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MOUNTAIN MEADOWS - In this meadow, where the sky forms a canopy over sage, cedar and juniper, more than one person must have wished on one of the abundant falling stars that the animosity that springs from this beautiful, haunting place would go away.
For the past week, a group of American Indians and other Utahns gathered here, burning herbs in abalone shells and offering tobacco. They were trying to communicate with the restless spirits here, they said, so that all those involved in the Sept. 11, 1857, Mountain Meadows massacre will find peace.
If there's a place that needs it, it is Mountain Meadows.
"This is a volatile area," said Raine Bowen, a Cherokee chief from the Salt Lake area and one of the organizers of the five-day event that began Tuesday.
The healing ceremony, the first event at the site organized by American Indians, culminated Saturday when Indians gathered with Mormons and other Utahns in a circle. Led by Cherokee spiritual leader Larry Williams, about 50 people tied white prayer ribbons in a show of unity.
But not all was well early Saturday when Williams pointed out that officials of the LDS Church did not accept an invitation to join them. Until Mormons joined in the healing, Williams said, the spirits would be restless.
"We're Mormon," several people said, pointing out that LDS people were there to help bring healing.
Williams replied that LDS officials needed to be present to help heal a wound that some members of the church helped to cause. "If we could bring the Mormon leaders, Creator, we could bring closure to this place."
A spokesman for the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints could not be reached for comment Saturday.
The only thing that is certain about Mountain Meadows is that about 120 Arkansans met their violent deaths here during an attack on their California-bound wagon train by Mormon settlers exactly 147 years ago Saturday.
The Mormons once blamed local Paiutes for the massacre, and while the Paiutes may not have initiated the attack, historians say, they played some role.
The Indian ceremonies were carried out over the objections of the Mountain Meadows Association, made up of descendants on both sides of the massacre, which unanimously voted to condemn the gathering.
Two other groups associated with the victims and descendants neither objected nor approved.
Some who gathered near the southwestern Utah town of Enterprise this week say that some of the 120 or so victims were part Cherokee.
An incomplete forensic analysis of human remains accidentally unearthed here in 1999 revealed that some skulls had distinct features that could be traced to American Indians. A complete analysis could not be performed, however, because then-Gov. Mike Leavitt ordered the remains immediately reburied.
Given the implications of the date, Sept. 11, Williams urged participants to pray for the Mountain Meadows victims as well as those who perished in the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States and those who have died in the war in Iraq.
The Mountain Meadows massacre, he said, was "the Cherokee 9-11."
Williams walked haltingly up a hill where a stone marker is engraved with the names of the Arkansans. He smoked a wooden pipe, prayed and offered tobacco, which he believes helps him communicate with the Creator. Someone else offered a flute song. Another sang a hymn.
Spiritual leaders from other Utah tribes, including one from a Paiute band and Bob Taylor Sr., a Northern Ute spiritual leader who serves the Salt Lake Valley, also joined the ceremony.
"The people who were traveling here, this is where they reached the end of their journey," Taylor said in a prayer Friday evening. "We want no guilt, no blame. Those people are in the spirit world."
Vickey Varney, a descendant of John D. Lee, the only man convicted and executed for his role in the massacre, attended Saturday's ceremony. "I came out because this place needs to be healed," she said.
Her great-great grandfather didn't commit the massacre alone, she said, and the descendants of all those involved need to find a way to respect one another and their beliefs. "We could become one and help each other with our grief," she said.
Williams says the spirits of three entities, the Paiutes, the victims and the Mormons involved in the massacre, won't rest until the modern-day descendants of all those involved make peace.
"Until that happens, these spirits will be clashing heads," he said.
But Glen Barrus, also a Cherokee, said the event was not in vain.
"To do nothing is the worst thing we can do," he said. "We've accomplished something. It'll help."
No one wanted to upset the descendant groups, Barrus said.
But Lynn-Marie Fancher, secretary of the Mountain Meadows Association, said earlier that the Indian ceremonies would amount to desecration of her ancestors, none of whom were Cherokees.
Such disagreements worry Clint and Suzanne Lytle, who own the nearby Mountain Meadow Ranch and once cared for the scattered monuments in the area.
The Lytles said they wished the bucolic landscape they call home can one day be thought of as a place of peace. But it seems that every effort to bring closure creates another schism.
"You can heal in more than one way," said Suzanne Lytle, who attended the Friday ceremony with her husband and their two children. "I'm hoping something like this will let go of that spirit of contention, let it go, out of respect for those who died here."