Movie revives debate about massacre

It's a story often left out of Western history: Pioneer-era Mormon settlers with painted faces and dressed as American Indians committing a vicious, execution-style killing of some 120 unarmed men, women and children who were part of a wagon train bound for California.

It happened Sept. 11, 1857, about 300 miles south of Salt Lake City in a place called Mountain Meadows on the old Spanish Trail.

Only 17 children — 6 years old and younger — were spared, most thought to be too young to remember or speak of what they saw.

The Mountain Meadows massacre is one of the darkest, most controversial moments in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For nearly 150 years, the depth of the church's involvement in the massacre of Capt. Alexander Fancher's Arkansas wagon train has been debated in dozens of books.

On June 22, Hollywood takes its turn telling the story with "September Dawn," an independent feature film from director Chris Cain ("Young Guns"). The film stars Academy Award winners Jon Voight and Terence Stamp, along with Lolita Davidovich.

"The reason I made the movie about this specific incident was not to blame anybody," Cain told The Associated Press. "At the core of the whole thing is religious fanaticism. I thought by making this movie we could take a look at how that evolved and how that can happen."

Cain co-wrote the screenplay with Carole Whang Schutter, weaving together historical accounts from nonfiction works and original Mormon sources — including the confession of John D. Lee, the only man tried and convicted in the murders — with a fictional love story between a girl from the wagon train and the son of the church leader who orchestrates the killings by the local militia.

The movie, like some scholars, makes the case that Brigham Young, then the president of the LDS Church, shared direct responsibility for the attack.

Church officials did not comment for this story but have said the movie is a work of fiction. The church, which erected a memorial on the massacre site in 1999, maintains Young had no role in the event and in fact sent word through a messenger that the Fancher wagon train should pass undisturbed.

"It's a story I've lived with my entire life, being a so-called gentile in Salt Lake City," bookseller Ken Sanders said. "It's my belief personally that any faithful, believing Mormon will never accept that Brigham Young had anything to do with the Mountain Meadows massacre. I simultaneously feel that there's no non-Mormon or gentile that will ever believe otherwise."