The lower Mississippi valley was now aroused. Mason had become a terror in a frontier country that was more or less accustomed to lawlessness and bloodshed. His robberies were current history and the whereabouts of Wiley Harpe was a discussed but unsolved question. A little more than two years before Governor Claiborne began to move toward the arrest of Mason, the news that Big Harpe had been captured and beheaded in Kentucky near Cave-in-Rock (Mason’s one-time headquarters) had rapidly spread throughout the country. With the report also had come the warning that Little, or Wiley Harpe, had escaped and fled south. Up to this time—April, 1802—there was nothing to point out the actual or probable whereabouts of the missing Harpe. No mention of any murders committed by him appeared in the current newspapers. Indications and hopes were that he had left the country for good or had been killed. Governor Claiborne probably had heard from others besides Colonel Baker that Wiley Harpe was one of Mason’s men. Even though he was not convinced of Harpe’s presence on the Mississippi, he knew that by linking the names of these two notorious outlaws together, the public would more fully realize the desperate character of Mason and therefore take a more active interest in his capture.
As indicated in his letter to Colonel Burnett, the governor of Mississippi Territory promised “a very generous reward” for the capture of Samuel Mason and Wiley Harpe. Monette says the governor “offered a liberal reward for the robber Mason, dead or alive, and the proclamation was widely distributed.” J. F. H. Claiborne, in his History of Mississippi, states that the proclamation was issued and a reward of two thousand dollars was offered for the capture of Mason and Harpe. No two historians make precisely the same statements regarding the reward. It is more than likely that a printed proclamation was issued, although an effort to find a copy or reprint has been futile. The proclamation in all probability gave, among other things, the facts embraced in the following statement quoted from a letter written two years later by Governor Claiborne to James Madison, who was then Secretary of State at Washington: “A reward of four hundred dollars for apprehending them was offered by the Secretary of War, and five hundred dollars by myself, in my character as Governor of the Territory.”
The extermination of Mason and his band was a matter of serious importance to the law abiding and peace loving citizens of the Territory. And now that a reward of at least nine hundred dollars had been offered and the militia directed to search for the outlaws, the prospects of capture appeared very encouraging. It was known that Mason and Harpe had lived in Kentucky and at Cave-in-Rock, and it was therefore apparently presumed that they were old and constant associates. The two outlaws, however, may never have met in Kentucky nor at the Cave. Whether or not Mason the robber and Harpe the brute were in the same band, both, nevertheless, deserved the severest punishment that could be inflicted by a pioneer people.
A number of highway robbers and river pirates had been arrested during the time Mason was working in Mississippi, but Samuel Mason and Wiley Harpe, the most notorious of them all, had evaded arrest. Where were they likely to be found? As a matter of fact outlaws camped at any place they found convenient and well adapted for their work, but never remained long at any one spot. It was known that Samuel Mason had, at one time, lived about twenty miles northeast of Natchez, near what is now Fayette. [[81]] Shortly after the Baker highway robbery had taken place it was discovered that at the time of the robbery Mason’s headquarters was near Rocky Springs, a stopping place on the old Natchez Trace some forty miles northeast of Natchez and twenty miles south of Vicksburg.[23]
Draper in a brief note [[12H]] says Mason spent much time at Palmyra and on Stack Island. Palmyra then, as now, was a very small settlement on the Mississippi, about twenty miles below Vicksburg. Stack Island, also known as Crow’s Nest or Island No. 94, was washed away shortly after Mason’s day, and in time most of its traditions disappeared. It was on Stack Island, near the mouth of Lake Providence, about fifty-five miles below Vicksburg, that we first hear of Mason—after organized bands began to search for him.
Claiborne, the historian, states that: “After the Governor’s proclamation had been issued Mason and his gang were closely hunted by the whites and Indians and, having made some narrow escapes, they quit the country and crossed the Mississippi to somewhere about Lake Providence [Louisiana] in the then Spanish territory.” Whether at Lake Providence (which is on the Spanish side of the Mississippi but practically on the river) or on the nearby Stack Island in the river, Mason was in a position to flee easily into that part of the great Spanish wilderness which today is northern Louisiana and the state of Arkansas. There he could not only conceal himself more effectually, but also live with some confidence that the Spanish authorities would not attempt to capture him.
At Stack Island Mason laid his hand upon fate. The band robbed a traveler and found among his effects a copy of Governor Claiborne’s proclamation. [[26]] Monette says that Mason read it aloud and “indulged in much merriment on the occasion.” The statement in the proclamation that Wiley (or Little) Harpe, the Kentucky desperado, was a member of his gang convinced Mason that the authorities were in great fear of the prowess of his band and were driven to arouse the public to terror and activity by conjuring with the dreadful name of Harpe. Mason was feeling good, notwithstanding the hue and cry raised by the promise of rewards for his capture dead or alive. He was perfectly confident of his ability to escape any American militiamen or Mississippi posse. He could afford to laugh at the additional incitement to his capture contained in the declaration that he had joined forces with Harpe.
Nobody can say positively that Little Harpe was at that date a member of the band. It is more than probable that Mason would not knowingly have permitted Harpe to join him. The reputation of the Harpes for brutality was sufficient to condemn them in the estimation of even such outcasts as Mason and his men. Somewhere in that southwest wilderness, however, Little Harpe was concealing himself from the fate that pursued him. He was hiding under assumed names, not daring to reveal his own even to the most abandoned persons he met for fear of capture. Hunted like a wild animal, it was necessary to lose his identity beyond the most remote chance of discovery.
The question is was Harpe with Mason when the latter read his name aloud and made merriment about it? Was the headsman of fate stalking there at Mason’s elbow, compelled to keep silence and join in the laughter in that hour of grim jocularity? It was not until April, 1802, that John Setton appears of record as one of Mason’s band, was captured with him, tried with him, and escaped with him. It was not until almost two years later, under most dramatic circumstances, that Setton was to be identified as Little Harpe—as the man who brought fate home to Mason and himself and immediately met the pitiless fate he had so long and well deserved. All this will be shown later, but it is one of the mysteries of history whether that day at Stack Island Mason laughed himself out of the fear of Governor Claiborne and committed himself into the hands of fate in the person of Little Harpe. There is a further doubt whether Mason ever did actually discover that John Setton was Little Harpe.[24]
In May, 1802, we find Mason’s band at the mouth of White River, about one hundred and fifty miles above Stack Island. The Palladium on August 12, 1802, in a news item dated Cincinnati, North West Territory, July 31, says: