Earning the dubious distinction of being the United States’ first known serial killers, Micajah "Big" Harpe and Wiley "Little" Harpe were murderous outlaws who operated in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois and Mississippi in the late 1700's. Often referred to as the Harpe Brothers, they were actually cousins who often passed themselves off as brothers.

Both of their fathers were Scottish immigrants who had settled in Orange County, North Carolina. Micajah Harpe was born to John Harpe and his wife, while Wiley Harpe, who was actually named Joshua, was born to John’s brother, William and his wife. Soon after the arrival of the Harpes in America, they changed the spelling of their original name from “Harpe” to “Harp.” 

 During the American Revolution, the Harpes fought for the British.
(Art by Frederick Coffay Yohn, early 1900's.)

Growing up near each other, the boys soon took up the nicknames of Big and Little Harp, as Wiley was much smaller than Micajah. The two left North Carolina in 1775 for Virginia intending to find jobs as slave overseers; however, the American Revolution interrupted their career. The pair sided with the British, but their interest seemed to be more in violence and criminal activities than any sense of patriotic duty. Along with other like-minded irregulars, they apparently thrilled in the activities of burning farms, raping women, and pillaging the American patriots. When Little Harp attempted to rape a girl in North Carolina, he was shot and wounded by Captain James Wood; however, he survived.

In 1780, the Harpes joined with the regular British troops and fought in several battles along the North and South Carolina borders. The next year, they left the army and joined up with a group of Cherokee Indians, raiding settlements in North Carolina and Tennessee and continuing their pillaging. Taking revenge on Captain James Wood, who had earlier wounded Little Harpe, the pair kidnapped his daughter, Susan Wood, and another girl named Maria Davidson. The women served as wives to the Harpes.

The pair, along with the brutalized women and four other men, then began to make their way to Tennessee. During the trip, a man named Moses Doss had the “audacity” to be over-concerned for the brutalized women. For his concern, he was killed by the Harpes. The group then settled in the Cherokee-Chickamauga village of Nickajack located southwest of modern-day Chattanooga, Tennessee. For the next dozen years, the Harpes, along with their “wives” lived in the Indian village. During this time, both of the captive women became pregnant twice and their children were killed by their fathers.

After the British surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, the Chickamauga and a break-away band of Cherokee continued to make war on American patriots and the Harpes were only too willing to help them, fighting in the Battle of Blue Licks, Kentucky on August 19, 1782 and other smaller skirmishes.

In September, 1794, the Americans planned to take the offensive against the Indians at Nickajack, but somehow, the Harpes got wind of the attack and fled before the patriots wiped out the village. The Harpes and their women then settled down at a new camp nearby, where they stayed for the next nine months, once again pillaging local villages in Tennessee. By the spring of 1797, they were living in a cabin on Beaver's Creek near Knoxville. That same year, Little Harpe married a local girl; a minister’s daughter, named Sarah Rice, and the other two women became the “wives” of Big Harpe.