Mason's Ruffians

Led by Samuel Ross Mason, a militia captain during the Revolutionary War, "Mason's ruffians" were a gang of river pirates and highwaymen who operated in the Mississippi Valley frontier in the late 18th century. Both the first-person narrator of "A Name for the City" and the omniscient third-person narrator of Requiem for a Nun reject the idea that the unnamed bandits who were briefly held in the settlement jail were part of this gang, because - as Requiem puts it - "even the last of Mason's ruffians were dead or scattered by this time" (5).