Monday Oct 30, 2023 will mark 185 years since the Hawn’s Mill Massacre occured in Missouri. What can an archaeologist tell us about that event? How do modern-day Missourians view it? Paul Debarthe will answer those questions, along with dispelling other myths. For example, was Nauvoo really a swamp? What happened to the rapids on the Mississippi near Nauvoo? Check out our conversation…
Nauvoo Swamp Doesn’t Exist
Paul 00:50 Give me one more, I have another article under way.
GT 00:52 Okay.
Paul 00:54 The history of the Nauvoo swamp.
GT 00:56 Yeah.
Paul 00:57 It is one of the most fascinating chunks of mythology that the Mormons have created. Virtually every Mormon history, the pageant, the tours, all speak of draining Nauvoo, draining the swamp, so they could make Nauvoo a habitable place.
GT 01:13 Well and plus there were all of the mosquitoes that were carrying malaria. Right? Well, I mean, they didn’t know that was the cause for that.
Paul 01:21 They didn’t know the ague was caused by that. But Joseph Smith noted that along the riverside, there was sickness. Well, the Mormons got there in the spring of 1839, a wet spring, probably a wet winter too. So, there would have been quite a lot of moisture coming off the bluffs down onto the flats. And so, they dug the ditch at Durfee Street to drain that. And they did a few other ditches. But to have a swamp, you have to have some kind of barrier that keeps the water from escaping. You don’t have that at Nauvoo. As a matter of fact, you’ve got the Des Moines rapids going right by Nauvoo. And you can’t combine rapids with a swamp.
GT 02:08 Okay.
Paul 02:10 And furthermore, archaeology shows that you have consistently layers of dark sandy loam, lighter sandy loam, gravel, limestone. There’s no layer of humus in there. That’s what you would expect to have if you have a swamp with all the vegetation falling into it and making layers.
GT 02:28 So there’s no swamp in Nauvoo.
Paul 02:30 We had some swampy areas, but no swamp in Nauvoo. And just as an example of that, this last August, August 4 and 5, I was in Nauvoo for the pageant. It was for the British performance. Beautiful music, I enjoyed it. I parked on the grass, two blocks away and walked in and a thousand people or more were there. A sprinkle came in during the performance, but not enough to stop the performance. We went home, the rain continued. We got 7.8 inches [of rain] in Nauvoo that night.
GT 03:07 Seven inches of rain?
Paul 03:08 Seven, almost eight inches of rain that night. The Durfee ditch was full and just surging toward the river. I had the privilege of escorting Mary and Rebecca and Rebecca and Rebecca, four ladies from Burlington, wearing Mormon period garb, the dress down to the ground, to that second performance. We parked in the grass in the same place that I parked the night before and didn’t get stuck. We walked. The ladies didn’t get their dresses dirty. Where it had been dusty the night before, now the dark sandy loam was packing down. We got to the performance, and we sat in chairs that had four legs. We did not tip over or sink in. We just sat there and enjoyed the performance. And were instructed at least 12 times during that pageant, that we’re sitting in this swamp. {Rick laughing} That inspired me to write this article that points out that you pretty well have to have geological characteristics. You have to have a barrier to have a swamp. You’ve got rapids. We have some swampy areas, yes, and you can drain those and yet, to get almost an 8-inch rain and in 20 hours it’s been soaked away and carried away, so the people are walking on virtually dry land, that’s not a swamp. And the Aboriginal folks have been there for 10,000 years on that Peninsula. I don’t know that the mammoth hunters were there that long. I mean they were residing there, but they were there because we had their projectile points. We don’t know if they were living there, but by the time we get to the bison hunters 9,000 years ago, 9,000 to 3,000 years ago, we have numerous projectile points. And we have the site where one of those projectile points was actually being made there on the site. These people were actually using resources, living there, burying their dead there.
GT 05:17 In a swamp.
Paul 05:18 And you don’t bury your dead in a swamp. And then the Mormons come in and they start digging basements. Well, actually, we had pre-Mormons digging basements. That basement for the Times and Seasons was a pre-Mormon basement, dug in a swamp? Come on. {Rick laughing} And so I’m asking for the Mormons to drain the swamp in Nauvoo. {both laughing}
Why Des Moines Rapids Don’t Exist
GT 05:41 I just want to mention one other thing, because we keep talking about the Des Moines Rapids. If you go there today, there’s no rapids because they have a dam in Keokuk now.
