37. Kidnapping Wives and Targeting Frontier Settlers
When their side lost the American Revolution, the Harpe brothers left North Carolina and joined bands of Cherokee Indians in attacking settler villages west of the Appalachians in Tennessee. Before doing so, they took revenge upon Captain James Wood, who had wounded Little Harpe during the war, by kidnapping his daughter, Susan, and another girl named Maria Davidson. The women were forced into serving as wives for the brothers. One of their earliest frontier murders occurred when a man named Moses Doss expressed concern over their brutalized women, and was killed for his troubles.
In 1782, the Harpe brothers accompanied a Cherokee war party that raided into Kentucky, and defeated an army of frontiersmen led by Daniel Boone at the Battle of Blue Licks. They ended up living in the Indian village of Nickajack near Chattanooga, Tennessee, for about twelve years. Then in 1794, they got word of an impending American attack and left just before the village was wiped out.
