I ended up spending more time than neccessary trying to figure out how the HttpIndexModule works because the current wiki page is missing some valuable information relative to the Original Documentation (wish I had noticed that link at the bottom earlier). I think it's important to include the following statement in the current wiki:

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It should be noted that when using an index file, an internal redirect is made, and request can be processed in a different location. For example, with the following configuration:

location = / {
index index.html;
}

location / {
...
}

a request of “/” will actually be processed in the second location as “/index.html”.
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Without knowing about the internal redirect, one could assume index pages are served directly.

It would be nice if comments could be added to wiki pages for input like this (similar to PHP.net documentation). That would be better direct feedback than this forum. I also tried to create a wiki account to see if I could suggest the update directly but my IP was stated as blocked for spamming reasons??? Strange as my IP is dynamically assigned by my ISP and I promise I haven't done any spamming :)