This gentlemen thinks he may have located the actual location of the graves. Mr. Bassett is a fellow archaeologist that I have worked with in the past. Based on my interaction with him, he seems to be pretty thorough.


http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2015/sep/13/resting-places-of-victims-in-1857-massa-2/

Is it not strange that the land where the cairn built by soldiers and torn down by BY's revenge is owned by LDSinc?

I hope they excavate.

Buried way down is this statement:

>Shannon Novak, a bioarchaeologist from Syracuse University who specializes in trauma and mass death, said the stone structures Bassett found do appear to be grave sites.

>Novak, who attended the meeting Saturday in Harrison, said the remains of 28 people are buried in a cairn at the battle site.

Novak, of course, was the forensic anthropologist then at the University of Utah who examined those skeletons that were uncovered during monument reconstruction. That scandal, incidentally, was what led me to "becoming a student of Mountain Meadows," and I'm still learning...

http://www.amazon.com/House-Mourning-Biocultural-Mountain-Massacre/dp/1607811693

I like to show this video regularly at local Exmo get-togethers (it's available at the Tanners'):

http://www.buryingthepast.com

And hey, a bit of justice in this world! While I was Googling this stuff (maybe when I finally grow up and get organized I'll have the links readily available), I saw a YouTube where somebody had uploaded it. It had been removed because the producer, Brian Patrick, complained, and knowing some of the particulars, I'm behind him foursquare. Spend the money, folks; it's the honorable thing to do...

And here's a link to the Christopher Smith stories that embarassed the bejesus out of the LDS and was a factor in the "Singleton Takeover," a horrible era in the history of the "free press in Utah."

http://1857massacre.com/MMM/142-year-old-wound.htm

One more on the "rock cairn":

http://1857massacre.com/MMM/rock_cairn.htm

Why bother having excessive power if you can't abuse rules that annoy you?

One highlight of the two part story from the SLTrib is the evidence that popped up during the brief time the bones were available for study:

"Novak's partial reconstruction of approximately 20 different skulls of Mountain Meadows victims show:

-- At least five adults had gunshot exit wounds in the posterior area of the cranium -- a clear indication some were shot while facing their killers.. One victim's skull displays a close-range bullet entrance wound to the forehead;

-- Women also were shot in the head at close range. A palate of a female victim exhibits possible evidence of gunshot trauma to the face, based on a preliminary examination of broken teeth;

-- At least one youngster, believed to be about 10 to 12 years old, was killed by a gunshot to the top of the head.

Other findings by Novak from the commingled partial remains of at least 29 individuals

-- a count based on the number of right femurs in the hundreds of pieces of bone recovered from the gravesite -- back up the historical record;

-- Five skulls with gunshot entrance wounds in the back of the cranium have no "beveling," or flaking of bone, on the exterior of the skull. This indicates the victims were executed with the gun barrel pointing directly into the head, not at an angle, and at very close range;

-- Two young adults and three children -- one believed to be about 3 years old judging by tooth development -- were killed by blunt-force trauma to the head. Although written records recount that children under the age of 8 were spared, historians believe some babes-in-arms were murdered along with their mothers;

-- Virtually all of the "post-cranial" (from the head down) bones displayed extensive carnivore damage, confirming written accounts that bodies were left on the killing field to be gnawed by wolves and coyotes."


That Man is wicked and cruel is not news, and so it is as with most tales of man's inhumanity to man, that interest is piqued when there is a cover up. And in this case, the continuing cover up...