Harpe Brothers

During the late 18th century the two Harpe brothers - "Big" and "Little" - were notorious for their many crimes in the area of the frontier that included northern Mississippi: it is possible that they killed as many as fifty people before they were separately executed in 1799 and 1804. The narrator of "A Name for the City" rejects the idea that the Harpes were the unnamed bandits who were held briefly in the settlement jail.