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.