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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- For decades it sat on a shelf in a brown cardboard box -- a skull pierced in the back with an apparent bullet hole and linked by a typewritten note to a dark and violent chapter in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Found in a pawnshop 27 years ago, the specimen is now in the hands of the Idaho state archaeologist. Ken Reid is supervising tests to determine whether the skull belongs to a victim of the Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857, when 120 men, women and children from an Arkansas-based wagon train were killed by Latter-day Saint settlers in southern Utah.
Descendants of the 17 surviving children from the Baker-Fancher party are anxious for those results.
"I was a little bit shocked when I first heard about it," said Patty Norris of Omaha, Ark., president of Mountain Meadows Descendants, one of three descendant organizations. "At this point we're working on the assumption that it is a victim of the massacre, but all we really know is that they haven't disproven it yet."
The skull's existence became known to descendants, officials of the Church and Reid in February.
Jeff Webb first discovered the skull on the shelves of a Salt Lake City pawnshop in 1982. A note in the box said the skull was from a female "victim of the famed Mountain Meadows massacre."
He lingered over it, his interest fueled by having served a church mission in Arkansas, where the massacre's events had created a legacy of resentment of the Church.
Webb took the skull home -- free of charge -- to Logan, where he ran his own pawnshop, but never offered it for sale. Instead it sat in its box on a food pantry shelf or in storage as the Webbs moved to Arizona, Idaho, and overseas. Often before a move, Webb and his wife would discuss burying the skull in their own backyard, but he says they never felt quite right about leaving it behind.
"I think she is just sort of part of the family," said Jeff Webb, 53, who now lives in Sugar City, Idaho.
Prepping for another move last fall, Jeff Webb asked his 80-year-old father to keep it for him.
Loren Webb, lives in Idaho Falls, Idaho, but spends winters in St. George, Utah, about 35 miles southeast of the massacre site, a lush, rolling valley that was once a popular stopover for California-bound wagon train parties on the Old Spanish Trail.
"We talked about going out there to the massacre site and just burying it," Loren Webb said, adding that he nixed the idea fearing he'd end up in jail.
Instead he called a local church leader, who contacted LDS church headquarters in Salt Lake City.
"My immediate thought was these are sacred remains and they need to be treated in an appropriate ethical and legal manner," Assistant Church Historian Richard Turley said.
Mountains Meadows marks a dark moment in the history of the Church -- one that has often been left out of history books.
On Sept. 11, 1857, the Baker-Fancher party was attacked by area church and militia leaders disguised as a local Indian tribe. After a five-day siege, the Arkansans forged what turned out to be a false truce with a local LDS church leader, laid down their weapons and were slaughtered as they were being led out of the meadow on foot.
The church had historically denied or downplayed its role in the killings, but in 2007 expressed its regret. Today, two monuments in the meadows memorialize the victims and the church is seeking National Historic Landmark status for the site.
The author of a book about the massacre, Turley isn't surprised by the possibility that an artifact from the massacre might surface this way.
"In the 19th century, people routinely took bones when they were lying on the ground as souvenirs," Turley said.
Historical accounts show that after the killings, the bodies of the victims were strewn across the 2,500 acre meadow and left unburied. Then in 1859, U.S. military contingents were sent to bury the dead. Among them was a doctor from Utah's Camp Floyd, who is known to have removed at least two skulls and possibly other bones from the site, Turley said.
It's not known what happened to the doctor's souvenirs and there's no way to know how many other bones or artifacts may have been removed from the massacre site, Turley said.
Reid, the archaeologist, said he has "many reservations" about the skull's origins. Aside from an address inked on its cardboard box, not much is known about who had the skull before Webb's pawnshop discovery. Webb said the pawnshop owner had acquired the skull through an estate sale.
"There's just a big gap between 1857 and 1982," Reid said. "I'm trained to worry about things like that."
According to Loren Webb -- who named the skull Mary and whose grandchild once took it to school for show-and-tell -- an initial evaluation of the skull by an Idaho Falls forensic anthropologist identified it as belonging to a 19th century woman.
Reid is getting a second opinion from a Boise State University scientists. Dr. Margaret Streeter is working to determine the skull's possible origins, race, sex and age. Other tests look for damage from weather and animals, in addition to things like gun shot wounds or other signs of trauma.
Depending on Streeter's findings, DNA testing -- including samples taken from remaining teeth -- could be recommended as the next step, Reid said.
Members of Norris's descendant group are willing to give DNA samples for comparison, as are members of two other descendant organizations, the Mountain Meadows Association and the Mountain Meadows Massacre Foundation.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
