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Chapter 1: What dark story unfolds on the Natchez Trace?
It's funny how life can turn on a dime. One minute you're having a casual lunchtime swim in a trailside stream, the next you're staring down the barrel of a gun. At least that's how it went for one unfortunate group of men in August of 1801. The swimmers were part of a team led by Colonel Joshua Baker, tasked with tracking down a famed highwayman named Sam Wolfman Mason.
You see, after a decade of robbing and murdering travelers, Mason happened to steal from Colonel Baker himself earlier that year. And so, in retaliation, Baker had enlisted a bandit hunting posse. And yeah, judging by the burly, snaggletooth fellow in front of them now, they had managed to find the Wolfman. Just not in the way they had hoped. But alas, here Baker's men were.
Naked, wet, and very much on the wrong end of the outlaw's rifle. Sam Mason stepped forward. He wore a leather shirt and leggings, his infamous wolf fang glinting crooked in his mouth. "'I'm glad to see you, gentlemen,' Mason said with a mocking politeness. "'And though our meeting did not promise to be quite so friendly, I am just as well satisfied.
My arms and ammunition will not cost as much as I expected.'"
Chapter 2: Who was Sam Wolfman Mason and why was he significant?
And with that, he forced Baker's men to relinquish their weapons before he vanished back into the woods like a pirate from a storybook. Baker had bested them again. It would be another year before the dreaded Wolfman would finally be caught.
And although he would swear before the court that he was only a humble hunter, the stolen goods, the guns, and most notably 20 human scalps in the guy's possession told a different story.
And Mason's spree might have ended there, if not for the fact that when being transported to stand trial, the outlaw and his men overpowered the guards and escaped along the very same wilderness path that they had terrorized for years. Who knows, perhaps some part of him remains there to this day.
After all, Sam Mason certainly wouldn't be the only ghost to wander the legendary trail known as the Natchez Trace.
I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore.
It's not an easy path. Wild grapevines tangle snake-like in the underbrush. Cane thickets tower so high they dim the sun, while Spanish moss drips from tree limbs, ghostly and pale, swinging in the breeze like a hangman's noose. But the flora is the least of your worries. What really matters is what hides inside it. Thieves and killers, crouching out of sight along the winding trail.
And guess what?
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Chapter 3: What dangers did travelers face on the Natchez Trace?
They've been waiting just for you. Welcome to the Nachos Trace. Stretching 440 miles from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee, the Natchez Trace is, simply put, a historic walking trail. But its first hikers weren't exactly human. No, it was actually traipsed into being thousands of years ago by bison and other grazing animals living along the Mississippi River.
And not one to let a perfectly-tramped-down pathway go to waste, it wasn't long before humans jumped on the bandwagon as well. Rather than bushwhack trails from scratch, native tribes started following the traces these animals left behind. And thus, the Natchez Trace was born. Villages cropped up along the way, of course. Some settled up to 10,000 years ago.
The first people traveling and living along the trace were the Mississippian mound builders. Later, native tribes such as the Chickasaw, Choctaw, and of course the Natchez Nations. And when European colonizers arrived in the so-called New World, well, they took advantage of this wilderness route themselves, widening it to accommodate horses and eventually wagons. And so it went.
The wagon wheel rolled on, and so did the years, until by the 1700s, the trace had become a full-blown trade route. It would go a little something like this. Boatmen would pull their flatboats down the Mississippi River to sell goods at the markets and notches in New Orleans. But when it came time to head home, well, they couldn't exactly float their boats upriver as well.
And so merchants would sell their flatboats for lumber and then hoof it north on foot, right along That's right, the Natchez Trace. And trust me, this was not an easy stroll. The trek would take about a month, and all sorts of dangers lay along the trail. Poor weather, snake bites, sickness and injury, those were definitely tough things.
But for those tradesmen whose pockets were heavy with earnings from recent sales, there was one more threat that was more dangerous than all the rest. Highwaymen. Suffice to say, these poor merchants were easy picking for brigands and bandits. And sure, there were places to stay along the route, accommodations known as stands, which popped up to cater to travelers.
One even offered, and I quote, a meal of corn mush and milk and a spot to sleep on the porch for 25 cents. Cozy, I know. But the best corn mush in the world wouldn't protect you once a highwayman had you in his sights.
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Chapter 4: How did the Natchez Trace become a notorious trade route?
The Trace was, arguably, the most dangerous place to travel in all of America. Heck, according to one historian, travelers who couldn't afford weapons would even, and I quote, grow out their fingernails and attempt to gouge out the eyes of anyone who tried to rob them. But the truth is, despite the dangers that tradesmen faced along the trail, there were people who suffered far, far worse.
Enslaved people were forced to march up to 20 miles a day along the trace, chained together and sleeping on the bare ground at night. In multiple places, the trace crossed another famously tragic trail as well, the Trail of Tears. And with all this death and terror, it makes sense that folks started calling the route by another name entirely, the Devil's Backbone.
