Америкалық қылмыскер дуэт: Харптердің тарихы

American criminal duo

Loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolution, the Harpes became outlaws after the war and began robbing and killing settlers in the remote frontier west of the Appalachian Mountains. They are believed to have killed 39 people, and possibly as many as 50. As the Harpes' crimes gained notoriety, vigilante groups formed to avenge their victims, and they were eventually tracked down and executed around the turn of the century. Their savagery has since entered American folklore, appearing to have been motivated more by blood lust than financial gain.

Historians note the difficulty of differentiating the facts about the Harpe brothers from the later legends of their exploits, as there are few certain records of their lives from the time period. They are believed to have been born in what is now Orange County, North Carolina to Scottish parents. Micajah was probably born in or before 1768 as Joshua Harper, and Wiley in or before 1770 as William Harper. Though many historical accounts identify them as brothers, it is also possible they were first cousins named Joshua and William Harper who emigrated from Scotland in 1759 or 1760. According to this theory, their fathers were brothers, John and William Harper, who settled in Orange County, North Carolina, between 1761 and 1763. The treatment of the Harpe family by hostile Patriot neighbors may have contributed to Big and Little Harpe's feelings of persecution and their desire for revenge against people they considered rebellious traitors who were still the British subjects of King George III. Around April or May 1775, the young Harpes left North Carolina and went to Virginia to find overseer jobs on a slave plantation. Big Harpe later traveled in the company of two women, Susan and Betsey/Betty Roberts, possibly sisters, both of whom bore him children.

Little is known of the Harpes' precise whereabouts at the outbreak of the American Revolution. According to the eyewitness account of Captain James Wood of the Continental Army, they joined a Tory
"rape gang" in North Carolina. The Harpes' gang took part in the kidnapping of three teenage girls, with a fourth girl being rescued by a Captain Wood. Later, the Harpes served under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton's British Legion at the Battles of Blackstocks in November 1780 and Cowpens in January 1781. On April 22, 1799, Kentucky Governor James Garrard placed a $300 reward on each of the Harpes' heads. Fleeing northward, the Harpes killed two men named Edmonton and Stump. When they were near the mouth of the Saline River in southern Illinois, they came upon three men encamped there and killed them. The pair then made their way to Cave In Rock, a natural cave on the bluffs above the Illinois bank of the Ohio River and a stronghold of the river pirate and criminal gang leader Samuel Mason. A posse had been aggressively pursuing them but stopped just short of the cave on the opposite shore in Kentucky. With their wives and three children in tow, the Harpes holed up with the Samuel Mason Gang, who preyed on slow moving flatboats making their way along the Ohio River. While the Mason Gang could be ruthless, even they were appalled at the actions of the Harpes. After the murderous pair began to make a habit of taking travelers to the top of the bluff, stripping them naked, and pushing them off, Samuel Mason forced the Harpe brothers to leave. The Harpes then returned to eastern Tennessee, where they continued their vicious murder spree. They killed a farmer named Bradbury, a man named Hardin, and a boy named Coffey in July 1798. Soon more bodies were discovered, including those of William Ballard, who had been disemboweled and thrown in the Holston River; James Brassel, who had his throat viciously slashed and was discovered on Brassel's Knob; and John Tully. John Graves and his teenage son were found dead with their heads axed in south central Kentucky. In Logan County, the Harpes killed a little girl, a young slave, and an entire family they found asleep in their camp. In August 1799, a few miles northeast of Russellville, Kentucky, Big Harpe bashed his infant daughter's head against a tree because her constant crying annoyed him, the only crime for which he would later confess genuine remorse. That same month, a man named Trowbridge was found disemboweled in Highland Creek. When the Harpes were given shelter at the Stegall home in Webster County, the pair killed an overnight guest named Major William Love, as well as Mrs. Moses Stegall's four month old baby boy, whose throat was slit when he cried. When Mrs. Stegall screamed at the sight of her infant being killed, she was also murdered.

In the 1941 film The Devil and Daniel Webster (or All That Money Can Buy), Big and Little Harpe are part of the "jury of the damned" that Daniel Webster must convince in order to free an innocent Jabez Stone. In the 1956 Walt Disney television series Davy Crockett and the River Pirates, the Harpe brothers are portrayed by American actors Paul Newlan as Big Harpe and Frank Richards as Little Harpe. The 1975 Broadway musical The Robber Bridegroom featured two characters (Big Harp and Little Harp) based on the Harpes. Big Harp is presented as a "cut off head" in a trunk, rescued by his brother when he was put to death for thieving. He's also the smarter of the two brothers. The Harpe brothers were the inspiration for Big and Little Drum in Lois McMaster Bujold's 2008 novel Passage, part of The Sharing Knife series. Wiley Harpe is also the subject of a song on Bob Frank and John Murry's 2006 album World Without End. In 2015, the Investigation Discovery television channel series Evil Kin aired an episode about the Harpe brothers called "Something Wicked in the Woods". A short narrative of the Harpe brothers' lives appears in Selah Saterstrom's 2015 novel Slab. Tiger, the novel's main character, grows up with her family near the Mississippi River on the land of Wiley Harpe's estate off the Natchez Trace where Wiley Harpe "would dismember the corpses and make arrangements from their parts, ornamenting the land around his humble plantation". Tiger's grandfather installs a tire swing on a tree, to which he also affixes "a historical plaque: LITTLE HARPE HANGED HERE". A book, "The Blue Cloak" by Shannon Mcnear, was released in 2020 telling the story of the Harpes with a focus on Sally.