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Summarized by Rosemary Pollock
LDS Church Delays Sending Mountain Meadows Artifacts to Arkansas
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH -- Scott Fancher, president of the Mountain
Meadows Monument Foundation, is encouraged by a recent letter that
was issued Tuesday, August 29th by the Utah Attorney General's
Offices state archaeologist Kevin Jones, that recommended that six
buttons and some broken crockery that were discovered and removed
from the burial site be re-buried with the emigrants' bones at
Mountain Meadows.
As reported earlier by Mormon News, LDS Church officials were
planning to donate the artifacts, currently held at Brigham Young
University, to a museum in northwest Arkansas for an early September
debut of the Mountain Meadow artifacts to be displayed at the Carroll
County museum in Berryville, Arkansas. "We made a decision a long
time ago that these artifacts should be returned to the people of
Arkansas," said Glen Leonard, director the LDS Museum of Church
History and Art. "They belong to the ancestors there, and those were
our plans all along."
According to the August 15 letter by Jones, owners of cemeteries do not
have any ownership of the remains and associated objects. "The law does not
prohibit us from displaying the buttons, but if some family members would be
offended if we did so, we would defer to those feelings," Leonard said. "It
seems to me that the wisest course to follow is to return the buttons to
Mountain Meadows. I will await receipt of the letter so that I can see
exactly what it says, and then I will make a recommendation to the First
Presidency." As of Wednesday, August 30th, church officials had no response.
Source:
State Wants Mountain Meadows Artifacts Returned to the Grave
Salt Lake Tribune 31Aug00 N1
By Christopher Smith: Salt Lake Tribune
See also:
Mountain Meadows Relics Raise New Controversy
Mormon News' Coverage of the Mountain Meadows Site
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