Descendants of victims of the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, seeking to "respect and honor" their ancestors, have threatened to sue the state to try to prevent publication of a scientific report detailing findings at the site.
On Friday, the Board of State History mulled that threat as Max J. Evans, director of the Utah Division of State History, said he can find no provision in state law that would allow withholding of the report on remains accidentally unearthed during construction of a monument erected for the victims' descendants.
Richard Sadler, the board's chairman, agreed the study should not be suppressed. If anything has been learned since 1857, he said, it's that "a massacre was inappropriate, and a cover-up was inappropriate."
Today, he said, a "cover-up" is still inappropriate.
The massacre by Mormon settlers and Indians is one of the worst blots on Utah history. About 120 members of an Arkansas wagon train were slaughtered in a meadow south of the present town of Enterprise, Washington County, with 18 young children spared.
Only one man was convicted, Indian agent and pioneer John D. Lee. He was executed on the site 20 years after the massacre.
Controversy and finger-pointing started as soon as the killings became known. Some accused high officials of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of
complicity, but no evidence ever surfaced of involvement by church officials in Salt Lake City.
The latest controversy started in August 1999, when the Mountain Meadows Association and the LDS Church were preparing to erect a new monument on the site of the massacre. Workmen accidentally uncovered remains of some of the victims. What happened next is a matter of controversy.
Association member Ron Loving, a resident of Tucson, Ariz., and descendant of wagon train leader Alexander Fancher's family, contends he was misled by a state official to hand over the bones and seek a state permit or face a felony desecration charge.
Loving said he has since learned that permits are not required for excavation on private land. The site is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Evans and state archaeologist Kevin Jones maintain that changed when bodies were discovered. Disturbing human remains on any property, private or otherwise, violates state law against desecrating human bodies — with certain exceptions. Those are that undertakers, police, etc., can remove bodies, as can archaeologists working under state permit.
"They voluntarily came to us and asked for a permit, and therefore all provisions of the permit are valid," Evans said in Friday's meeting. One of the provisions is that excavated remains must be studied and reports must be written about them, he said.
David Tufts, a Salt Lake lawyer representing the Mountain Meadows Association, disputes Evans' account. "It's not accurate, and we may end up having a lawsuit over that and over the interpretation and application of the State Antiquities Act," he said. The bones were discovered on Aug. 3, 1999, Tufts said. The permit was issued on Aug. 6. "There wasn't even a permit on the 4th when the bones were taken out of Ron Loving's hands," Tufts said.
Before the remains were returned to the site, they were photographed. A University of Utah archaeologist, Shannon Novak, prepared information about the bones, which was to be part of a larger report assembled by a Brigham Young University archaeologist. State officials have made Novak's study available to those who requested it, and Evans says the overall report will contain nothing more inflammatory than the already released portion.
Still, the Mountain Meadows Association would like to suppress the final report, with its descriptions and possible photographs.
"Maybe this is already out, and we're never going to be able to un-ring the bell," Tufts said. "Nevertheless, the division (of State History) has trampled on the rights of these descendants, displayed their ancestors' remains."
Not all victims' descendants agree about what should be done.
Scott Fancher, president of the rival Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation, who lives near Harrison, Ark., opposes any attempt to stifle the report. Two of his great-uncles were murdered at Mountain Meadows.
"We have gone on record both with the state and the (LDS) church as opposing any suppression of the forensic report," he said. "Since it's now in the public domain, it should remain there."
Fancher said the report documents that Mormon settlers, and not just Indians, were involved in the massacre of the women and children. Historians generally agree that Mormon settlers killed men of the wagon train. But one of many controversies in the case concerns whether Lee and other whites intended for the women and children to be killed or whether they participated in killing them.
Evans told the board that forensic evidence can't shed any light on how the massacre happened or who did what. And even if it did shed more light Loving asks, the privacy rights of the descendents are more important.
"Our whole thing, our whole drive, is to protect and take care of the remains," to "respect and honor these people," Loving said. "Let 'em be."
By displaying or describing the remains, the state is "bashing the descendants of the people in the wagon train," he added. "And that we find very offensive. . . . They've been very rude and crude to the descendants."
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