Paul 05:50 Right.
GT 05:50 Which is what covered up the first Times and Seasons building.
Paul 05:54 Right. Lake Cooper has raised the water level 20 to 22 feet.
GT 05:59 So they call that part of the Mississippi River a lake now?
Paul 06:02 Yeah, it’s Lake Cooper, named for the engineer that built the dam at Keokuk.
GT 06:07 Okay.
Paul 06:08 In 1913.
GT 06:09 Okay.
Paul 06:10 And because it raised the water level that much, here’s another phenomenon. The Nauvoo House was prophetically designed in 1841. And they started digging the foundation for it and building the walls. When Joseph Smith and Hyrum were shot and killed, they buried the bodies in the basement of the Nauvoo House. The Nauvoo House is 10 feet lower than the Mansion House, or the Homestead. And they buried the bodies in the basement, in a swamp? Now, there’s no basement. When Major Bidamon remodeled it and made the Riverside Mansion, it now has a crawlspace. And every time the river floods, it’s wet there. Even with the embankment to protect it.
GT 06:55 Okay.
Paul 06:56 But that’s because the water level is 20 feet higher.
GT 06:59 Right.
Paul 07:00 Another example, we dug the well at the Mansion House, and at 12 feet, we hit water. We hit water, but we also hit limestone backfill and all kinds of junk. And so, we dug the junk out and went all the way down to 28 feet. Twenty-eight feet, I think, was the original subsurface water level. That was the same level that they dug the well to on the Homestead lot. And at that time, the water level would have been 20 feet lower than what it is today. So, when you see the Mormon period subsurface level, as compared to today, then that’s probably a much more accurate reading of where it was.
GT 07:41 Wow.
Paul 07:43 Yeah. We’re a little bit off topic there. The swamp at Nauvoo is just so much fun. {both laughing} I mean, that’s so fresh, because it was just this August that I had that experience with the seven-inch rain and just being told I was sitting in the swamp when it just was such incongruently that my brother and I have been writing an article on that, which we hope to get published shortly.
GT 08:11 Wow. Very cool. Very cool.
Battle or Massacre at Hawn’s Mill?
GT 08:12 All right. So diving back into Hawn’s Mill, October 30, 1838, was the date of the massacre/incident. And I do want to mention one other thing. I spoke with Darren Parry. He used to be the chief of the Northwest [band of the] Shoshone. Basically, really quickly, the Mormons referred to what happened in Bear River as the Bear River Battle. Two hundred fifty Shoshone Indians were killed by the US military, there in [Utah]—well, it’s in Idaho now. It used to be part of the State of Deseret or Utah, at the time. And she, (Darren’s mother) made a big deal about, “No this wasn’t a battle. It was a massacre, because 250 Shoshone were killed.” I don’t think any white troops were killed. So, it’s hard to call that a battle. It really was a massacre. And she made a big deal about renaming this from the Bear River Battle to the Bear River Massacre. And it’s now known as the Bear River Massacre because battle is a more neutral term. So, when you talk to these students in Missouri that want to call it the Hawn’s Mill Incident, is that a way of whitewashing what happened there at Hawn’s Mill?
Paul 09:43 Yes. But at the same time, there’s still a lot of tension.
GT 09:51 Right.
Paul 09:52 There was a plan by the Corps of Engineers to build a dam at Braymer, Missouri. That dam would have flooded the Hawn’s Mill area.
GT 09:59 Oh.
Paul 10:00 And there’s some RLDS people, in particular, that banded together and went to work on writing up a plan to save the site from that dam incursion. That was one of the earlier efforts, then, to try to build a monument there and make it so that the site would be preserved and people could understand their history better. The Mormon history and the Missouri history are quite seriously in conflict about it. And to have people live together in peace, sometimes we have to realize our words, our thinking, and for the Mormons to refer to Joseph Smith as a martyr, as compared to referring to him as somebody who had been assassinated while he’s running for President of the United States, to me, is one of those conflicts in words where I think it’s much better for people to understand that he was the first person running for president United States who was assassinated in the process. Bobby Kennedy was the second.
GT 11:07 Right.
