Swamp Outlaws

Reprint of the original, first published in 1872. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.

The South had lost the Civil War and was losing its soul. Uniformed Rebels who had fought honorably in the light of day now wore tattered sheets in the dark and burned crosses. In armed packs they dragged the helpless Negro or Indian from his bed and stopped his hurried prayers with noose or buckshot. In North Carolina’s Robeson county, the Ku Klux did not see the vengeance it was stirring up: Henry Berry Lowery's gang of Swamp Outlaws, who ruthlessly protected themselves and the county's Indians and Negroes. "We kill anyone who hunts us, from Sheriff on down,” Lowery promised, and by forays out of the swamps to keep that promise he became the highest-bountied outlaw in the nation’s history. This tale of bloody revenge and brilliant survival is drawn from the gang’s real victims, benefactors, and descendants – all as told by the Yankee reporter from the New York Herald who joined the gang to get the story.

During the Civil War many young Lumbee Indians of North Carolina hid in the swamps to avoid conscription into Confederate labor battalions and carried on a running guerilla war. To Die Game is the story of Henry Berry Lowry, a Lumbee who was arrested for killing a Confederate official. While awaiting trial, he escaped and took to the swamps with a band of supporters. The Lowry band became as notorious as their contemporaries Jesse and Frank James, as they terrorized bush-whacked leaders of possses and military companies. For more than five years, with the support of local Indians and Negroes, they eluded capture. In 1872, Henry disappeared and some of his other followers were eventually hunted down and killed by bounty hunters.

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