From Deseret News archives:

Mountain Meadows site focus of dispute

Published: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 12:08 a.m. MDT
 |  E-MAIL | PRINT | FONT + - 
Descendants of the 120-member Arkansas immigrant party slaughtered in southern Utah by pioneer LDS settlers say their plea for federal stewardship of the Mountain Meadows mass grave site has been rejected by leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Phil Bolinger and Scott Fancher of the Arkansas-based Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation say they got the news June 6 in a telephone call from Elder Marlin Jensen, who oversees the church history department.

"He told us that President (Gordon B.) Hinckley had turned us down. He doesn't think it's in the best interests of the church to allow federal stewardship in the meadows," said Bolinger, the foundation president who is related to 30 of those killed. "That really bit me bad."

Jensen declined an interview but confirmed through spokeswoman Kim Farah that the church will not pursue federal stewardship of the site. A similar request was also rejected in 1999.

Descendants want the site in the hands of a neutral third party because they believe the institutional church is complicit in the murders.

"It's not right for the people who had complicity to the killings to be the grave owner," said Bolinger, who discussed the issue with Jensen on April 25 in Salt Lake City.

"I asked him, 'How do you think the Kennedy family would feel if the Lee Harvey Oswald family had control of the Kennedy tomb?"'

Story continues below
History hangs the Sept. 11, 1857, event on southern Utah LDS leaders and a small band of Paiute Indians, leaving the culpability of then-church president Brigham Young up for debate. An upcoming book from church historians takes the same position.

Headed to California, the wagon train led by Capt. Alexander Fancher and John Baker arrived in the Utah territory at the same time the federal government was mounting pressure on the LDS Church for its practice of polygamy and disregard for federal oversight.

They camped first near Salt Lake City and then headed south to the meadow, a well-known stopover on the old Spanish Trail. The immigrants were attacked and spent a week engaged in gun skirmishes before local LDS militia member John D. Lee rode in on horseback with a white flag to negotiate their rescue.

Persuaded to walk single-file and unarmed from the valley, the immigrants were shot at close range, stabbed or beaten to death. Their bodies were not buried.

Seventeen children were spared, all of them under age six — young enough, some said, not to remember or speak of what they saw. The youngsters were adopted by local families and later returned to their relatives in Arkansas.

Comments

You can be the first to comment on this story.

previousnext

Latest comments

you need to move to Sweden, where citizen in fact are guaranteed housing,...

I am a PG fan and wanted to congratulate the girls on a State championship! I...

Reducing game time laughable

I definitely understand the need to train year round. I'm not a collegiate...

TIME FOR CHANGE IN AMERICA. I have a family here in America.... They...

Libs, Silver Grey? That's cleaver.

Let's imagine an man comes to your door and tells you he has an amazing...

House passes health care bill

To have health coverage which government workers enjoy. To be able to work...

Come on. This showdown is nothing like Alabama. Contrary to what's been...

What is normal? And really all are bad?

Wyoming just hates BYU. Lose big, or even win big, they still hate BYU. ...

Advertisements
Advertisement