Bones of historic Mountain Meadows massacre victims unearthed

Paul Foy

Friday, Aug. 13, 1999 | 4:33 a.m.

SALT LAKE CITY - The bones of 10 men, women and children believed to have been among 120 California-bound pioneers massacred by a Mormon militia and Indian allies in 1857 have been unexpectedly unearthed at the site.

The bones, discovered Aug. 3 by workers restoring a monument to the slain, were quietly shipped to Brigham Young University for an archeological evaluation before eventual reburial.

The discovery occurred as a crew hired by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was replacing a crumbling masonry wall that surrounded a mass grave covered by rocks. The rock cairn is a few hundred yards from the massacre site at Mountain Meadows about 230 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

The parched bones were inadvertantly exposed by a backhoe removing the last of the crude wall around the grave site.

"The discovery was accidental," said Shane Baker, an archeologist for church-owned Brigham Young University in Provo.

"We disinterred the remains so they wouldn't be further damaged. We have the partial remains of a number of individuals. All evidence substantiates they were victims of the Mountain Meadows massacre," he said Friday.

The discovery was first reported Friday by The Daily Spectrum.

On Sept. 11, 1857, the Arkansas emigrants were tricked into laying down their arms with a promise of safe passage and slain for reasons still not fully understood. The massacre occurred in a climate of war hysteria as Utah Mormons prepared for an invasion by federal troops sent to deal with a defiant Mormon theocracy under Brigham Young.

Church spokesman Dale Bills said the church is "restoring the Mountain Meadows grave site as a dignified, lasting memorial to the victims of the 1857 massacre."

After the backhoe exposed a few bones, BYU archeologists spent two tedious days working by hand recovering the rest of the skeletal remains.

"It was a very humbling, spiritual experience," Washington County Sheriff Kirk Smith, who was on hand for the excavation, told the newspaper. "It just really touched me deeply. I saw buttons, some pottery, and bones of adults and children.

"But the children - that was what really hit me hard."

BYU archeologists are examining the fragile bones to determine sex, age and any evidence of disease or trauma. A private ceremony is planned for the bones' reburial.

A church crew has resumed building a memorial wall 4 feet wide and 2 feet tall and a dedication ceremony is scheduled for Sept. 11.

It will be the latest in a series of reburials, ceremonies and monuments erected for the massacred pioneers, who originally were hastily buried in shallow graves repeatedly exposed by animals, erosion and flash floods.

In 1859, federal troops led by Army Maj. James H. Carleton of California collected the exposed remains of 36 of the pioneers and reburied them under the rock cairn. The bones found last week were under the masonry wall built around the cairn in 1932.

It was not known for certain whether the recovered bones were among the original 36 bodies interred there. The bodies of the other 84 victims are believed scattered around the massacre site in unmarked graves.

Glen Leonard, director of the Church Museum of History and Art in Salt Lake City, was able to determine the number of men, women and children associated with the recovered bones, Washington County Attorney Eric Ludlow said Friday.

Leonard was not permitted by church authorities to comment.

"This was a very tragic event and many still have deep feelings about it. We're doing everything we possibly can to remain sensitive to that," said Baker, the BYU archeologist.

"The LDS Church is working in good faith to make this spot a respected place for those who lost their lives. We are trying not to let this (discovery) disturb the positive strides the church has taken to memorialize the place," he said.

The only person ever held accountable for the massacre was Mormon convert John D. Lee, a major in the Iron County Militia who was tried, convicted and executed at Mountain Meadows 20 years after the slaughter.

A bitter Lee considered himself a scapegoat for the church.

The Mountain Meadows Association, formed by descendants of the pioneers and their assailants in 1989 to maintain and build memorials at the site, was immediately informed of the discovery, Bills said.

Association President Ron Loving, an aerospace-systems engineer in Tucson, Ariz., who is related to 12 of the slain emigrants, could not be reached for comment Friday.

In 1990, the Mormon church erected a granite wall not far from the cairn listing the names of the slaughtered pioneers.