 1999 dedication.
The whole ordeal not only stirred up conspiracy theories, it created a schism among descendants. Those living in Arkansas resented that certain MMA members were speaking for them, and in so doing were misrepresenting their wishes to the church. The establishment of MMMF soon followed.
MMMF members say theirs is a frustration with the church institution, not the Mormon people in general. What they want are assurances that developers won't sweep in and build condos, that access to the hallowed grounds will remain open, that mishaps like the backhoe incident of 1999 won't take them by surprise and that no one party will own the history's narrative.
The story, after all, belongs to many, no matter how discomforting it may be.
"It's a discovery process. Everyone needs to face up to the realities," says Pearce, who's just beginning to open the past. "I would rather know, even if it's somewhat painful."
[email protected]
kenb
By Jessica Ravitz
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 09/11/2007 06:57:40 AM MDT
MOUNTAIN MEADOWS - A recently discovered part of Parley Pearce's family history is laid out before him in the broad expanse of a valley floor that is Mountain Meadows.
It was here amid the sage and scrub, 150 years ago today, that one of his ancestors, a member of a local Mormon militia, participated in the killing of 120 Arkansas emigrants who were traveling by wagon train to California. Descendants of the victims, the 17 survivors (all children 7 and younger) and the perpetrators, as well as others, will stand together this morning to remember the Mountain Meadows Massacre - perhaps Utah's, and the LDS Church's, darkest chapter and one that has fueled historical debate, descendant infighting, conspiracy theories about cover-ups and, at times, fragile detentes.
"I thought with a name like mine, I might get lynched down here," says Pearce, 57, of Walla Walla, Wash., who decided to brave the trip so he could learn more about his family's past, good and bad. "You can't go back and change history, but it's important to know the truth."
The only thing as complicated and contested as nailing down exactly what happened before, during and after the bloodbath in this valley - then a common stop along the Old Spanish Trail - is determining the future of the grave site monument.
Situated off Highway 18, about an hour's drive southwest of Cedar City, stands the grave site monument where
Pearce and others will gather today for a memorial service. The large rock pyramid-like structure, which measures about 15 feet tall and is encircled by a protective wall, was built and is maintained by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns this part of the land.
That fact alone rankles Phil Bolinger, president of the Arkansas-based Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation Inc. (MMMF, one of three organizations representing descendants), because he, like many victim and survivor descendants, sees then-LDS prophet Brigham Young - and, by extension, the church - as culpable for the crime.
Quoting an often-used analogy, he asks, "How do you think the Kennedy family would feel if the Lee Harvey Oswald family was in charge of the Kennedy grave?"
Bolinger's organization wants third-party intercession, namely federal stewardship of the grave site, an issue MMMF members and guests discussed at length during a Monday morning roundtable discussion.
Only then, they say, can the story of their ancestors, and the remains of those who died in Mountain Meadows, be protected.
The bodies of the dead were left where they fell. Captains Reuben T. Campbell and Charles Brewer, along with their men from Camp Floyd, Utah, reportedly arrived a year or so later. They gathered and buried, in three separate sites, some of the remains in the northern valley, where the massacre took place. Of those sites, at least two are unmarked and all three are believed to be on privately owned land.
When Brevet Major James H. Carleton of Ft. Tejon, Calif., entered the meadows in 1859, he and his troops found bones strewn across the southern valley. They gathered partial remains of about 36 individuals, in the area where the original siege of the emigrants took place days before the massacre, and buried them beneath a large stone cairn. That structure, and the actual rocks used, would become
the model and materials for today's monument.
In the years that followed, the cairn crumbled, was torn down, moved and rebuilt 11 times, says Marian Jacklin, who oversees historical issues for Dixie National Forest, which manages much of the federal land in the area.
Along the way, different plaques adorned it. A 1932 bronze marker placed blame squarely on John D. Lee, the one Mormon militiaman convicted of the murders, who was executed in 1877 at Mountain Meadows while sitting on his coffin. By mid-September 1990, with the approval of the LDS Church (which had been deeded the land in the 1970s), the Lee family members removed that marker and replaced it with a new plaque that spoke of a massacre but offered no explanation of who was behind the killings.
That plaque appeared in conjunction with the placement of another monument about a mile up, atop Dan Sill Hill overlooking the valley. Etched in granite imported from Arkansas are the names of the 120 victims and 17 survivors. There are signs offering a historical overview (placing blame on Mormon settlers and Indians, which has been refuted by some historians and members of the Paiute Nation), a map depicting the path of the emigrants, and a metal viewfinder to help visitors pinpoint where the massacre occurred. All of this is neither owned by the LDS Church nor on the land the emigrants traveled. Instead, this monument is on federal land, is managed by Dixie National Forest and was built under the direction of the Mountain Meadows Association (MMA), the oldest descendant's organization, Jacklin says.
The experience of pulling this together showed how loaded this chapter in history remains.
"Back in '89, there were 27 different accounts of what happened at Mountain Meadows, and it's just gone from there," she says. "It's still very volatile. . . . The emotions are right there on the edge."
So it goes at the rock cairn, too.
LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley visited the site in October 1998, saw the then-deteriorating cairn and determined it was time to refurbish it.
On Aug. 3, 1999, under the supervision of several MMA members and archaeologists from Brigham Young University (who had reportedly accessed the land so as to avoid disturbing burial grounds), workers digging a trench unearthed, with a backhoe, the remains of about 29 individuals. The bones, as is common practice when human remains are found, were sent to BYU and the University of Utah
for analysis.
Initial studies by then-U. anthropologist Shannon Novak showed that wounds were not consistent with LDS Church historical accounts that had placed blame on Paiute Indians. But before she and others could complete their work, then-Gov. Mike. Leavitt (a descendant of some massacre perpetrators) intervened, issuing an order to stop the evaluation and return the bones to the grave site so that they could be reinterred in time for the Sept. 11, 1999 dedication.
The whole ordeal not only stirred up conspiracy theories, it created a schism among descendants. Those living in Arkansas resented that certain MMA members were speaking for them, and in so doing were misrepresenting their wishes to the church. The establishment of MMMF soon followed.
MMMF members say theirs is a frustration with the church institution, not the Mormon people in general. What they want are assurances that developers won't sweep in and build condos, that access to the hallowed grounds will remain open, that mishaps like the backhoe incident of 1999 won't take them by surprise and that no one party will own the history's narrative.
The story, after all, belongs to many, no matter how discomforting it may be.
"It's a discovery process. Everyone needs to face up to the realities," says Pearce, who's just beginning to open the past. "I would rather know, even if it's somewhat painful."
[email protected]
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