HAUN'S MILL.
THE mob forces were gathering from all quarters to destroy Far West.
Niel Gilliam was in the west urging the citizens to drive the "Mormons"
from the State. Generals Lucas and Wilson, who will be remembered
as active leaders of the mob which expelled the saints from Jackson
County, were collecting those same mob forces; while General Clark was
in the south raising companies of men to carry out the exterminating
order of Governor Boggs.
In addition to these preparations for the destruction of the saints,
in the counties immediately surrounding Caldwell, there was a general
uprising of the old settlers under no particular leadership, but
roaming through the scattered settlements of the saints in small bands,
murdering, stealing stock, house-burning, whipping the men and driving
the terror-stricken women and children from their homes. In fact,
the whole country surrounding Far West was infested with a merciless
banditti, which daily were guilty of the most atrocious deeds of
cruelty. The saints living in a scattered condition over the prairies
who were fortunate enough to escape with their lives, came running into
Far West at all times of the day and night, white with fear. Let is
here be said that the Prophet Joseph and counseled his people to settle
in villages, and have their farms on the outskirts thereof, after the
pattern, as far as circumstances would permit, of the plan given by
revelation for building up the city of Zion, described in a former
chapter of this volume. He had urged, in addition to the improved
opportunities this plan would give them for educating their children,
etc., that they would be in a better condition to defend themselves
against their enemies. But the saints, at least many of them, would not
hearken to this advice; now, however, that the enemy was upon them,
when it was too late for them to profit by it, they could see the
wisdom of it.
It was one of these marauding bands, under the leadership of Nehemiah
Comstock, which was guilty of a fiendish massacre at Haun's Mill, on
the thirtieth of October. Haun's Mill was between ten and twelve miles
nearly due east of Far West, on the south bank of Shoal Creek, which
takes a meandering course, though in the main flowing east, and finally
empties into Grand River. All told there were about thirty families of
the saints located at Haun's Mill, several of which had just recently
arrived from the eastern states, and were camped in their wagons and
tents behind an old blacksmith's shop adjacent to the mill. The banks
of the stream were lined with a growth of scattered trees and an
undergrowth of hazel and other brush; while back from the banks is the
rather sharp rolling prairie common to that part of Missouri.
This little body of saints had been threatened by mobs for some time
and were therefore on their guard. On the twenty-eighth of October,
however, Colonel Jennings, of Livingston County, whose band of mobbers
had been most menacing to the peace and safety of the saints, sent
one of his men to the settlement to make a treaty of peace. This
proposition of peace was gladly accepted by the saints, in fact, it was
what they most devoutly prayed for. There was to be mutual forbearance,
and each party was to exert itself to the extent of its influence to
prevent further hostilities. There were other mobs collecting in the
vicinity, however, who were not affected by this agreement of peace
entered into by the saints and Colonel Livingston--one particularly on
Grand River, at William Mann's residence. Hence the brethren in the
little settlement on Shoal Creek remained under arms.
The thirtieth of October, the day on which the fearful tragedy
occurred, is said by some of the survivors to have been a most
beautiful one: one of those days in mid-autumn, when smoky mists hang
about the horizon--the sure sign of the Indian summer; when the sun
shines with all the brightness, but without the scorching heat, of
August; when the gentle breeze rustles through the ripened corn and
softly stirs the leaves of the forests that have been kissed by the
early frosts and autumn sun to purple and gold, and all the shades
and tints known to the practiced eye of the artist; when the sinking
sun paints the heavens with new glories; and when hill and plain,
stream and sky, forest and field all reflect the fullness of nature's
beauties. Oh, is it not passing strange that one of God's fairest days
should be made to look upon so foul a deed as that committed at Haun's
Mill! The merry laughter of the children as they played upon the banks
of Shoal Creek, mingled with the snatches of songs the mothers sang as
they went about their domestic employments, made sweet music to the
fathers engaged in gathering the crops, or guarding the mill.
In their neighborhood all apparently was peace, and no premonitory
shuddering warned the saints of their approaching fate. It burst upon
them with all the suddenness of a clap of thunder from a cloudless sky.
