Part 17

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. No record of the court proceedings was found, although a careful search was made.

The first entry found in the docket book is dated Friday, January 13, 1804. The court was presided over by Peter B. Bruin, David Ker, and Thomas Rodney, who were among the best known men in Mississippi. It is an interesting fact that when Aaron Burr was arrested the following year on Cole’s Creek, near Greenville, he was tried in Washington, Mississippi, before two of these same judges, the third, Judge Ker, having died of pneumonia contracted while serving at the trial of Harpe and May. William Downs, as foreman of the grand jury, brought in “an indictment of robbery” against each of the prisoners: “The Territory against James May” and “The Territory against John Setton.” Little Harpe, alias Setton, and his co-worker May were represented by Mr. Breazeale and Mr. Parrott. These attorneys evidently made every possible effort to save their clients. A plea of “not guilty” had been entered. Then followed much sparring over technicalities. They first attempted to quash the indictment; they next claimed the court did not have jurisdiction; and finally presented a petition for a writ of _habeas corpus_. But all these contentions were overruled.«32» “And for trial (each) put himself upon the country and General Poindexter, Attorney General.” Each was tried by separate jury, James May being the first, and each was found guilty. Then the two attorneys came forward with “a plea of former acquittal,” but the court rendered a decision that “the plea of former acquittal is not sufficient in law to be considered a sufficient bar to this indictment.” This plea of “former acquittal” leads one to infer that when Mason’s head was brought to Natchez both men were tried there and elsewhere for murder, and having been “acquitted” of that charge they, in all likelihood, argued that they were therefore also acquitted of highway robbery which was incidental to the murder.

As already stated, the record of the proceedings containing all these and other details of the case cannot now be found. There is nothing to indicate who the witnesses were, except Elisha Winters, who was “allowed the compensation allowed by law for his attendance at this term and for traveling to and from said court one thousand miles.” Among the few available pages of the docket book bearing on this case is one containing two entries dated February 4, 1804. They show that the sentence passed was in the same words for each prisoner. James May’s is the first on the record, and is immediately followed by Little Harpe’s:

“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.

In pioneer days the official executioner usually prepared a gallows by fastening one end of a long beam or heavy pole in the forks of a tree and placing the other end similarly in another tree. On this cross timber he tied the rope with which the condemned man was to be hanged. The prisoner, as a rule, was put on a wagon, his coffin serving as a seat, and driven to the place of execution. Upon his arrival the same wagon and coffin on which he rode were used as the platform and trap of his gallows. After the suspended rope was properly looped around his neck the condemned man was made to stand erect on his coffin. When all details had been attended to the horses were rushed forward, leaving the human body hung suspended in the air. In some instances the gallows was a frame-work with a platform in which a trap door was built.

In the hanging of Harpe and May the procedure was somewhat unusual even for a frontier country. 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.” [54]

The news that Samuel Mason had at last been killed was a great relief to the country. The fact that Little Harpe and James May were actually hanged was a matter of equally widespread interest. _The Guardian of Freedom_, February 20, 1804, published the following, which was copied by a number of papers, including _The Kentucky Gazette_ of a week later:

“Extract of a letter from a gentleman in Mississippi Territory to his friend in this town (Frankfort) dated February 8, 1804: ‘There have been two of Sam Mason’s party--which infested the road between this country and Kentucky--in jail at Greenville for trial. They were condemned last term and executed this day. One of them was James May; the other called himself John Setton but was proved to be the villain who was known by the name of Little or Red-headed Harpe, and who committed so many acts of cruelty in Kentucky.’”

_The Palladium_, March 3, published a news item dated Natchez, February 9, 1804: “Setton and May were executed at Greenville yesterday between three and four o’clock, pursuant to their sentence. We are informed that Setton made some confession at the place of execution which has a tendency to implicate several persons not heretofore suspected as parties concerned with Masons in their depredations. May complained of the hardship of his fate; said he had not been guilty of crimes deserving death and spoke of the benefit he had rendered society by destroying old Mason.”

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.” [105]

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 grave yard about one hundred yards east of the Greenville jail and court house and about the same distance north of the hotel in the central part of the village.

This new grave yard 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.«33»

What attempts were made to collect the reward offered for the capture of Mason? What became of the Masons? It is probable these questions can never be fully answered. The court records showing the total expense involved in the trial and transportation of the Masons, and in the trial and execution of Little Harpe and James May, have not been found. These expenses were paid by the territorial and federal governments. One of Governor Claiborne’s letters [113] shows that in January, 1806, one Seth Caston “exhibited demands for one hundred dollars for apprehending and bringing to justice” these two notorious outlaws. There is nothing indicating the character of Caston’s claim; nor is there anything to show whether or not he received any money. Harpe and May were entitled to the reward offered in Governor Claiborne’s proclamation; it doubtless would have been granted to them in full had they not proven that above all other rewards they best deserved that which they received on the gallows.

