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- The remains of pioneers massacred by Mormon militiamen
and their Indian allies in 1857 on the trail to California have been unearthed
in Utah.
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- At least 120 pioneers from Arkansas were killed in the
Mountain Meadows incident. It was while restoring a monument to the dead
that workers found the bones of at least ten men, women and children.
The cause of the massacre has never been fully explained, but at the
time the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was in a state of
acute paranoia, fearing invasion by the army and bitter at the persecution
of Mormons in Arkansas.
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- Blame for the attack was laid on John D. Lee, a major
in the Iron County Militia and a zealous Mormon convert. The pioneers
were tricked into laying down their arms with a promise that they would
be unharmed, before they were murdered. Some 20 years later Lee was convicted,
excommunicated and executed.
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- A spokesman for the Mormon Church said that the monument,
40 miles north of Saint George, Utah, was being restored as "a dignified,
lasting memorial to the victims of the 1857 massacre".
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