"We sold our beautiful home in Kirtland and traveled all summer to reach Missouri... We arrived in Caldwell County, near Haun's Mill. Two days before this we were taken prisoners by an armed mob that demanded every bit of ammunition and every weapon we had. We surrendered all. They knew it, for they searched our wagons. A few more miles brought us to Haun's Mill, where an awful scene of murder was about to be enacted. My husband, Warren Smith, pitched our tent by the blacksmith's shop.
"Brother David Evans made a treaty with the mob that they would not molest us. He came just before the massacre and called the company together and we all knelt in prayer.
I then sat in my tent. Looking up, I suddenly saw the mob coming -- the same mob that had taken our weapons. They came like so many demons... Before I could get to the blacksmith's shop to alarm the brethren, the bullets were whistling amongst us. I seized my two little girls and escaped across the millpond on a slab-walk. Another sister fled with me. Though we were women with tender children in flight for our lives, the demons poured volley after volley to kill us. A number of bullets entered my clothes, but I was not wounded.
"When the firing had ceased I went back to the scene of the massacre, for there were my husband and three sons, of whose fate I as yet knew nothing. As I returned, I found the sister in a pool of blood where she had fainted, having been shot through the hand. Further on was laying dead Brother McBride, an aged white-haired revolutionary soldier. His murderer had literally cut him to pieces with an old corn cutter...
"Passing on, I came to a scene more terrible still to a mother and wife. Emerging from the blacksmith shop was my eldest son, bearing on his shoulders his little brother Alma.
"Oh! My Alma is dead!", I cried in anguish.
"No, Mother, I think Alma is not dead, but father and Sardius (the third son) are killed."
What an answer was this to appall me. My husband and son murdered, and another little son seemingly mortally wounded, and perhaps before the dreadful night should pass the murderers would return and complete their work!
But I could not weep then. The fountain of tears was dry, the heart overburdened with its calamity, and all the mother's sense absorbed in its anxiety for the precious little boy which God alone could save by his miraculous aid. We laid little Alma on a bed in our tent and I examined the wound. It was a ghastly sight. The entire hip joint of my wounded boy had been shot away. Flesh, hip bone, joint and all had been ploughed out from the muzzle of the gun, which the ruffian placed to the child's hip through the logs of the shop and deliberately fired. I knew not what to do. "Oh my Heavenly Father," I cried, "what shall I do? Thou seest my poor wounded little boy and knowest my inexperience. Oh, Heavenly Father, direct me in what to do!"
Then I was directed as by a voice speaking to me. The ashes of our fire was still smoldering. We had been burning the bark of the shag-bark hickory. I was directed to take those ashes and make a lye and put a cloth saturated with it right into the wound. It hurt, but little Alma was too near death to heed it much. Again and again I saturated the cloth and put it into the hole from which the hip joint had been ploughed, and each time mashed flesh and splinters of bone came away with the cloth. The wound soon became as white as chicken's flesh.
Having done as directed, I again prayed to the Lord and was again instructed as distinctly as though a physician had been standing by speaking to me. Nearby was a slippery-elm tree. From this I was told to make a slippery-elm poultice and fill the wound with it. My eldest son was sent to get the slippery-elm. From the roots of the [tree the] poultice was made and the wound, which took fully a quarter of a yard of linen to cover so large was it, was properly dressed. It was then I found vent to my feelings in tears, and resigned myself to the anguish of the hour.
The next day I removed my wounded boy to a house some distance off and dressed his hip, with the Lord directing me as before. I was reminded that in my husband's trunk there was a bottle of balsam. This I poured into the wound, greatly soothing Alma's pain.
"Alma, my child," I said, "do you believe that the Lord made your hip?"
"Yes, Mother", he replied.
"Well, the Lord can make something there in the place of your hip. Don't you believe He can, Alma?"
"Do you think that the Lord can, Mother?" inquired the child in his simplicity.
"Yes, my son," I replied, "He has shown it all to me in a vision."
Then I laid him comfortably on his face, and said, "Now you lay like that, and don't move, and the Lord will make you another hip."
So Alma laid on his face for five weeks, until he was entirely recovered, a flexible gristle having grown in place of the missing joint and socket, which remains to this day a marvel to physicians.
On the day that he walked again, I was out of the house fetching a bucket of water when I heard screams from the children. Running back, I entered and there was Alma dancing around and the other children screaming in astonishment and joy.
It has now been forty years, and Alma has never been the least crippled during his life, and he has traveled quite a long period of time as a missionary of the gospel and a living miracle of the power of God.
The news of the Mormon Miracle spread far and near and after Amanda went to Quincy, Illinois, she was visited by five physicians sent by a board of doctors in St. Louis who had heard of the case and wished to investigate. After watching the action of the hip as Alma walked, they declared it a complete mystery.
They could not understand what kind of combination it was that supplied strength and action, for the hip bone was gone. A sort of gristle had partly supplied the place and it was just as strong as the other leg and as active though there was a depression easily detected through his clothing. They asked the name of the surgeon who had performed the wonderful piece of surgery. Amanda replied, "Jesus Christ". They said, "Not the Savior of the world." She replied, "Yes, the same, Sirs; He was the Physician and I was the nurse."
(Compiled and written by David Kenison)
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