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100 6 “Was This Really Missouri Civilization?” The Haun’s Mill Massacre in Missouri and Mormon History Thomas M. Spencer The three-month-long“Mormon War” in northwest Missouri during 1838 has been viewed by Mormons and scholars of Mormonism as a trying time in the history of the LDS church. As Alexander Baugh, the eminent scholar of the Missouri period of LDS history, put it, “For a period of three agonizing, painful, and eventful months, this disproportionate religious minority defended their rights, liberties, and property, against an overwhelming intolerant majority.”1 One of the pivotal events in the Mormon War was the Haun’s Mill Massacre, the killing of seventeen Mormon settlers by the Livingston County militia at Jacob Haun’s mill on October 30, 1838. The Haun’s Mill Massacre is viewed as a seminal event by many Mormons today, who still speak with outrage and contempt for the acts of those Missourians nearly 170 years ago. The event and its aftermath have become a major part of Mormon history and culture. Some scholars of Mormonism contend that the massacre convinced Joseph Smith to surrender at Far West two days later and agree that the Mormons would leave Missouri.Other scholars have maintained that the massacre led to a greater militancy later on the part of Smith and the Mormons, culminating in the forming of the Nauvoo Legion in the 1840s, an imposing military force that was half the size of the U.S. Army at the time. At the very least, this tragic event confirmed the worst fears Mormons had about frontier Missourians. While some early accounts by local historians were relatively accurate, Missouri history scholars over the past fifty years have seemingly tried their best Haun’s Mill in Missouri and Mormon History 101 to forget the Haun’s Mill Massacre even took place. In the most frequently used textbook for the Missouri history course in colleges across the state, Missouri : The Heart of the Nation, authors William E. Parrish, Charles T. Jones Jr., and Lawrence O.Christensen do not mention the massacre in their three-page treatment of the 1838 Mormon War—and the same brief account appears in all three editions of the book published between 1980 and 2004. Nor is the massacre mentioned in the University of Missouri Press’s History of Missouri Series by Perry McCandless. The massacre merits only three sentences in Duane Meyer’s 830-page magnum opus, The Heritage of Missouri, a book that devotes more than two pages of space each to such topics as the Missouri mule and famous professional and amateur sports teams of the nineteenth century.2 Missouri’s academic historians are not interested in recounting the events at Haun’s Mill or pondering their significance. Worse than this sin of omission is that some Missouri history scholars have gone so far as to blame the victims themselves for the events of the Mormon War. Focusing on the July 4 sermon of Sidney Rigdon, they argue that the words and actions of the Mormon leaders were to blame for the events that followed. This essay will recount the events of the Haun’s Mill Massacre and its aftermath as well as focus on how the event has been interpreted by Mormons and Missourians. Ultimately, the Haun’s Mill Massacre has several important causes. First, both sides in the conflict viewed violence as a proper regulatory response to remove people they considered dangerous members of society. Second, both Missourians and Mormons took aggressive actions that served to escalate tension during the fall of 1838, ultimately contributing to the outbreak of violence. Finally, Mormon historians have always argued that Missourians ’ land hunger was the primary cause of the massacre. Using a recently indexed original plat map of Daviess County, this study finds evidence to support these claims as a cause of the Haun’s Mill Massacre. The Haun’s Mill Massacre took place on October 30, 1838, when a group of soldiers from the Livingston County militia attacked a group of Mormon settlers at a small settlement called Haun’s Mill on the banks of Shoal Creek in southeastern Caldwell County, sixteen miles east of the main Mormon settlement at Far West and only four miles west of the Livingston County line. The Haun’s Mill settlement never included more than ten to fifteen families. Local settlers referred to the area, which included two mills, one owned by Jacob Haun and the other by Robert White, as...

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