Paul 11:09 But to refer to him as a martyr, gives it sort of a religious theme, that while it pushes the buttons for Mormons, it does not communicate nearly as well as being assassinated, a victim of a presidential attack. And in terms of the future, I believe the politics of recognizing Joseph Smith as being assassinated while running for president is far more valuable than calling him martyr. With Hawn’s Mill, to recognize there was an incident in the Mormon War–the fact that the Mormon militia had beat the state militia at the Battle of Crooked River two weeks before, you can’t have a private militia beat the state militia. No state militia is going to stand for that.
GT 11:54 Right.
Paul 11:55 Put that in context. And you see, the Mormon War was moving to a climax, by which the Mormons were in trouble. And they pretty well would have to get out of there. And so, yes, your suggestion that if only Governor Boggs’ Extermination Order had arrived earlier, they might have saved the lives of those people. But again, Jacob Hawn was not a Mormon. The people that did the attacking included the gentleman who ran Whitney’s mill, four miles down Shoal Creek on the other side of the line in Livingston County, another miller from up on Grand River. I mean, economic competition here, the fact that the Mormons had developed these 1000 acre firms and were inviting poor people to come farm and earn money and produce a crop. The first year you help produce the crop and then we’ll sell that to Fort Leavenworth. And next year, you can use your money to invest in your own land. How’s that going to go over with a bunch of people who are slave owners, competing and losing the contracts to a bunch of Mormons who are bringing in a bunch of free labor from the east, from the northeast, who are abolitionists. There’s a fascinating statement by Senator Atchison at the end of the Mormon War, who said it’s time now for us to Mormonize the abolitionists.
GT 13:11 Oh, really? Wow!
Paul 13:14 Isn’t that fun?
GT 13:15 Wow!
Paul 13:16 Mormonize the abolitionists. Here all these Canadians had come in, and they were abolitionists.
GT 13:21 Yeah.
Paul 13:23 So many of these Mormons were. There were some slave owner Mormons, yes. But not very many. A couple of families that I can come up with. But really, the vast majority were abolitionist oriented. And that just simply was a major contrast with the attitude of Missourians. And when they’re starting to take your economic contracts of Fort Leavenworth, as well, you understand…
GT 13:47 Then it’s an economic and religious conflict.
Paul 13:49 Absolutely and the economic one has been overlooked. Mike Riggs has done beautiful work on that study. In fact, I think he has a book on the way to illustrate that much more closely. It wasn’t just the grain, but also contracts for building the military roads. And so, the Mormons had the manpower to go do these things and to outbid the slave owners and so it was an unacceptable condition, as a result of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. And then we get to the Civil War. We get to Bleeding Kansas. And here’s a continuation of that politics in Missouri. And in some respects, I think we still have the politics of Missouri influenced by those property owners versus the non-property owners.
GT 14:36 Very interesting. I know part of the reason why Jacob Hawn settled in Hawn’s Mill, there’s a river or creek there next to it?
Paul 14:54 Shoal Creek.
GT 14:54 Shoal Creek. And so, they used the waterpower for the grist mill, and that’s why he built the mill there. And so, he was making a lot of money from both Mormons and non-Mormons, just grinding their corn, grinding their wheat. And so, when the Mormons wanted to move there, it’s like, come on. It’s good for business, right? I know when the Mormons saw the Missouri mobs coming, or should I say militia?
Paul 15:24 Regulars.
GT 15:24 The Missouri regulars coming, they hid in a partially completed something, like log cabin kind of a building for protection, which ended up being a death trap.
Paul 15:40 It was a blacksmith shop, which had not been chinked.
GT 15:42 Okay.
Paul 15:43 So, the bullets from outside would come through the unchinked gaps. So the Mormons who were standing there couldn’t help but get all of the bullets that came through and hit them.
GT 15:52 So, for those who don’t understand chinking, when you’re building a log cabin, you’re stacking these logs on top for the walls. And obviously, there’s going to be gaps and so they chink the gaps to fill in the gaps. But that hadn’t been done yet.
Paul 16:06 Right.
GT 16:08 Can you talk about that? Were you able to find that building and determine anything there?
Paul 16:14 There was, at the time, a teardrop driveway at Hawn’s Mill. And the best indication I have is that the teardrop driveway is where that blacksmith shop would have been.
GT 16:27 Oh, where people can park now?
