For most people, 9/11 refers to the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

For Muskogee residents Doris Peavler, 74, and Sue Staton, 70, it is a reminder of another Sept. 11 — Sept. 11, 1857, the date of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

The massacre is the real story behind the movie “September Dawn,” which is now showing at Arrowhead Mall 10.

Approximately 120 emigrants passing through southwest Utah Territory died in the massacre. They were part of a wagon train were traveling from Arkansas to California. They were killed by Mormon militiamen with the help of local Paiute Indians.

Peavler and Staton had ancestors who were targeted in the massacre. Some survived, but most were killed.

“My great-grandmother, Sara Frances Baker, was among 13 members of the Baker family headed west with the wagon train,” Peavler said. “She said she was sitting on her father’s lap when something, a bullet or an arrow, tore through her ear and killed her dad. Then she turned around and saw her mother tumbling out of the back of the wagon, and she knew she was shot.”

Peavler’s great-grandmother was 3 at the time. She was among 16 or 17 young children who survived.

After an initial attack, the wagon train circled and held off the militiamen for several days. On Sept. 11, militia major, John D. Lee, approached the wagon fort under a white flag. He offered safe passage to nearby Cedar City on the condition that the pioneers give up their possessions and surrender their weapons.

As agreed, the youngest children and wounded left first in two wagons, followed by women and children on foot. The men and older boys filed out last, each escorted by an armed militiaman. The group marched for approximately a mile until, at a prearranged signal, each militiaman turned and shot the emigrant next to him. Indians rushed from their hiding place to attack the women and children.

Peavler suspects LDS church President Brigham Young was involved in the bloodbath.

“We definitely believe nothing would have happened without Brigham Young,” she said. “No Mormon would make a move without his approval.”

Peavler said her grandmother Baker never showed any negative feelings about the tragedy.

“She was soft-spoken and kind all of her life,” Peavler said.

The children who survived were taken in by local Mormon families. Peavler and Staton both say children who were siblings were separated. Although the government retrieved the children a year and a half later, Peavler believes the Mormons kept one child. She said her great-grandmother was walking down a street and saw her sister on the other side. The girl ran across the street and the two embraced, then adults pulled them apart. She never saw her sister again.

In the 1980s, there was an effort to bring together descendants of the survivors and descendants of those who participated in the massacre. Mormon President Gordon B. Hinckley supported the effort. One step was rebuilding the monument at the massacre site. During the construction, more victims’ bones were discovered.

Peavler was involved in the attempted reconciliation and says it went very well until the conclusion.

“When the monument at the site was rebuilt, he (Hinckley) was making a speech at the dedication,” she said. “At the very end, he said, ‘But we didn’t do it.’”

Staton’s surviving ancestor was her great-grandmother, Nancy Saphrona Huff, age 4. Staton criticized both those who killed the pioneers and the lack of remorse by current LDS church leaders.

“They killed these people for the booty; it was one of the richest wagon trains that ever went west,” she said. “A lot of those who did the killing went kind of crazy afterwards. One man died screaming.”

By August 1859, Jacob Forney, superintendent of Indian Affairs for Utah, had retrieved the children from Mormon families housing them. They were then returned to their relatives in Arkansas.

Another of Staton’s ancestors was part of the Forney’s response to the incident.

“My great-grandfather went in with the army to get the kids back,” she said. “Even though they had killed all those people, taken their possessions and taken the children, they charged the government for the time they had them. I believe it was $286 per child.”

Staton said the LDS church has not done enough to take responsibility for the tragedy.

“After 150 years, they have never apologized,” she said. “The site of the massacre is controlled by the Mormon church. It should become a national monument.