Sacred Burial Site @ Hawn's Mill

This is perhaps the most sobering and heart-rendering scene I have ever tried to paint. After that excruciating night of terror at the Hawn's Mill settlement in October 1838, 17 men and boys were found murdered in and around the blacksmith's shop. Several others were badly wounded. The remaining survivors were in fear for their lives and thus had to remain in hiding for some time afterward.

They didn't have the means or manpower to properly bury the dead. No funeral services were performed, nor could they be buried with customary decency. The lives of those, who in terror performed the last duty for the dead, were in jeopardy. Every moment they expected to be fired upon by the fiends who they supposed to be lying in ambush waiting for the first opportunity to dispatch the remaining few who had escaped the slaughter of the remaining day.

So in the hurry and terror of the moment, the survivors placed the bodies of the slain in a dry well and buried them with dirt, straw and rocks. They later returned to place a stone painted red atop the mass grave. Eventually all of the Mormon settlers were driven from Missouri on the extermination orders of Governor Wilburn Boggs. All this death and tragedy simply because of their faith.