In a previous post, I quoted an entomologist who thought the name “Mormon Fly” was “an insolvable mystery.” [1] He went on to say that “there was somewhat more plausible ground for calling the Chinch bug the ‘Mormon louse;’ for that little pest really did swarm for the first time in Illinois about the same year that the Mormons settled there.” The bug in question, Blissus lucopterus, is a small beast, usually less than 4 mm aft-to-stern, but it has destroyed great swaths of wheat and other grasses throughout the US for the past two centuries and change by feeding on roots and blocking the flow of nutrients. The earliest reference I’ve found comes from 1856:

[The Chinch bug] made its appearance there simultaneously with the establishment of the Mormons at Nauvoo (1840-1844 [sic]) and many ignorant people firmly believed they were introduced there by these strange religionists, and ‘Mormon lice’ became the name by which they were currently designated, through that district. When we have such instance of credulity and ignorance of our own day and generation, let us not smile at our patriotic grandsires for deeming that the Hessian soldiers were breeding and shaking off pestilent vermin and scattering them over the country wherever they marched.” [2]

The much-loathed Hessians appeared in many of the citations.

In parts of North Carolina it receives the name, Hessian Fly or, Hessian Bug, on the supposition that they were left in the country by German soldiers, as they were first observed after a detachment had passed through. In Illinois, they were similarly called Mormon lice, upon the supposition that the Mormons were somehow responsible for them. [3]

Different circumstance, different bugbear—othering is nothing if not plastic. I find interesting here the construction of an elitist identity: the writers smugly assert their intellectual superiority to “strange religionists,” previous generations, and plebeians. Such constructions differ from many of the others we’ve been discussing in that the construction distinguishes the “rational” from the “credulous,” rather than the moral from the immoral. For Mormons, mere “strangeness” indicated, at least rhetorically, a much greater degree of social acceptance. The growing authority of Science in the late nineteenth century changed/coincided with (re)constructions of Mormon identity. For an increasing part of the population, Mormonism became “just another irrational religion.” [4] Clean cities and racial homogeneity invited admiration in the new paradigm. Mormon industry had always inspired favor (or envy or fear), so approval did not so much increase as the loathing of a “moral abomination” decreased. Mormons shifted from evil non-Whites who happened to be good—and therefore dangerous—colonizers to good, White—and therefore useful—colonizers who happened to hold weird ideas. But all that was still mostly in the future. By the 1890s the sobriquet “Mormon lice” had mostly petered out even though Mormons and B. leucopterus both still held national attention. [5] The timing requires explanation: the second-relic-of-barbarism 1880s were hardly the decade for negative Mormon references to die off. Possible factors include the fact that the name never gained more than local traction; the chinch bug’s wide range and previously established name obscured the new name; and Mormons didn’t implicate it in a faith-promoting story. [6] Like most common names, “Mormon lice” lacked taxonomic precision and some folks might have applied the name to bed bugs (Cimex lectularius). I also found one reference to “Mormon bed-bugs”:

Fleas are, in western phrase, ‘tolerable bad,’ but bed bugs are intolerable; both in numbers and voracity those of Utah beat the world, particularly in the country towns, and among the poorer classes of foreign-born Mormons. In certain settlements their ravage is incredible, and Mormon bed-bugs seem as much worse than others as their human companions. Like the latter, too, they seem to regard the Gentile as fair prey. [7]

The author scores big points in nativist pinball, hitting almost all of the standard issues: overwhelming numbers, individual ferocity, poverty, foreign-ness, and lack of decency. In particular, the dig undermined one of the Mormons’ most (/the only) successful claims, pioneering excellence. If bed bugs vexed, Mormons hadn’t been as successful as claimed in civilizing the frontier. [8]

At any rate, the big issue with Mormon lice is, of course, the nits. Haun’s Mill Massacre participant William Reynolds famously explained his execution of a child with, “Nits will make lice, and if he had lived he would have become a Mormon.” [9] As Paul Reeve demonstrated at MHA this year, the “nits make lice” idea surfaced during conflicts with Native American Peoples from the eighteenth through the nineteenth century. [10] However, I have not yet found any documentary evidence connecting Reynolds’s nits with “Mormon lice.”

Even without the possible equation with Indians, “Mormon lice” keyed on a fundamental assumption for most White, nineteenth-century Americans: lice signified poverty, disgrace, uncleanness, and moral degradation. “Lice-ridden” almost always made up part of the assigned identity for Blacks, immigrants, and the poor. Thus, even though I find no direct evidence changing “Mormon lice” from a troponym to a charactonym, I think it highly likely that it connoted disreputability and performed maintenance othering. [11]

The standard caveats: When I write “The earliest instance…,” etc, the “that I’ve found to date” is implied. When I write something like “Most of the Mormon records used…”I am reporting a non-quantitative, subjective impression (unless otherwise stated).

Related Posts: Twin Barbarians 1: Mormon Crickets
What Put the “Mormon” in “Mormon Fly” Might Not Go Well with Breakfast
All God’s Creatures—Including Mormos, the Other Mormons
A Preliminary History of the Phrase “Happy Valley”