The Death of the Harpe Brothers: Murder and Retribution in Colonial America
Daily life in Colonial America was hard, and travel was dangerous. One could easily be robbed or killed by any number of outlaws or people simply driven to desperation by poverty. There was also the very good chance of being murdered for no reason at all, and if one were unfortunate enough to meet up with the Harpe brothers, that was the most likely outcome.
The Harpe brothers, now known as America's first serial killers, were two cousins – Micajah Harpe (birth name: Joshua Harper, later known as Big Harpe) and Wiley Harpe (birth name: William Harper, later known as Little Harpe) – who terrorized communities in Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, the Natchez Trace, and Tennessee between 1797 and 1799, murdering at least 39 people (probably 50 or more) for no reason other than their own bloodlust.
In 1799, the two men and their three wives and children took refuge with the Stegall family – Moses Stegall, his wife, and their four-month-old son – at the Stegall home. Another guest, Major William Love, was also in residence. During the night, annoyed by Love's snoring, the Harpes killed him. The next morning, they murdered the young boy for crying and then killed his mother when she dared to object.
Moses Stegall and one John Leiper formed a posse and chased down the Harpe brothers. Big Harpe was captured and decapitated. Little Harpe escaped and eluded authorities until 1804, when he was caught. Going under the name James Setton (also given as James Sutton), Little Harpe and another outlaw, Peter Alston (going under the name James May), tried to collect a bounty on the head of the river pirate Samuel Mason. They were recognized, however, and hanged in February 1804.
The cousins had kidnapped three women in the course of their criminal career, who became their 'shared wives' and bore them children. These women, after the deaths of the Harpes, were acquitted of all crimes and went on to lead normal lives.
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The following text is taken from The Outlaws of Cave-In-Rock: Historical Accounts of the Famous Highwaymen and River Pirates who operated in Pioneer Days upon the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and over the old Natchez Trace by Otto A. Rothert (1924) as given on the Project Gutenberg site. Rothert's work draws on earlier primary sources of the Harpe brothers' crimes and eventual capture and execution.
Omissions are indicated by ellipses. The full text is given below in the bibliography and External Links. In the following, the name of Moses Stegall is given as Steigal.
Death of Big Harpe:
When about two miles from the camp , Big Harpe was again discovered on a ridge a short distance ahead, and some of the party halloed to him to stop, upon which he abandoned his women to their fate, and dashed on alone—Leiper, in the meantime, making an ineffectual shot at the fugitive. Tompkins and Lindsey were left in charge of the two captured women, while Leiper, Christian, Grisson, and Steigal renewed the chase with increased animation. Leiper not being able to draw his ramrod, owing to its swollen condition from the rain of the preceding night, had exchanged guns with Tompkins.
The fleeing outlaw was closely pressed, Christian, Steigal, and Grisson each giving him a shot in the pursuit—Christian's alone taking effect, wounding him in the leg. Harpe, discovering that Leiper was considerably in advance of the others, and supposing his gun empty, concluded to take advantage, as he thought, of the circumstance, and get a fair shot at his dangerous adversary. He accordingly stopped his horse, and while renewing his priming, Leiper took unerring aim, and fired—and the same powder which the outlaws had a few days previously given Tompkins, now sped the ball that mortally wounded Big Harpe.
Though badly shot through the spine of his back, the wounded ruffian, determined to sell his life as dearly as possible, levelled his gun at Leiper; but even that deserted him in his hour of need—it snapped! and he threw it away in disgust. As Leiper and Christian were rapidly advancing upon him, Steigal and Grisson having lagged far behind, Harpe drew a large tomahawk and brandished it furiously to keep off his pursuers, at the same time urging on his jaded horse as well as he could.
Leiper and Christian kept close at hand, repeatedly calling upon him to surrender, when he would again brandish his tomahawk in savage defiance. He finally agreed to surrender himself if they would stop their horses; accordingly, they all reined up, Leiper and Christian dismounted and made some demonstrations towards loading; perceiving which, Harpe suddenly dashed off. Leiper's horse, which had been standing by his side, though not held by him, now took fright and darted off after Harpe's horse.
Seeing the accident, Christian instantly mounted his steed and quickly overtook the runaway horse, returned him to Leiper, and both without loading renewed the pursuit. They easily followed the trail through a small canebrake of thick growth, and just as the fugitive was emerging from it, they overhauled him, not more than half a mile distant from where he had taken French leave. His horse was walking quite leisurely, and Harpe's wonted daring and bravery seemed to have forsaken him; and, faint from the loss of blood, he had either lost his tomahawk or thrown it away. They rode up and pulled him from his horse without resistance…
Steigal, after reminding Harpe how unfeelingly he had murdered his wife and only child, drew a knife, and exhibiting it to him, said in plain terms that he intended to cut his head off with that!... Steigal stepped forward and pointed the muzzle of his gun at the head of the expiring outlaw, who conscious of the intention, and desirous at least of procrastinating it dodged his head to and fro with an agility unexpected to the beholders, manifesting pretty plainly a strong disrelish 'to shuffle off this mortal coil.' Perceiving this, Steigal observed, 'very well, I believe I will not upon reflection shoot him in the head, for I want to preserve that as a trophy;' and thereupon shot him in the left side—and Harpe almost instantly expired without a struggle or a groan.
