Nauvoo, Illinois, was once the site of a Sauk and Fox village. After the Indians moved west of the Mississippi, promoters attempted to develop town sites there, but the marshy bottom lands attracted few settlers. In 1839, the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith chose the town, then called Commerce, as the home for his followers, who had been driven from Missouri. The Mormons renamed the community Nauvoo, said to mean “Beautiful Place,” and secured a special charter from the Illinois Legislature that gave the city government its own courts, militia, university, and all other governmental powers not prohibited by the Federal and State Constitutions. Mormon converts from across America and Europe soon raised the population to about 15,000, making Nauvoo one of the largest cities in Illinois by 1845. Resentment of the civil and religious authority of Mormon leaders grew among some Mormons and their Gentile neighbors, and tensions became severe. After the Nauvoo City Council had an anti-Mormon newspaper destroyed, Mormon leaders were arrested and jailed at Carthage, where on June 27, 1844, an armed mob shot and killed Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. Conflict between the Mormons and their neighbors continued until 1846, when the Mormons completed their exodus from the state. In 1849, Etienne Cabet’s followers, the Icarians, came to Nauvoo to practice their form of religious communism, but dissensions soon weakened the colony, and their experiment lasted less than ten years.