[A little context of the event, courtesy of Wikipedia: “The Haun's Mill Massacre (also Hawn's Mill Massacre) was an event in the history of the Latter Day Saint movement. It occurred on October 30, 1838, when a mob/militia unit from Livingston County, Missouri attacked a Mormon settlement in eastern Caldwell County, Missouri, after the Battle of Crooked River. By far the bloodiest event in the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, it has long been remembered by the members of the Latter Day Saint movement. While the spelling "Haun" is common when referring to the massacre or the mill where it occurred.”]
Within days almost all the Mormons had abandoned their outlying settlements – all except Jacob Haun and his fellow settlers at Haun’s Mill, who refused to leave their small community and newly built flour mill on a creek a few miles from Far West. On October 30, more than two hundred militiamen stormed the village, brutally slaughtering seventeen men and boys. When a nine-year-old was dragged from his hiding place in a blacksmith shop, one of the Gentiles [non-Mormons] was heard to say: “Don’t shoot, it’s just a boy.” But in a cold-blooded murder that would become legend in the decades that followed, a man shot the child in the head from point-blank range. The Haun’s Mill Massacre, as it came to be known, would thus become a rationale and justification for future vengeance and bloodshed – the undeniable evidence of the persecution so central to the growing [Mormon] faith.
Source:
Denton, Sally. “Kirtland/Far West, 1831.” American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857. Vintage Books, 2004. 20-1. Print.
Further Reading:
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