The Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock

Very interesting, would have liked more factual records, but realize going back to Revolutionary times might be hard to cover.

This book by a noted historian tells how river pirates and wilderness highwaymen (and women) preyed on westward travelers in the 1800s. As the country developed westward, a particular mix of men and women criminals practiced their arts at the moving edge of civilization and law. Whether traveling by land or river, many travelers passed through Southern Illinois during this time and had to deal with criminals whose practices were sometimes beyond imagination. A central player in this drama was the "Cave-in-Rock", a large cavern that opens appealingly upriver on the Ohio near the present day village and state park of the same name. While the cavern functioned as an Inn and Tavern that was a welcome sight to travelers, at times the proprietors served up meyhem and murder along with the grog and gruel. This was aptly shown in the movie How the West Was Won. The Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock focuses on the major criminal elements and their leaders that operated along the Ohio River near Cave-in-Rock and the nearby inlands of the Shawnee Hills. Mr. Rothert does an excelent job of distinguishing between documented and oral history and tells about the individuals as well as the events of interest. The blood lust and gold lust of some of the central figures is astounding and their resourcefulness in obtaining both is frightening. In showing the flavor of the dark side of humanity that plagued these westward travelers, The Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock is unmatched.

This book tells the story of the outlaws of the early West (western Kentucky, southeastern Illinois, and Tennessee from around 1795 to 1820). These men were not the gun-toting, bank-robbing criminals of the Wild West but were highway robbers and river pirates who most often wielded knives and axes. They preyed on pioneers living in isolated cabins in the wilderness and on traders coming down the Ohio River on flatboats or traveling inland along wilderness trails. Most of these criminals at one time or another used Cave-in-Rock as their headquarters. This huge cave, on the Illinois side of the lower Ohio River, is about 85 miles below Evansville, Indiana.The most notorious of all the criminals of this time and place were the two Harpe brothers, who were said to kill men, women, and children simply to gratify a lust for cruelty. One story epitomizes the brutality of their exploits: Traveling through western Kentucky, the Harpes came to a cabin, where they found only a mother and her baby, the husband being off hunting. They asked to spend the night, and the next morning they asked the woman to prepare breakfast for them. She consented to do so but said that it would take her some time because her child was not well and she had no one to nurse it. The men then said that she should put the baby in its cradle and they would rock it while she cooked. After the woman had served their breakfast, she went to the cradle to see if the child was asleep, expressing some astonishment that her child should remain quiet for so long a time. She found the infant lying breathless, its throat cut from ear to ear."Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock" was first published in 1923 and was recently reprinted by Southern Illinois University Press. Historians, amateur and professional, will value this book interesting for the light it sheds on a period of the nation's history that has received too little attention.