John Setton, the man of various aliases, was brought before the Commandant to testify. He admitted that he had changed his name to John Taylor, but explained that he did so because Samuel Mason demanded it, and that he suspected Mason had some specific purpose in insisting upon the name of John Taylor. He also admitted (and probably in a triumphant way) that Samuel Mason was correct in his statement that he, “one of Mason’s fellow prisoners, could give much information regarding robberies.” He said that he had been with the Masons since May 14, 1802—eight months.
He swore he was an Irishman and had come to America in 1797, and shortly thereafter enrolled in Major Geyon’s corps but “deserted near the high coast.” Reaching Nogales (Vicksburg) he “worked for three weeks for His Majesty the King of Spain,” and then went down the river in the “row-gally Louisiana” to New Orleans where, during the winter, he found occupation as a carpenter. After this, for a period of about two years, he shifted around in Spanish territory, either working with white people or “hunting with Chaquetaw Indians.” One day while in Arkansas an American officer recognized him as a deserter from the army and asked for his delivery to a Spanish post. He was delivered into the hands of the American authorities and placed in jail. There he met Wiguens, an American soldier, and a month later both escaped. They went back to Arkansas and were shortly afterwards arrested by the Commander of the Arkansas Post, who considered them suspicious characters and kept them in jail twenty-eight days. They then found farm employment for a month with a man named Gibson, who obtained for them a passport to go hunting on White River. They hunted until May, 1802, when they came down the river some distance in a boat and then crossed over the country to “Little Prairie of the St. Francis River,” where they sold their skins to one Fulsom. They continued their trip, for he, Setton, “wished to join his family in Pennsylvania.” When “at the crossing of the Chaquetaws below the river Ares,” they met, by chance, John and Thomas Mason, Gibson, and Wilson, and he had been with the Masons ever since.
The Commandant asked Setton whether or not he was acquainted with “the man Harpe” and he answered that he had met a man by that name in Cumberland who had since been killed, but had left a brother, whose whereabouts was unknown to him. Setton further stated, upon being questioned, that he did not know whether or not Harpe and any of the Masons ever had any dealings together or had ever met, but he felt confident that Harpe had not been around since he had had the misfortune to fall into Mason’s hands.[27]
Setton, continuing his account, swore that John and Thomas Mason took possession of all his belongings, and encouraged him to stay by promising him land on to which he could later move his family and by giving him a contract “to go after Mother Mason,” who apparently had some time before refused to live any longer with her outlaw husband and sons. Setton declared that from the very day he met the Masons they had kept him like a prisoner. The promised land had never materialized and the trip for their mother was never attempted, but he was obliged to linger with them because he found no opportunity to escape, and the Masons never allowed him more than two rounds of powder at a time.
He asserted that since he had been with the Masons they had committed no crimes in his presence. They did not demand that he steal horses, but apparently expected him to do so. A number of horses had been brought in and taken away, but he asked no questions and as he heard no comments made regarding them, he had no idea how they came or where they went. He knew, however, that there was an agreement between the Masons and one Burton, of Little Bay Prairie, who bought at twenty dollars all the horses the Masons could supply, provided the animals were such that they could be sold for about sixty dollars.
The Masons occasionally left home “to repair a chimney” and if they remained a few days they invariably accounted for their prolonged absence by saying they “could not cross the water,” “lost their repairing tools,” “were hindered by bad weather,” or “visited friends,” but in no instance had they given the name of the friend they claimed to have seen.
Setton related that when he and the Masons were in Nogales, at the residence of Charles Colin, a Mr. Koiret, an American citizen, chanced to stop in the house. Koiret impressed the Masons as a prospective victim, and he (Setton) being permitted to chat freely with Koiret, soon proved himself “an interesting conversationalist.” But when Koiret incidentally remarked that he was simply passing by on his way looking for outlaws who had committed crimes along the Natchez Trace and the Mississippi River, John Mason, on a pretext, lured him (Setton) away from the officer, and, in the meantime, other Masons tactfully managed to “speed the parting guest.” Turning a corner of the house, he (Setton) unexpectedly ran into Samuel Mason, who, with drawn dagger, commanded “silence.” John Mason seized him and the father and son immediately gagged him, bound his hands and feet, and dragged him into the house where they held him down on the floor for about three hours. Feeling that Koiret had got far beyond hearing distance, they ungagged and untied him, but continued to guard him closely until the next day.
Setton swore that shortly after he had received this brutal treatment Samuel Mason prepared a written statement in which he, under the assumed name of John Taylor, made a declaration that he, Phillips, Fulsom, Gibson, Wiguens, Bassett, and others were implicated in one or more of three robberies—the Baker, the Owsley, and the Campbell and Glass robberies—and in it further declared that the Masons were in no way connected with any of these depredations.
After the statement had been prepared the Masons explained to him that they were going to conduct him to a justice of the peace and they furthermore convinced him that should he fail to swear to this written confession and declaration of the three robberies, they would kill him before he had a chance to inform the officers that the statements were false and not his own. He related how John and Thomas Mason, armed with guns, and Samuel Mason, who bore no weapon at all, forced him to the residence of William Downs, a justice living below Vicksburg, and that, with seeming calmness, he went through the form required by the law and the outlaws. He realized that while he and Samuel Mason were in the house, the two sons were outside in hiding, prepared to shoot him should the prearranged signal be given.
The first of the three robberies detailed in the false affidavit, continued Setton, was the robbery of Baker on the Natchez Trace, from whom the Masons took “twenty-five hundred piasters in gold, silver and banknotes.” For this John Mason had been imprisoned, but by the aid of his brother Thomas and others, made his escape. The object of the confession was to show that he (as John Taylor) and others were the guilty men and that Mason was absolutely innocent of the crime. Notwithstanding his purported statement, he could prove an alibi, for ten days before the robbery took place, he had been committed to the Arkansas prison. He suspected that part of the money found on the Masons by the officials who arrested them was a part of the booty obtained in the Baker robbery. The explanation that the money they had was found “in a bag hanging on a bush near the road” was suggested by Samuel Mason a few hours before the arrest, saying at the time, “accounting for it in that way won’t do any harm.”