Literature: Mormon uses the literary device of a contrasting parallel. He contrasts mourners who fear for their loved one’s soul with those who also mourn for their dead but who have hope in Yahweh’s promises (v. 11)
We might read the first category as the Lamanites and the second Nephites, but Mormon’s concerns are almost exclusively Nephite. Therefore, these mourners are Nephites. The contrast is between those who embrace the gospel of the Atoning Messiah with its promise of resurrection and those who follow the order of the Nehors and who therefore “have reason to fear” (v. 11).
Culture: Verse 11 also describes two different treatments for the dead. Some are “laid low in the earth” and some “are moldering in heaps upon the face of the earth.” Based on the differential treatment of the dead seen in Alma 3:3 and Alma 44:22, I believe that the Nephite dead were interred while Lamanites were left “moldering in heaps upon the earth.”