How does this mesh with official accounts today that the Paiutes were primarily involved in the early siege of the Fancher-Baker party several days before Sept.11 -- and that some remained to club women & children to death on Sept. 11, 1857? Well, it's interesting. BYU received permission from the Mormon church to conduct an archaelogical excavation of the Mountain Meadows Massacre site in 1998 – and began the excavation in August 1999.
...Utah state archeologists Kevin Jones reaffirmed to church and law enforcement officials the legal requirement that any unidentified remains uncovered must be forensically examined, and failure to comply would be a felony. (Denton, p. xxii - see title & source below)
Still, a team of anthrolopologists, archaeologists, and other church and state scientists from around Utah began working long hours poring over the remains. “It was a marathon forensic study. As the scientists from around the region gathered, news of the discovery leaded to the national press, unleashing a storm of public controversy over the unexpected skeletons...Delicately removing hundreds of pieces of bone from the opening dug by the backhoe, the scientists worked eighteen hours a day to determine how and when the victims were killed. Before the examination could be completed, however, it was stopped. For descendants of both victims and perpetrators, for institutions of church and state implicated in what the bones signify, the issue was as volatile and ominous as it had been nearly a century and a half before. Utah governor Mike Leavitt, himself a direct descendant of someone who participated in the murders, ordered the bones be reburied as quickly as possible; he then directed state officials to find administrative or other means to do just that...Before the probe came to a standstill, the scientists reconstructed eighteen different skulls and reported publicly that the killings were more complicated than previously believed. But the dead would not be allowed to speak. (Sally Denton's book, 2003 book entitled: American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857 Vintage Books, division from Random House, pp. Xxii – xxiii)
From the article: Just like the Arabs are despised in America for 9/11, we were despised in Southern Utah for the massacre on 9/11 of 1857. For 150 years. Until as recently as 2007. ...the Mormon Church expressed regrets to Indians and admitted that it was the church leaders and members who had committed the massacre and had blamed it on Indians. But this “regret” wasn’t widely disseminated. And in private communication to its members, the church continues to strongly implicate Indians in the massacre. The church concedes that the Mormons killed the men but as of the present insists that Indians clubbed all women and children to death. However, forensic pathologist Shannon Novak and her team found bullet holes in the skulls of women and children, which ran counter to the church’s claim that the Paiutes clubbed them to death.
Ah, forensic “complications” with official Mormon accounts, eh?
So the Paiutes didn’t have guns...right?