Paul 16:29 No, they can’t now.
GT 16:30 Oh.
Paul 16:30 The property has been sold. The LDS Church owns it now. They have modified the parking and squared off, so the teardrop drive could become available for excavation. And I’m pretty confident that’s where the blacksmith shop ultimately will be found, presuming that they’re going to do that.
GT 16:47 Oh, so were you able to excavate that then?
Paul 16:48 No, it was parking lot then.
GT 16:51 Okay.
Paul 16:51 I couldn’t intrude upon the parking spaces. We got right close to it. And the closer we got to it, the more hand forged metal we found. And so that’s why I’m convinced that it is right there close.
GT 17:03 That’s where the blacksmith shop was.
Paul 17:05 Yeah, the blacksmith shop was not very far from where the mill was. And we didn’t find the mill either. But the mill is four miles down the river at Whitney’s mill. There’s one up on the bluff and it’s two rods by two rods square? It’s big, much larger than I anticipated.
GT 17:25 And remind people what is a rod?
Paul 17:27 A rod is 16 and a half feet.
GT 17:29 Okay.
Paul 17:29 And so to be 33 feet by 33 feet is a big building.
GT 17:34 Right.
Paul 17:35 And I think we may have been looking for too small of a building at Hawn’s Mill, but it has been pirated. That is, the stones have been taken out. And so, well, let me explain. Shoal Creek has changed its course. And one of our exploration results was just to demonstrate some of the places where it had been. For example, the Hawley’s of Steamboat Arabia fame came with metal detector and found a spot that was 10 feet below surface that had a heavy chunk of metal and so we went to dig there because we hoped that that would be where the mill wheel or what part of the mill had been left behind. [We} got a backhoe and we started at Shoal Creek on the east and dug 30 feet back to where that metal was. And just before we got to the metal, we got to a plastic diaper and a Csardas cup and plastic.
GT 18:33 I don’t think that dates from 1830?
Paul 18:34 Right. These were 10 feet below the surface, 13 feet below surface.
GT 18:37 Okay.
Paul 18:37 We got to the metal and it was a 50 gallon barrel drum that had been cut in half and split open to make it into a feeder trough like what my dad used on the farm in Iowa 50 years ago.
GT 18:48 No way.
Paul 18:51 The Shoal Creek had moved 30 feet at that spot.
GT 18:54 Oh really?
Paul 18:54 To the east. It’s also moved to the south. And so, to be able to identify precisely where it is, we’ve got the bypass. The bypass is pretty clear, and probably the holding pool for the logs. So, somebody had gotten in there, illicitly, with a backhoe and messed around and dug some holes, thinking they were going to find the well. We chose that area, then, to mark off four, 10-foot squares adjacent, to make it so you have a spot clear for a monument. Because the sign, the monuments that they put up over there for the last century had been shot. They’d been mutilated. They’ve been burned, and the partyers there have had a lot of fun. {Rick laughing} It’s not been a safe place for Mormons. And so, we dug that spot and in getting down to three feet below surface, we encountered, not only charcoal, but burned granite from where the mill wheels had been burned to make it easier to hold them off. And those granite mill wheels had to be cut and smoothed down to where they would turn one facing the other, with only a 1000th of an inch of clearance. So, the grain coming through, would come through up here closer to half an inch. But that grain, as it comes out through the little slots, gets ground by the granite. And so, you only want a 1,000th of an inch of that grain by the time it gets out. That’s why it’s called a grist mill. And then you can pull it out and take it up and run it down through again.
GT 19:06 And then it becomes flour.
Paul 19:24 But you’ve got to have that precision to get those stones face to face, the top one turning, so that it can actually do that grinding. And so, the precision of lithic technology to be able to do with a hammer and chisel, do that kind of work, the millwrights were just awesome people with that skill. And so here we were finding that they started out with a big boulder of granite, and they started burning it and chopping it down to get down to those mill wheels that were used at Hawn’s Mill. And so that would have been close to the mill itself. The mill itself undoubtedly would have been three stories high, because you get the first grinding of the grist. You take it back up and run it through the process to bring it down again. The whole study of mill technology, in the 19th century is fascinating. And I would so much like to see us be able to see that standing again someday. But the problem is that with 17 bodies in a well, or 15 bodies…
GT 19:24 Let’s talk about why the bodies are in a well. Tell people who might not know.
