This interesting article is from an old book titled "The Ohio River" printed in 1906 by G.P. Puttnam's Sons, New York. The Reign of Outlaw and Rowdy. I love these early printings, for I feel the earlier they were printed the more truthful they are, as the stories haven't been recopied and added to during the years of being reprinted.
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The pioneers who entered the Ohio Valley after its conquest from the aborigines found it to be a beautiful gem very much in the rough. Savage conditions did not prevail, it is true, so far as scalping and burning at the stake were typical of them, but it was many ears before life and property were safe from outlaws, and more before rowdies and rowdyism ceased to menace liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Drifting about from place to place setting up claims for land that rightfully belonged to others, now and then, if the exigency of the case demanded, committing brutal murder, and at all ties brawling in grog-shops and pilfering along the rivers, the outlaws of the "Ohio Country" gained a national reputation. But it will be readily admitted that in this matter there has been a vast deal of exaggeration; there was but one Micajah Harpe, and but one Harpe's head raised on a pole; yet to read some pages one would believe there was a Harpes head on every tree in the West, and an uncouth murdered behind every bush that grew along the wild Ohio's bank of flowers.
Every new county must needs suffer, it seems, from the pens of travelers who portray exceptional incidents so vividly as to make the exception seem the commonplace. And it is also true that local historians have been guilty of exaggeration of events in their own localities; many small affairs have assumed great proportions under the gentle breath of legend.
The lower Ohio River was very sparsely settled until a comparatively late date and in pioneer days this portion of the river was for a time a noted resort for bands of pirates from whose hands the descending flat-boatman did well to steer clear.
Cave-in-Rock, on the Illinois shore near the present hamlet of that name, was a notorious rendezvous for a number of years. This is a cavern measuring about two hundred feet long and eighty feet wide; at its mouth it is eighty feet wide and twenty-five feet high. The floor was very smooth throughout and the walls arose in grades like seats in a theater.
Strange hieroglyphics dating far back into prehistoric days covered the gloomy walls. The mystery of the place was enhanced by another room-like apartment over the cavern; the passage-way to this second cavern was like a huge chimney some fourteen feet long. Since about the time of the war of 1812, if not before, this grotto has born the name Cave-in-Rock; about it towers a rocky eminence into which the grueling hands of the floods have torn this aperture.
Early in the century a man named Wilson brought his family to this river stronghold and made it his home. More than that, he threw the home open to the passing public and mounted his hospitable sing, "Wilson's Liquor Vault and House of Entertainments," where not the passerby reads "St. Jacob's Oil"' if the proprietor's liquids were not a balm it was not because there were not broken heads to mend.
For the idea gained for its originator all the returns that his ingenuity deserved; flatboats were continually passing down the river to Mississippi ports and a grog-shop (an alcoholic liquor, esp. run diluted with water) at the water's edge was a feature that at that day and that place could not fail to attract both the curious and the thirsty.
As evil never fails to carry in it the seeds of its own undoing, so here the House of Entertainment soon gathered a plotting band of guerillas headed by none other than Wilson, the proprietor, which began a murderous confidence game that take rank in the West with the worst of outrages.
The gang made its headquarters on nearby Hurricane Island and the plan of operations was fiendishly simple; richly laden, were inveigled to the cave, where in short order a crew from the island took charge of the boar and floated it to New Orleans; here the cargo and boat were sold and upon returning to Cave -in-Rock the proceeds were divided. Many circumstances combined to make this conspiracy safe and the conspirators wholly free from suspicion.
The danger of the river travel on the Ohio and Mississippi was great, and so many boats were wrecked that the owners of any one of the captured boats could easily account for their loss of the score of dangerous navigation.
Then too, there were the dangers of the return overland trip from New Orleans in case the boat did reach its destination in safely; this journey through Tennessee and Kentucky, as will be shown, was perilous in the the extreme for those carrying money. Thus the desperadoes at Hurricane Island were not suspected for some time and it was longer still before the scattered population of the region took the matter into ins hands.
Wilson's band numbered nearly fifty; many of these escaped before the storm broke; a few were taken prisoners. A large price was set on Wilson's head and to obtain it, one of is own murderous gang killed him. "Not long after," writes so good as authority as Collins, "In the upper room of his mysterious cavern were found about sixty skeletons, which confirmed the take of systematic confidence, betrayal, and murder.
The reign of outlaw-ism in the area was of prolonged duration, attracting wide attention and gaining for the area a reputation as unique as it was unsavory. The river was the highway of travel and consequently social conditions here came under the eye of hosts of travelers, whose accounts had, after, a wide circulation. Frequently these accounts were told with literal truthfulness and yet, as they stand, are misrepresentations.
The outlaw-ism was a natural product of the era of disputes over land and of grubbing (clearing of the land). It was a hard time to live or let live; the good old days are written and spoken of lightly but they must not be made to cover the first two generations of pioneer life.
The life was exhausting; the forests were to be feled, the great logs rolled together and burned, and families reared and provided for, and usually the land to be paid for – with markets many miles away. All this had to be done under the most difficult climatic conditions, the fevers attacking the men at their work in the wet forests, especially along the river, with regularity and often with fatal effect.
When this home-building and land-clearing was accomplished, if one had a picture, it would reveal not only the changes that had been wrought, but a host of prematurely broken down men and women, besides and undue proportion resting peacefully in a family grave yard nearby.
If one could attempt truly to chronicle merely the hardship ad suffering of a day when dentist and rubber boots were unknown, the result would be too painful to be interesting reading.
