"Burying the Past: Legacy of the Mountain Meadows Massacre" Comes to USU
Utah State University will present a showing of the film “Burying the Past: The Legacy of the Mountain Meadows Massacre” Thursday, April 19, at 5 p.m. in the Manon Cain Russell Kathryn Caine Wanlass Performance Hall on the university campus. The director of the film, Brian Patrick, will be at the showing and will host a question and answer session immediately following the film. The showing is free and open to the public.
Patrick made the movie to “heal some of the wounds” experienced by the descendants of the families involved in the 1857 massacre in southern Utah. The movie details the history of the massacre which involved a California-bound wagon train from Arkansas led by John T. Baker and Alexander Fancher. The group was camped in a valley near Cedar City, Utah, when for reasons not fully understood, a party of local Mormon settlers and Indians attacked and laid siege to the encampment. At least 120 people died in what became known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Seventeen children under the age of eight survived the ordeal and were eventually returned to Arkansas.
The movie uses re-enactments, a rare first-person account of the massacre and interviews with three historians including Weber State University history professor Gene Sessions; Will Bagley, author of “Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows;” and Gene Leonard, director of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Museum of History and Art.
Beyond the massacre’s history, the movie chronicles the Mountain Meadows Association’s efforts to get a long-neglected Mountain Meadows monument 40 miles southwest of Cedar City rebuilt. In June 2011, the Mountain Meadows site was designated as a National Historic Landmark.
Patrick is the associate chairman at the University of Utah film studies department.
The showing of the film is sponsored by the USU Communication Arts Seminar and Graphic Design Emphasis located in the Caine College of the Arts in the Department of Art and Design.
For more information, contact USU’s Department of Art and Design, 435-797-3460.
Contact: Alan Hashimoto, alanhashimoto@gmail.com
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