By the mid-1820s, the advent of the Mississippi steamboat caused the trace to fall out of fashion. After all, now that a boat could carry you back upriver, which would you rather? Pay a little extra for a charming passenger cruise with a singing calliope, or trudge through the robber-filled wilderness for a month? Yeah, pretty much a no-brainer. And that was that.
Within a decade, much of the trail had been reclaimed by the elements, swallowed back up by all the cane, grapevine, and Spanish moss those bison had trampled so many millennia before. But just because the trail was gone didn't mean the dangers were. A lot of blood had seeped into that southern soil.
Blood that, if the stories are to be believed, left the devil's backbone with more than its fair share of ghosts.
The truth is, the dead were everywhere. The hikers just didn't know it. I'm referring to the graves, under stones and in mounds of earth, hidden behind tree roots and dumped into ditches.
The trace wasn't just a trail. It was a boneyard. Remember the Mississippi mound builders I mentioned earlier, those first human residents along the trail? Well, they were called mound builders for a reason. These early peoples built at least 22 mounds along the trace, many of which were used for burial.
Excavations into one called Magnum Mound revealed more than 80 bodies sleeping in the earth, and who knows how many still remain undiscovered. But it wasn't only native residents using the route as a final resting place. North of Tupelo, Mississippi, lie the corpses of 13 Confederate soldiers. And the thing is, no one knows why. Their names are unmarked. Their cause of death? Unknown.
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Chapter 5: What was the impact of the Harp brothers on the Natchez Trace?
And you have to remember, by the Civil War, the trace was already out of use. So the real question is, why had the men been there at all? Was there a secret field hospital on the site? Had they wandered sick and injured from a battle further away? Or had something else lured the soldiers onto the path and never let them leave?
now sure the presence of graves in such a long occupied area is totally natural but some spots along the trace seem downright supernatural take for example a little spot known as the devil's punch bowl described by native inhabitants as the former site of a meteor strike the devil's punch bowl is a massive indentation in the ground stretching some 500 feet wide and there are all sorts of eerie legends attached to it
Steamboat operators claim that their compasses would go wonky while passing by the punch bowl on the nearby Mississippi River. Highwaymen used to use the hole as a hideout, and their ghosts are said to haunt the site to this day, shimmering at the basin's edge. Some are even said to have hidden treasure there, deep in the hollow pit.
And then there's the tale of the cutthroat highwayman, Joseph Thompson Hare. According to legend, when Hare found out his mistress had been cheating on him, he had her buried alive right there in the heart of the punch bowl. And apparently, she was wearing nothing but her jewelry.
On dark nights, her ghost is said to appear to travelers, offering them that same glittering jewelry in exchange for a decent Christian burial. As far as I know, no one has ever taken her up on the offer. What I do know, though, is that real-life horror will always make ghost stories pale in comparison. And the reality of The Devil's Punchbowl is proof.
You see, in the wake of the Civil War, there was an immediate housing problem. Thousands upon thousands of African Americans had become newly emancipated. and desperate to get away from the Confederate-ruled regions where they had been enslaved, they began to flee north.
And Natchez, Mississippi, well, not only was it the largest city in Mississippi, but it just so happened to be under the control of Union forces. Suddenly, countless families were flooding into Natchez, more than the city could possibly accommodate. And so, desperate to help, the Union set up a refugee camp smack dab in the middle of... That's right, the Devil's Punchbowl.
The union did the best they could, but the truth is they were ill-equipped to handle the sheer mass of people who were arriving every day. Sanitation was not what it could be, the drinking water was not clean, and to make matters worse, smallpox had begun working its way throughout the crowded camp.
Tragically, thousands of formerly enslaved people would die right there, in the belly of the Devil's Punchbowl. Their lives cut short just when they had finally won their freedom. Oh, and remember Sam Wolfman Mason, that highwayman who evaded capture and vanished along the trace? Even he had a tie to the Devil's Punchbowl.
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Chapter 6: What gruesome events are linked to the Harp brothers?
They would throw bodies over the side and place bets on how long they would take to hit the bottom. Pretty grisly, right? Legend or not, Mason was a very real threat along the Notch's trace. But he wasn't the apex predator. No, that title belonged to someone else entirely. Because the only thing more dangerous than one monster is two.
The brothers had a bounty on their head. $300 each, to be exact.
Nearly six grand today. And trust me, stopping these guys would be worth a hundred times that and more. The year was 1799, and Micaiah and Willie Harp, aka Big Harp and Little Harp, were on the run from the law. Why? Oh, nothing major, just some casual murdering and jailbreaking. Everyone needs a hobby, I suppose.
Big Harp was tall and a cruel man with a broad face and curly black hair that fell over his forehead. Little Harp was, as his name suggested, smaller with red hair. And though the duo told everyone that they were brothers, they were probably cousins. And look, I get it. The Harp cousins doesn't have the same ring to it. These guys were going to be on a lot of wanted posters.
