Note 24 — Mason On the Natchez Trace

Cramer’s Navigator, 1818, says: “Stack or Crow’s Nest Island has been sunk by the earthquake [of 1811] or swept by the floods.... Stack not long since was famed for a band of counterfeiters, horse thieves, robbers, murderers, etc. who made this part of the Mississippi a place of manufacture and deposit. From hence they would sally forth, stop boats, buy horses, flour, whiskey, etc. and pay for all in fine, new notes of the ‘first water.’ Their villainies (after many severe losses sustained by innocent, good men, unsuspecting the cheat) became notorious, and after several years’ search and pursuit of the civil law, and in some cases the club-law, against this band of monsters, they have at length disappeared.”