Neither history nor tradition tells what became of the Mason family after Samuel Mason met his fate and Little Harpe and James May received their reward. Samuel Mason’s wife, who evidently did not approve of her husband’s lawlessness--at least not in her later years--made her home, as we have already seen, not far from old Shankstown, in Jefferson County, Mississippi. There, according to Claiborne, the historian, she was “generally respected as an honest and virtuous woman by all her neighbors, and one of her sons [probably Magnus or Samuel Mason Jr.] was a worthy citizen of Warren County.” Monette says that “the Mason band being deprived of their leader and two of his most efficient men, dispersed and fled,” and thus terminated the greatest terror to travelers which had infested the country.«34»

In the meantime, the headless bodies of Little Harpe and James May continued to lie in their double grave near the Natchez Trace. As time rolled on the narrow Trace widened and, as roads frequently do, it wore deeper into the slight elevation over which it led. About the year 1850 this widening and deepening process reached the fleshless bones in the solitary grave, and the two skeletons, protruding piece by piece from the road bank, were dragged out by dogs and other beasts until the highway widened beyond the grave and the burial site became part of the ditch along the Natchez Trace.

Some twenty years ago, upon straightening out a part of the Natchez Trace, the small section of the old road of which the burial place was a part, was discarded as a highway, and today the old road bed, including the site of the grave, is a mere jungle of briars and brush.

Thus the last vestige of these two villains disappeared on the very highway upon which they had committed so many crimes, and possibly on the very spot where one of their victims breathed his last. The ocean of time has closed over every one of the personal relics of all these enemies of society, but the waves that their activities started still carry on as ripples of human interest.

Coiners at the Cave

The Cave had been used for religious purposes, as a haven in time of distress, as an inn and as a decoy house for murder and robbery. Through the widely scattered references to it in early books of travel and in magazines and newspapers we find also occasional indications that it had been, at different times and for short periods, the workshop and headquarters of counterfeiters. There are, indeed, few details concerning its occupation by bandits and criminals of any description; this is the veil of mystery that shrouds it in enduring interest. The knowledge that distinct facts about definite crimes committed there can never be obtained has challenged the imagination of various writers. Facts about the counterfeiters who used it are much less in evidence than facts about those following other forms of crime; probably because counterfeiting must of necessity be more secret than other crimes.

There is nothing to indicate that any of the counterfeiters of Cave-in-Rock were guilty of robbery by force or of murder. The part they played in outlaw river life was in the purchase of goods from passing boats and the payment for these goods in counterfeit coin and currency. Not until it was too late would the receivers of such money discover they had been duped. For this reason the counterfeiters could not long use the Cave at one time. There were, as far as is known, only three counterfeiters identified with the Cave. Two of these were among the first lawbreakers to convert the place into a workshop for a nefarious trade; the other was among the last of its outlaws.

Dr. Frederick Hall, who went up the Ohio in 1839, states in his _Letters from the East and from the West_ that “this noted cavern is styled Counterfeiters’ Cave.” He further comments that “in times gone past, never to revert, it was inhabited by counterfeiters, robbers, and murderers.” Charles Augustus Murray, in his _Travels in North America_, writes of his trip down the Ohio in June, 1835. He says that the current report of the country at the time of his visit to the Cave, was that when this den of thieves was finally broken up “it contained great quantities of gold, silver, silks, and stuffs, and false money, with an apparatus for coining.”

It is not known what disposition was made of the coining tools and false money referred to by Murray. Nor is it known what became of any of the apparatus and illegal money left behind by the Cave’s other counterfeiters. The person who expresses the opinion that an “upper cave” exists, is likely to add that great quantities of good and bad money are hidden in the undiscovered cavern. The counterfeiters probably carried away all their coin and coining apparatus. The only trace of suggestive evidence preserved today indicating the former occupancy by counterfeiters is the half of a double die or mold which was found many years ago in the vicinity of the Cave. It has been cherished as a possible relic of the counterfeiting regime there.

This die was seemingly hidden near the Cave by one of the men who had used it for the purpose of making counterfeit half-dollars and the large five-dollar gold pieces of those days. It is a double plate of iron four and three-quarter inches long and two and one-quarter inches wide, welded together. The upper plate is one-eighth of an inch thick and in it are cut two discs, each being one and one-half inches in diameter and having a gap at the top, opening to a funnel shaped “feeder.” It is said that a particular local clay or some other suitable material was placed in the circle and into this pliable matrix the impression was made of one side of a genuine half-dollar, or of an old style five-dollar gold-piece, which was of about the same size. This formed, when hardened, a more or less durable mold for one side of the new coin. In like manner another mold was prepared in the other half of the coining apparatus for the other side of the counterfeit piece. The two parts of the mold were then placed in proper position and the hot metal poured into the cavity through the funnel-like opening. This process doubtless produced, as a rule, a more or less crude imitation, but since many of the genuine coins of an earlier date were somewhat crude and were still in circulation, the counterfeiters experienced comparatively little trouble in imitating the old pieces.