Branding mattered, apparently. The Harps were the sons of Scottish immigrants to North Carolina, and had even fought on the side of the British during the Revolution. Which, let's just say, didn't exactly leave them on warm and fuzzy terms with their American neighbors once the war was over. So, after the smoke cleared, the Harps decided it was time for new stomping grounds.
And I'll give you one guess as to where they fled. That's right, the Natchez Trace. Now, you might think that being at war would have scratched whatever itch these guys had for bloodshed, but no, right away the Harps started killing again. Pretty soon, they were wanted for multiple murders in Kentucky and Tennessee alike, hence those tidy little $300 bounties.
Just two more killers roving Notch's trace. But they weren't alone.
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Chapter 7: How does the legend of Witch Dance connect to the Harp brothers?
Their wives traveled with them. A woman named Sally Rice and two sisters named Betsy and Susan Roberts, each with a baby in tow. And yes, I know there's something funny about that math, right? Two harps, three wives. Well, while Sally Rice was married to Little Harp, Big Harp considered himself married to both Betsy and Susan.
So, what do you do during a family vacation on a beautiful hiking trail? By lots and lots of murdering, of course. At least, that's how the Harps passed their time. In what can only be described as a full-blown killing spree, the Hart brothers rampaged through the South.
In one incident, they were graciously invited to stay near a homestead for the night and thanked their host by axe-murdering him and his 13-year-old son. Another time, they shot 11 campers while they slept just for kicks.
And at another time still, the Harps took a total stranger captive, stripped him naked, tied him to a blindfolded horse, and then drove the horse off a cliff, all while cackling maniacally. Yeah, these guys were straight-up supervillains, and as their spree continued, one thing became abundantly clear to the terrified citizens living along the trace.
These men weren't like other bandits on the trail. In fact, they could hardly be called bandits at all. The truth was, they rarely even stole from the people they murdered. They would burn down houses with everything inside. They would leave bodies behind with pockets still heavy with valuables.
Instead of filling their own coffers with stolen goods, they spent their time filling their victims' bodies with rocks before gleefully sinking their corpses into the river. No, the Hart brothers weren't killing for profit. They were killing for fun. And it wasn't just strangers who suffered at their hands. One day, Sally Rice's baby daughter started crying and Big Heart became annoyed.
Now, I won't go into the gruesome details here, but let's just say that the baby count immediately went down by one. Death after death, cruelty after cruelty, the harps were like a plague infecting the whole of the Natchez Trace, until finally one summer, they took things a step too far. It was August 20th of 1799 when the harps arrived at the home of Moses Stiegel in western Kentucky.
Now, to say the Stiegels were friends with the Harps would be a strong word. I really don't think these fellas were great at making friends. But they were acquainted, and the Stiegels had housed the Harp wives and their children in the past. On this particular night, though, Moses wasn't home, but his wife was, and she gladly welcomed the Harps to stay.
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Chapter 8: What mystery surrounds the death of Meriwether Lewis?
Now, she was hosting another guest that night as well, a traveling surveyor named Major William Love. And the house was small. But that's okay. Mrs. Stiegel and her own baby could sleep on the floor, and the three men could share the bed. When the time came to sleep, Major Love, Big Harp, and Little Harp all cozied up together in the same little bed.
And I'll admit, I can't help but imagine this scene as some kind of slapstick head-to-toe situation, like the grandparents from Willy Wonka. Kind of cute, right? Or, well, it could have been, if Major Love hadn't been a snorer. Sometime during the night, the harps awoke to the Major absolutely shaking the room with his snores.
And so they responded in a totally reasonable way, by chopping him to death with an axe. And from there, they reprimanded Miss Stiegel for putting them in the bed with a snorer, before killing her and her baby as well. And then they set the house ablaze, leapt on their horses, and galloped off into the dark.
It wasn't long before the townsfolk discovered the grisly crime scene, though, and there was no doubt in anyone's mind this could only be the work of the Harp Brothers. Immediately, a posse formed to hunt them down, but the harps were no strangers to running, and so, to evade their pursuers, they decided to split up.
Forced to choose, the posse let Little Harp go and chased Big Harp, and amazingly, they caught him. And who had the honor of killing him? Why, that went to poor Moses Stiegel, who had led the hunt. Some say that he shot his family's murderer through the heart, others that he used Big Harp's own butcher knife to hack off his head. But either way, one thing was certain.
Micaiah Harp, the demon of the Natchez Trace, was dead. As a warning to others, his head was placed in a tree along the trail, not far from Stiegel's home. Time passed, scavengers feasted, and soon only a grinning skull remained. Today, the skull is long gone. The memory is not. In fact, a thoroughfare nearby still bears the name Harp's Head Road.
as for little harp well he would be hanged only five years later in 1804 just like big harp his head too would be placed on a stake along the trace how was he caught you might ask well he was actually the one to approach the law not to turn himself in no little harp had been recognized after marching right up to the authorities plopping something in front of them and demanding a reward
What was the object he brought them? Well, according to Little Harp, he had just delivered to them the head of Sam Wolfman Mason.
A trail is a lot like a story.
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