The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apologized for an 1857 massacre that was wrongly blamed on Indians but descendants of the survivors continue to commemorate the attack.

Members of the Mormon Church attacked and killed about 120 settlers from Arkansas who were passing through Utah on September 11, 1857. The participants blamed the Mountain Meadows Massacre on the Paiute Tribe.

“There’s families all scattered in through this area who had ancestors in that, so there is a tinge of anti-Mormonism in this area, a little bit of bias I suppose,” Roy Ragland, a Republican former state legislator in Arkansas, told The Washington Post.

Ragland doesn't believe the memories of the massacre will make a big difference for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who is a member of the Mormon Church. Romney was asked about the incident during his 2007 campaign.

“That was a terrible, awful act carried out by members of my faith,” Romney told the Associated Press. “There are bad people in any church, and it’s true of members of my church, too.”

Get the Story:
Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith tangles with a quirk of Arkansas history (The Washington Post 5/21)

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