The sun had sunken more than halfway down the western sky, when some of
those on guard saw a large body of armed and mounted men approaching
the mill at full speed. They came through the scattering timber on
the bank of the creek to the edge of the prairie, where they formed
themselves in a three square position with a vanguard. David Evans ran
out to meet them, swinging his hat and crying, "Peace! Peace!"
But there was no peace.
The saints by this time were in the wildest state of excitement, and
running in every direction, many of the men taking refuge in an old
blacksmith shop not far from the mill. The leader of the mob, numbering
two hundred and forty, fired his gun, and after a pause of a few
seconds about a hundred shots were fired into the old blacksmith shop,
and at those fleeing for the protection of the woods. The mob then rode
up to the shop and fired through the space between the logs until,
as they thought, all had been killed or mortally wounded. They then
entered, and among the dead and dying found Sardius Smith, a lad about
twelve years old, who in his fear had crawled under the bellows for
safety. He was dragged from his place of concealment by a Mr. Glaze,
who placed the muzzle of his gun near the boy's head and literally shot
off the top of it. The inhuman wretch afterwards shamelessly boasted
of his damning deed. His brother, Alma, a boy of eight summers, was
shot through the hip. He had seen his father and brother shot down, and
fearing if he moved the heartless wretches would shoot him again, he
remained quiet among the dead until he heard the voice of his mother
gently calling his name in the darkness. She nursed him tenderly,
prayerfully, and under the inspiration of heaven made such a collection
of herbs and barks with which she dressed his wound that he recovered,
grew to manhood, lived to a reasonably good old age, and lately died at
Coalville, Summit County, Utah.
Thomas McBride, an old gray haired veteran of the American Revolution,
was met by a number of the mob in front of Mr. Haun's house. The old
man, trembling with age rather than from fear, surrendered his gun,
saying: "Spare my life, I am a Revolutionary soldier." But the inhuman
wretch to whom he made this simple, pathetic appeal, sufficient to
have moved adamantine hearts, shot the veteran down with his own gun,
and then a Mr. Rogers, of Daviess County, fell upon him and hacked him
to pieces with an old corn cutter. And there lay the veteran soldier
of the Revolution, covered with a score of unsightly wounds, either
of which alone had been fatal--his brains oozing from his cracked
skull, and his white hairs crimsoned with his gore! Oh, a hard fate to
overtake one of that noble band, who gave the best years of his life to
his country's service, that liberty might survive oppression!
As night drew her sable mantle over the ghastly scene about Haun's
Mill, those who had escaped to the woods returned to learn the fate of
their friends. I need not dwell upon the horrors of that awful night in
which wives with bursting hearts sought for their husbands, and mothers
searched for their sons among the mangled bodies of the dead. Nor need
I pause to relate in detail the sights revealed by the morning light.
According to the statement of the leaders of the mob, they had fired
seven rounds each, making in all some sixteen hundred shots fired at a
company in which there were not more than thirty men. Nineteen of the
men and boys were killed outright in this inhuman butchery, and some
twelve to fifteen were wounded more or less severely. The few men who
escaped with their lives, the following day carried the bodies of the
slain to an old vault which had been dug for a well, and there the
butchered were interred in haste, as those performing these sad offices
were under fear every moment that the mob would return to massacre the
survivors of the tragedy of the day before.
This Haun's Mill butchery may very properly be regarded as the first
fruits of Governor Boggs' exterminating order. On the twenty-eight of
October, Colonel Jennings, of Livingston County, had entered into a
treaty of peace with the saints at Haun's Mill, and each party agreed
to use whatever of influence it possessed for peace; and while we
cannot learn whether that same colonel was in the company which did the
killing or not, still it is known that a few days after the massacre,
he, in company with other leading men in upper Missouri, among whom
was Mr. Ashby, member of the State legislature from Chariton, went
about threatening the lives of the survivors, stealing their property,
laying waste their crops and running off their stock. My own view of
the circumstances is that after the treaty of peace entered into on the
twenty-eighth, Colonel Jennings' men, with other mob forces, heard of
the exterminating order of Governor Boggs, and gathered together under
the leadership of Comstock and undertook to carry out the monstrous
edict that was worthy only of a Nero, a Caligula, or a Domitian.