Groups want church to back historic landmark status

Fancher noted that Elder Eyring "was very emotional about it. I took it as an apology."

Fancher said board members of his group will vote in the near future on whether to support the other two groups in their quest to have the site designated as a historic landmark. He said he expects they will approve the move.

"But there's a distinct difference between that and federal stewardship," where the government would decide what occurs on land owned by the LDS Church. "We want to make sure that designation is not a precursor" to government control of the site, he said.

He praised the LDS Church for its work to protect the site and to work with descendant groups in creating memorials to the victims.

Burr Fancher, also a member of the MMMF, told the assembly the foundation has worked with Arkansas historians to bring the story of the massacre back to history books. Since 1953, there has been no mention of it at all in Arkansas history texts, he said, but "for the first time, a chapter on the Mountain Meadows Massacre will be included in the new Arkansas history textbook.

"There is a revival of interest in the history of the massacre," he said, noting a collection of materials that has been assembled within an Arkansas library to help facilitate research.

"We believe full light should be shown" on the massacre, "before full closure can occur. All stakeholders must follow their hearts in this. But the event cannot be relegated to the trash bins of history or covered up."

Burr Fancher said the Mountain Meadows site, where the LDS Church owns 125 acres of land, "must be secured for generations to come. This story belongs to the nation, and no single group has a lock on its interpretation," he said.

"Blaming the immigrants for their own deaths will no longer stand as a reason for the massacre. Education and information must replace stonewalling and evasion to make the massacre an open subject of Western history. Only then will true closure come."

Hundreds gathered at the site of the 1999 cairn monument erected by the LDS Church for the anniversary ceremony and watched as descendants of massacre victims carried banners with their family names behind a single covered wagon.

Horsemen carried Arkansas and U.S. flags as the entourage made its way from the upper Dan Sill Monument to the lower cairn memorial site. Bones of several massacre victims are interred there, and the church recently purchased a piece of land which is believed to contain many more human remains.

Church leaders have pledged to work with descendant groups in properly memorializing that site.