Life and bloody career of the executed criminal, James Copeland, the great Southern land pirate — John Shaqi
Life and bloody career of the executed criminal, James Copeland, the great Southern land piratePitts, J. R. S. (James Robert Soda)
History
Life and bloody career of the executed criminal, James Copeland, the great Southern land pirate
Pitts, J. R. S. (James Robert Soda)
Copeland, James, 1823-1857; Criminals -- Gulf States -- Biography
that led us down the creek. We halted about noon to rest our horses,
which by this time were much fatigued. Here we procured something for
ourselves to eat.
We were now over two hundred miles from the place where we had stolen
the negroes; we here enquired for several places and where was the best
place to locate. We wanted to find a rich neighborhood where there was
good society, etc. We got directions for several places, among the rest
the lower settlement on the Brasos river. After we had rested, late in
the afternoon, we set out, pretending to be bound for San Antonio, but
we steered our course for the Brasos river, where we arrived the second
day after. We quartered our negroes with a planter there and traveled
around. We at length found a purchaser, some twenty miles from the
place where the negroes were. We delivered them to him and received the
pay for them—sixteen hundred dollars. We took the horses about forty
miles and sold one, and about thirty miles further we sold the other.
We then went some distance and sold our own horses.
We had realized from all our sales a little short of two thousand
dollars. This was about the tenth of May. The money was principally
in New Orleans Bank bills, and we had some gold and silver to pay our
little expenses. We now steered our course for San Antonio, on foot,
and reached there in about five days. We traveled leisurely, and
procured some two-headed Texas gourds to carry our water through the
prairies. After resting a day or two, we looked around to see how the
land lay. We went into a store and bought two light Spanish saddles,
with bridles and all the apparatus for riding. We put them up in a
genteel package, and provided ourselves with provisions for two days.
Each shouldered his pack, and we left San Antonio in the night, and
steered our course west. We had traveled some ten or fifteen miles,
when we stopped at a small creek and camped. Next morning we traveled
on some twenty-five miles farther, when we came to a ranche, where
there was a great stock of horses, mules, jacks, jennies and horned
cattle. We hid our saddles before we approached the place, and went up
with our bundles of clothes and guns and asked for something to eat,
which was given us—plenty milk and bread. Only one or two of the people
could speak English, and that very indifferently. An old man, the head
of the place, and his drover and herdsman, spoke the best English. We
asked the old man to let us have a couple of horses and saddles, and we
would go with him a hunting and take our guns; we told him we wished
to see the country; he told us “yes,” and furnished us with horses. We
spent a week or more with him. We killed plenty of venison to supply
the whole ranche.
MURDER OF THE TWO MEXICANS IN TEXAS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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