Boat wreckers were another common source of great danger. Under one pretext or another they managed to get aboard the boat and scuttle it near a place where their confederates were prepared to make an attack. Or, like Colonel Fluger, they waited until they found a boat tied along the bank and then bored holes in the bottom or dug out the caulking. When the ill-fated boat began to sink, the fellow-wreckers rushed to the rescue and appropriated the goods for their own use, killing part or all the crew if necessary.
Then, as now, a number of dangerous channels existed in the Ohio and Mississippi. They were designated as such in The Navigator. Near the head of some of them lived reliable settlers who made it a business to pilot boats through for pay. Pirates frequently succeeded in passing themselves off as trustworthy local pilots. Boats turned over to such men for safe steering were usually grounded and immediately thereafter delivered into the hands of outlaws in waiting.
One of the dangerous channels, against which voyageurs were warned by The Navigator, ran from the head of Walker’s Bar (a bar beginning about two miles below Cave-in-Rock) down to Tower Rock, and from there extended to the foot of Hurricane Island, a total distance of about eight miles. The author of the river guide, after devoting considerable space to directions for navigating this channel and avoiding the Hurricane Bars, adds a suggestion: “Just below the Cave, on the right bank, there is a person who is sometimes employed to pilot boats through this serpentine channel, and it is better for a stranger to pay a dollar or two for this purpose, than run the risk of grounding on either one or the other of these bars in low water. When the water is high there is no occasion for a director.”
The outlaws at Cave-in-Rock turned to their advantage the suggestion published in The Navigator. About ten miles above the Cave, near Battery Rock, or on what has long since been called the Jonathan Brown Old Place, the robbers stationed a man who offered to pilot, for a small sum, single boats or small fleets through this “serpentine channel.” He explained that the person referred to by The Navigator as living “just below the Cave” was out on a visit and would not return for a week or more. In the event the first man failed, another, standing ready a few miles further down at Ford’s Ferry, offered his services. The pilot who succeeded in being employed grounded the boat in front of the Cave if, by the time he reached the place, he judged the cargo was worth the risk and the crew could be overpowered. If more time was required, he guided the boat to the head of Hurricane Island. There it was either wrecked or taken safely through the channel, the procedure depending on whether or not he judged a profitable robbery possible. Boatmen who declined to take a pilot aboard at Battery Rock or Ford’s Ferry were likely, if the water was comparatively low, to inquire for a director “just below the Cave.” The man procured there, whether a member of the Cave band or not, invariably guided the boat safely through. Thus by helping to maintain one reputable and reliable place near the Cave for procuring the services of a pilot, the robbers experienced little trouble in trapping the boats they selected for that purpose.
Although most of the prospective victims were given little consideration until after they had come within ten or twenty miles of the Cave, in a number of instances the river pirates began setting a trap for a boat long before it arrived at Shawneetown.
The fact that the victims were piloted to the Cave by certain members of a band, or enticed into the place by some other means for the sole purpose of robbery, is recorded by many early writers; none of them, however, gives any details. All authors who touch on the Cave’s history publish statements based on what other men and women heard other people had experienced while in the hands of the outlaws. Only one instance has been found in which the victim himself (Dr. Charles H. Webb) recited to an author the details of how he was decoyed to the Cave and how he escaped from the men then occupying the place. The old flatboat robbers and flatboat wreckers left no first-hand accounts of the methods they employed.
The year 1788 roughly marks the beginning of the big inflow of settlers into the region west of the Alleghenies, also the beginning of counterfeiting and other outlawry at Cave-in-Rock. Many travelers and home-seekers followed the trails and went into the interior afoot, on horseback, or in wagons; others took the river to some river point and either settled there, or proceeded overland to an inland section. Thus, by “long lines of wagons” and “great fleets of boats” the middle West became settled. In the meantime many a small party traveled alone over the trails or drifted down the river in a single boat or in a small fleet, into the new and sparsely populated country, and became easy prey for highway robbers or river pirates who were likely to appear at any time and in any disguise.[3]
The earliest connection of the Cave with the name of any outlaw who became famous was in 1797, when Samuel Mason, of Revolutionary fame and hideous fate, seems to have occupied it as a main trap for his carefully worked out scheme of river piracy on a large scale. He erected a great rude sign on the river bank near the mouth of the Cave, proclaiming to every passerby that his “Liquor Vault and House for Entertainment” was open to the public. Many captains and their crews and many flatboat passengers were lured to it. After Mason and his family left for the South, most of the succeeding bands, during their necessarily short stay, operated a gambling and drinking place on the same principle.
It was a common practice among outlaws frequently to change not only their headquarters but their names. While at Cave-in-Rock Mason was also known as “Wilson.” Thomas Ashe, who wrote about it, probably did not know that the Wilson he described was Samuel Mason. Among the various men who appeared after the departure of Samuel Mason, alias “Wilson,” was one Jim Wilson. Whether Jim Wilson was his real name is not known. However, between Samuel Mason as “Wilson” and a later man known as “Jim Wilson” there has been more or less confusion for almost a century, especially in tradition. In 1897 William Courtney Watts wrote a historical romance, Chronicles of a Kentucky Settlement, in which he presents James Ford, of Ford’s Ferry notoriety, as “James Wilson.” James Ford was in no way connected with Mason or with Wilson, but his presentation under the fictitious name of “James Wilson” had added to the already existing confusion.
After James Ford’s death, which occurred in 1833—and many years before Watts applied the name of “James Wilson” to him—a writer published a sketch of the career of one Jim Wilson at the Cave. This sketch is here recapitulated, not as a story that can be verified in all its details by history, but as a semi-historical tale which may convey a better idea of the methods, life, and fate of the Cave’s outlaws than formal history. Only one who will make a study of the Cave’s past—from the available authenticated records down to some of its absurd traditions—will recognize this story as a picture in which facts fairly divide the scene with fiction, and painted in colors that bring joy to the hearts of readers of dime novels. When and by whom it was written or first published has not been ascertained. It apparently was not written before 1836, for the author, in his introduction, attempts a description of the Cave as it appeared that year. The writer evidently had read Thomas Ashe’s account published in 1808, and was also familiar with some of the Cave’s printed history and oral traditions. The story was probably first published in an old magazine or newspaper. In 1893 it appeared, anonymously and without credit, in the Crittenden Press, of Marion, Kentucky. From that weekly it was copied by many newspapers in the lower Ohio Valley, and is now preserved, under various titles, in many a scrap book.