Paul 21:40 There was an unfinished well that was being dug at the time of the incident at Hawn’s Mill. And on the 30th of October, these people were killed. They dispersed. People ran across the dam and up escape hill. They ran a mile or a quarter mile or wherever they could find shelter. Some of them were wounded, and some were busy dying. One gentleman got up on the wall, thinking he was safe, and got hit by a bullet from probably some 300 yards distance. And we have the story of the gentleman bragging about having made that lucky shot. But the escapees, the people got shot, such a sad story, and it’s so unnecessary. But the people came back the next day and feeling like they’re under jeopardy, they simply dumped the bodies in the well, with Sardius Smith, the 10-year-old [who] had been shot in the head, as the final one on top.
GT 21:48 And so basically, the well became a burial spot for all these people.
Paul 22:00 And so, Mike Riggs and I decided that we would do everything we could to avoid finding the well, because we think that it’s the kind of site that is like the Arizona site in Pearl Harbor. We know 2000 people were buried there and we know who they were, what better Memorial than just leaving that ship there as the tomb for those sailors.
GT 23:12 But you’re saying that some other people didn’t feel the same way as you and we’re trying to find the well and find the bodies.
Paul 23:17 Right. Absolutely.
GT 23:17 And when did that happen, in the 50s?
Paul 23:19 Well, in the 60s, I know that, I don’t want to use people’s names. But in the 60s, I know that there was an announcement. We found it. I think what they found was the charcoal about at that three-foot level. I think they had no business digging there at that point. And then, I’m not sure what it would be. I think it was in the 90s, the backhoe got in there and did its damage. But there’s sufficient hints to give people a chance to speculate about where the well was and so the idea of being able to find the well has been a driving motivator for a lot of people. And I understand that, but with the thousands of people that are now descended from people that are buried there, if you allow all those people to be polled, you have such a variety of responses. Many want them left. Some want them dug up and moved. But I am convinced that the best lesson in history, I believe, is to leave that marker there to let people understand: There’s an incident in the war that was unnecessary. We can learn to live together peacefully and harmoniously, if we will. And to allow our anger to cause us to shoot each other is pretty foolish. And here’s an example of that.
GT 24:43 Yeah, because I do know a lot of people are very interested in where those bodies are buried. And so, it’s very interesting to hear your perspective about why you purposely avoided trying to find it.
Paul 24:53 We have information that, I think, helps to refine and guide people to it. But again, it has changed hands. It was in the hands of Community of Christ. It’s now in the hands of the LDS Church. They’re doing a better job of keeping the place mowed and the brush out and poison ivy is reduced. But I am concerned. One of the significant things we’ve had, you see, I involved students in hands on history, in hands of archaeology. I had high school students from Shawnee Mission East, and they did a marvelous job. I want to encourage people to recognize that kids finding artifacts, find history. They learn to love and appreciate history. We had college students. And while I was teaching at the Johnson County Community College, we had some of those students involved. We set up a field school for Western Missouri University at Maryville.
We and had an eight-day concentration for them in 2006. They worked on the western hill and there we came down on good evidence of a middle woodland village, some 2000 years of age. And [they found] one projectile point that probably takes us back 5000 years there. So, that site has been occupied for long term. It’s a sacred site for the Mormons, but it’s also a sacred site for the prehistoric people. We have a coral bead that probably comes from the Gulf of Mexico. We have what appears to be Catlinite that is probably from Minnesota. So, we’re talking about people trading goods for a thousand miles to lose them at Hawn’s Mill. So, let’s appreciate the cultural heritage that’s there, the history that’s there, the pre-history that’s there. And I think the monument not only ought to be celebrating the victims of Hawn’s Mill, but the earlier unnamed victims should be recognized and appreciated as well. The First Nations people have been victims of American history as long as we’ve been writing history, and that’s something we can make better. You mentioned massacre.
GT 27:06 The Bear River Massacre, yeah.
Paul 27:08 The fact that we’ve got numerous accounts, the last one Wounded Knee, boy to have that horrible massacre. Again, [it was] totally unnecessary. But probably 300 people were killed in that one and buried on the hill.
GT 27:32 Yeah, it’s terrible. The way the Native Americans have been treated is a poorly told story, I would say.
{End of Part 3}
