Nits
Will
Make Lice

He didn't ride to Haun's Mill to kill a ten year old. He told himself he rode to protect his home. Silas Kee has lost land, money and standing.

"The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace."

Governor Lilburn W. Boggs, Missouri, 1838

The Ground Is Real

In the summer and fall of 1838 the conflict remembered as the Mormon War spread across northwestern Missouri: Sidney Rigdon's salt sermon and the expulsion of dissenters from Far West; his Fourth of July oration; the brawl at the Gallatin polls; armed men at Millport dispersed by General Alexander Doniphan; the siege of DeWitt; the burning of Gallatin and Millport and of Mormon homes before and after; and the fight at Crooked River, whose casualties were wildly exaggerated in reports to the Governor.

Boggs's order was genuine. Whether the men who rode to Haun's Mill had received it, or only heard of it, historians still debate.

Haun's Mill

Late on October 30, 1838, Missouri militia and volunteers, largely from Livingston County under Colonel William O. Jennings, attacked the settlement on Shoal Creek in Caldwell County, despite a recent truce. Its captain, David Evans, called for peace as the attackers came out of the timber. The men took refuge in a blacksmith shop whose log walls had wide gaps, and were fired on through them. Thomas McBride, an elderly veteran of the Revolution, was killed after surrendering his gun. Survivors buried their dead in an unfinished well. No one was ever tried.

Within days Far West surrendered, and over the winter the Latter-day Saints were driven into Illinois. The Governor's order stayed on the books until a later Missouri governor formally rescinded it, well over a century afterward.

Silas Kee and his circle are fictional; the confession is imagined. The events around them are drawn from the record.