Burying the Past: Legacy of the Mountain Meadows Massacre (2004)

150 years ago this September 11, a (probably) religiously motivated massacre took place. Some 100 to 140 men, women, and children over age 8 were slaughtered; 17 younger children were taken by the murderers to live with families of their faith. The leaders of the faith of the murderers deny that their leadership had any knowledge or responsibility. Blame has been placed on the fear the religious leaders had of the US Army invading their territory. The remains found are scattered and fragmented, buried under rubble. The site? Mountain Meadows, Utah. The religion? Mormonism. The people in control of the site where the massacre took place--and the recently-found remains of the victims? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In short, the Mormons. Now. We don't know for sure the Mormon leadership, as personified at the time by Brigham Young, had any direct culpability, though I think we can be pretty sure they were at least in part responsible for the climate. However, the knowledge that the church has consistently played fast and loose with the facts of those days, from those September days in 1857 to today, means I am not okay with their church being in control of the site. Horribly, when the bones of the victims were discovered during the construction of the current monument, they were taken to BYU without the consent or even awareness of the descendants of the survivors. Worse, they were found by backhoe. I know a Mormon who still denies any Mormon culpability in the massacre or its follow-up, which, based on my research, is a historically untenable position. For a start, it took some three years for those children to be returned to their surviving families back in Arkansas, including those families who had them lying about it. This is a sobering film. Few people know of this particular event, and fewer still know of its aftermath. The part that strikes me most about this film--told without overall interpretation by the filmmaker--is that the historians who are not Mormon have no doubt as to how high responsibility went. Only the Mormons still believe that the Church was innocent--of the betrayal of history, at least, even if they are innocent of the massacre.