Steigal, with the knife he had so menacingly exhibited to Harpe, now cut off the outlaw's head…Thus died Big Harpe, long the terror of the west, and his decapitated body was left in the wilds of Muhlenberg County, as unsepulchred as his merited death was unwept and unmourned…
The head was conveyed to the cross-roads within half a mile of Robertson's Lick, and there placed in the forks of a tree, where for many years it remained a revolting object of horror. To this day the place where that bloody trophy was deposited is known as Harpe's Head, and the public road which passes by it from the Deer Creek settlement to the 'Lick,' is still called Harpe's Head Road.
In subsequent years a superstitious old lady of the neighborhood, some member of whose family was afflicted with fits, having been told that the human skull pulverized, would effect a certain cure, thus appropriated that of the memorable outlaw of the west…
Death of Little Harpe:
Up to this time, Little Harpe, under the names of John Taylor, John Setton, and Wells, had succeeded in concealing his identity. He now realized that, even though he turned state's evidence against the Masons, the history of his own terrible career in Tennessee and Kentucky and at Cave-in-Rock was too well and widely known for him to expect any mercy, no matter how important his revelations regarding the Masons might be… Although his identity was now well established, he, in self-defense, persisted in denying the name. Escape was his only hope.
How Little Harpe and May escaped is not known. While at Natchez they may have been indicted for Mason's murder. If so, having killed Mason in compliance with the governor's proclamation to capture the outlaw dead or alive, they were acquitted. William Darby, then living near Natchez, writes that the two prisoners "learning their danger fled from Natchez, but were taken in Jefferson County, Mississippi, and confined in jail and in due time, tried and convicted...." They were tried before the Circuit Court in Greenville, in January 1804, as is shown by the few existing entries made in the now mutilated docket book of that court…
"John Setton who has been found guilty of robbery at the present term was this day set to the bar and the sentence of the court pronounced upon him as follows, that on Wednesday the eighth day of the present month he be taken to the place of execution and there to be hung up by the neck, between the hours of ten o'clock in the forenoon and four in the afternoon, until he is dead, dead, dead. Which said sentence the Sheriff of Jefferson County was ordered to carry into execution."
On Wednesday afternoon, February 8th, Little Harpe and James May were taken from the jail to a field about a quarter of a mile north of the village of Greenville. There, on what has ever since been known as "Gallows Field," they received their well-deserved reward, but not the one they had planned to procure. They paid, with their lives, what was, considering the atrocity of their crimes, a light penalty…
Two ropes were tied to a heavy pole placed high between two trees. The two men walked from the jail to the gallows. Each with his hands tied behind him was made to mount a ladder; his feet were then bound, and the noose fastened around his neck. When the ladders were dropped the two bodies fell as far as the suspended rope permitted, and thus each was "hung up by the neck" until, as prescribed by law, he was "dead, dead, dead."…
The hanging of Little Harpe and James May for highway robbery was a fulfillment of the written law of pioneer times as well as the unwritten law of frontier communities. But many of the enraged citizens felt that the law of pioneer justice had not been satisfied for the known and unknown murders committed by these two offenders. There is nothing in history or tradition to indicate that an attempt was made to lynch the two condemned outlaws.
But the lynch spirit evidently raged. In the words of Franklin L. Riley, an authority on early Mississippi history: "After their execution on the Gallows Field their heads were placed on poles, one a short distance to the north and the other a short distance to the west of Greenville, on the Natchez Trace."
How long these gruesome warnings to highwaymen stood along the road and what finally became of them is not known. Each doubtless met with a fate befitting a head so ignoble. It is not probable that they were ever interred in the grave with the two headless bodies. Tradition has it that the two bodies were placed in a box and buried in a new graveyard about one hundred yards east of the Greenville jail and courthouse and about the same distance north of the hotel in the central part of the village.
This new graveyard was on the Natchez Trace and contained less than half a dozen graves. Tradition says that an effort was made by a number of people who had kinsmen buried in it to influence the officials to bury elsewhere the decapitated remains of these despised desperadoes.
Their request was not granted, and the burial was held late on the night of the execution within a few yards of where stood one of the head-surmounted poles. The next day the indignant men who had opposed this as a burial place for the two villains, exhumed their dead and removed the remains about a half mile south of Greenville and there began a new burying ground which today is known as Bellegrove Church Yard.
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