Note 12 — The Harpes—Big Harpe’s Ride to Death

Draper in his “Sketch of the Harpes” places Big Harpe’s head “in the forks of a tree,” but in a later note [12G] he has it “placed or rather stuck on the sharpened end of the limb of a tree.” Breazeale has it “upon the top of a lofty pole, or in the fork of a tree.” Collins, in one version, says the men “stuck it upon a pole where the road crosses the creek,” and in another, that “a tall young tree, growing by the side of the trail or road, was selected and trimmed of its lateral branches to its top, and then made sharp. On this point the head was fastened. The skull and jaw-bones remained there for many years—after all else had been decomposed and mingled with the dust.” In his sketch on Webster County, Kentucky, Collins states that “Big Harpe’s head was stuck upon a pole” near an oak tree which was still standing, and that the letters H.H. for Harpe’s Head, carved upon it in 1799, were still legible in 1874.

Robert Triplett, in his anonymous autobiography, Roland Trevor, publishes an absurd story to the effect that the two Harpes had stolen the daughter of a pioneer living near Henderson. The father pursued Big Harpe, wounded him, and shortly thereafter captured him. This confused and confusing writer says: “Harpe lay near a tree. The father lifted him, and set him up against it, and then went a little way to a branch, from which, in the brim of his hat, he carried Harpe some water, and while he was drinking reloaded his rifle, and shot him. Then with his knife he cut off his head and stuck it on a pole at the fork of the road between Henderson and Madisonville, which place, from that circumstance, was called, and is to this day, ‘Harpe’s Head.’”

Another absurd story of the Harpes appears in History of Great American Crimes, by Frank Triplett who with a few facts and a vivid imagination succeeds in covering some twenty pages on the Harpes. According to his account, Leiper and Stegall organized a pursuing party, and when the wounded outlaw was overtaken one end of a rope was adjusted around Big Harpe’s neck and the other thrown over a limb of a large tree under which the wounded man lay. “Appalled by the blasphemies of Harpe, the word was given, and, with a strong pull, his body was run up some six or eight feet from the ground, and whirling round and round in the rapidly gathering twilight, it quivered convulsively for some moments; there was a fierce death struggle and the soul of the most demoniac murderer that ever cursed our continent had gone out into the limitless realms of eternity. When satisfied that Harpe was dead, the corpse was lowered to the ground, the head cut off and fixed in the fork of the tree which had served his executioners as a gallows.”