Among the early counterfeiters who made the Cave their headquarters for a time was Philip Alston, who looms large in the romance and gossip of the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries. He was a gentleman by birth, education, and early association. He comes down to us handsome in figure and grand in manner, wearing broad-cloth, ruffles, and lace. He had an air of chivalry to women and of aloofness, superiority, and mystery to men. He was the “Raffles” of pioneer days and legend paints him in high colors.

Alexander C. Finley, in his _History of Russellville and Logan County, Kentucky_--a unique publication from the standpoint of its style--says Philip Alston was driven out of the South and settled in Logan County about 1782. A few years later “his thirst for counterfeiting again returned.” But “feeling insecure” Alston moved from place to place in western Kentucky. “About 1790 he crossed over the Ohio and became the fast friend and disciple of the notorious counterfeiter Sturdevant [Duff?] at the Cave-in-the-Rock. But he did not reside here long before he came to himself and wondered how he, the gentlemanly Philip Alston, although an elegant counterfeiter, could have become the companion of outlaws, robbers, and murderers ... and so he returned to Natchez.”«35»

It is quite likely that a counterfeiter named Duff had been making use of the Cave long before the time of Philip Alston’s short stay at the place. He may be regarded as Cave-in-Rock’s first outlaw. Neither history nor tradition has preserved Duff’s Christian name. One version suggests that he may have been the John Duff who met George Rogers Clark on the Ohio, near Fort Massac in June, 1778, and who, after some bewilderment, showed General Clark the way to Kaskaskia. It is not improbable that the two were one and the same man. At any rate, very little is known of John Duff, the guide, or of Duff the coiner.

Governor Reynolds in _My Own Times_ and Collins, in his _History of Kentucky_ devoted only a few lines to Duff, and these lines pertain to his death. The author of _A History of Union County, Kentucky_, prints some five pages on his career, based on traditions gathered in 1886. Duff apparently lived the latter part of his life in or near Cave-in-Rock and procured his lead and silver along the Saline River and in other sections of southern Illinois. He evidently operated a counterfeiter’s den in different places. According to tradition, there were at least three places known as “Duff’s Fort:” one was at Cave-in-Rock, another at Caseyville, Kentucky (near the mouth of Tradewater River, fourteen miles above the Cave) and a third in Illinois, at Island Ripple on Saline River (thirteen miles above its mouth and about twenty-eight miles, via river to the Cave). Like all outlaws of his and other times, Duff was obliged to shift his headquarters. It is probable that some of the localities in which he lived no longer have any traditions regarding his activities there.

In 1790, Philip Alston, as stated by Finley, fled to the Cave and became a “fast friend and disciple” of Duff. Collins, in his chapter on Crittenden County, Kentucky, says that Duff lived near the mouth of Tradewater River in 1799 and then, or shortly thereafter, was killed by Shawnee Indians and that “there was reason to believe some one residing at Fort Massac had employed the Indians to commit the crime.” Governor Reynolds briefly states that Duff was killed “near Island Ripple in the Saline Creek, and was buried near the old salt spring,” and that “it was supposed the Indians were hired to commit the murder.” Just where he was killed cannot be ascertained with any certainty after a lapse of so many years. There are two or three coves or small caves on Saline below Island Ripple, each of which is known as Duff’s Cave, and each has a local tradition to the effect that Duff was killed in it.

The compiler of _A History of Union County, Kentucky_, is the only writer who has gathered any Duff traditions, and since he confined his research to the stories told in and near Caseyville, his life of this Cave-in-Rock outlaw does not branch into the many and varied claims made in local traditions of other sections. Nevertheless, his sketch of this pioneer and counterfeiter is one that might be accepted as typical of what would be found in the other localities in which Duff had made his headquarters. In sum and substance the story runs as follows:

Duff lived in a house called “Duff’s Fort,” which stood near what later became the old site of the Christian Church in Caseyville. Here he dispensed a rude but cordial hospitality. On the bluff above was his meadow. The overhanging cliff near his house furnished a shelter for his horses. The shallow cove in which they stood is now almost filled with alluvial soil deposited by the little brook which flows near. His household consisted of his wife and a faithful black slave named Pompey, who would risk anything or undergo any hardship for his master.

It is said that Duff was a brave man and a good strategist; he was seldom found at a disadvantage. He often had narrow escapes in his encounters with the officers of the law and the people living in the vicinity. On one occasion, when he was closely pursued by his enemies, he ran towards his home. There he found his wife at the river doing the family washing. Near her was a large iron kettle, in which she was boiling clothes. Without hesitation Duff upset the kettle, rolled it into the stream, where it was quickly cooled, and lifting the kettle over his head, he plunged into the water. The river was low at this point, enabling him to wade most of the way to the farther bank. Before he reached the Illinois shore, however, his pursuers appeared on the Kentucky side and opened fire. Their aim was well directed. Several of the bullets struck the kettle, but rebounded without injury to the man beneath. On reaching the dry land he took the kettle from his head. Holding it behind him as continued protection, he ran for safety. The pursuers increased their fire. More bullets rained upon the impromptu shield--but Duff escaped unhurt to the shelter of the woods.