Oct. 31, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
695 
The Tragedy of Reelfoot Lake. 
On the shores of the famous Reelfoot Lake 
a lynching has just occurred which has shocked 
the public North and South, but especially the 
public of the great State of Tennessee. Two 
prominent attorneys of Trenton, Tenn., w'ere 
taken from "Ward’s Hotel, at Walnut Log, by 
masked men and one of them murdered. Col. R. 
Z. Taylor, a man seventy years old, and Capt. 
Quentin Rankin, were the men taken. Captain 
Rankin was beaten into insensibility and a rope 
was put about his neck and he was hauled up 
into a tree, when the mob emptied their pistols 
into his body. While this was going on, Col. 
Taylor was left standing alone a few feet away. 
Knowing that many of the pistols of the mob 
had been emptied, he sprang into a deep arm 
of Reelfoot Lake and started to swim across, 
swimming under water as far as possible, com¬ 
ing up for a breath and then diving again. It was 
very dark. Presently he reached a log and re¬ 
mained behind it until the shooting ceased, and 
then swam to the other shore, got into the 
woods, and started away. When the sun rose, 
he was able to locate himself, but not daring to 
return to Walnut Log, he traveled on through 
the forest until he came to a cabin, where he 
remained until next day, when he proceeded to 
Tiptonville, Tenn. 
Gov. Patterson, of Tennessee, has offered a 
reward of $10,000 for the arrest and conviction 
of the assassins, and has .called out the State 
troops to try to look for them. 
It is not known who composed the mob who 
were guilty of this crime. A farmer named 
Powell gives a story of the tragedy which is re¬ 
garded as reliable. He says that he was taken 
from his home and forced to accompany the 
men to the hotel at Walnut Log and ordered 
to awaken the proprietor and guests. The men 
called for came out of the house unsuspectingly 
and were at once caught, tied and mounted be¬ 
hind two of the riders. Powell was taken to 
Bayou Deshae, near Reelfoot Lake, where he 
was left under guard of a part of the band and 
the two other men were taken on further. 
Public opinion in Tennessee and other States 
is deeply stirred by the events. 
Reelfoot Lake is one of the most famous shoot- 
ing and fishing resorts in the Southwest. It is 
less than a century old, having been formed dur¬ 
ing the historic earthquake in the Mississippi 
valley which took place in the winter of 1811-12. 
Over much of its surface dead drowned cypress 
trees still dot the lake, though all the deciduous 
trees that were killed by the rise in the water 
have long ago rotted and disappeared. A large 
part of the lake and its surrounding territory 
used to belong to a man named Harris, who 
bought up claim after claim, and finally was 
thought to own all the lake, though not without 
dispute. About 1898 or 99 some Louisville, Ky., 
men tried to purchase the lake. They spent 
some money on it, but finally, wearied by the 
contention with those whom they tried to make 
their neighbors, sold out to Harris. 
From that time on there has been unending 
war and litigation between the squatters about 
Reelfoot Lake and those who owned or thought 
they owned it. It has been reported that the fish 
and game sold from Reelfoot Lake amounted 
to $70,000 a year. This business has been a prize 
worth striving for, and there have been many 
people after it. Of those the chief has been Mr. 
Harris, who owns the most of the land. This 
is what Raymond S. Spears had to say on the 
subject in igo.4 in one of his articles of his in¬ 
teresting series, “Floating Down the Missis¬ 
sippi’’ : 
“Harris owns a lot of claims covering parts 
of the lake. He owns a good deal of the land 
around it. He has the deeds to show for it, and 
B } 
f 
I 
I 
TREES IN REELFOOT LAKE. 
the quit claims. Ranged against him are the 
‘always hunted there,’ some claims or titles he 
could not purchase—so it is said—the fact of 
launches and ferries on the lake—a mail route 
across it during high water, when the road can¬ 
not be followed with a ten foot pike pole—some 
scores of fishermen, a lot of hunters and public 
sentiment. Harris claims two objects in getting 
possession of the lake. He wants to control the 
ANOTHER VIEW OF REELFOOT LAKE. 
output and eventually to make it a club’s pre¬ 
serve. Seventy thousand dollars’ worth of fish 
and the best duck shooting in the Mississippi 
valley are worth contending for; any sportsman 
or commercial mind will admit that. Harris 
does not shoot or fish, but, as remarked, takes 
delight in a camera, and some of the best photo¬ 
graphs of Reelfoot so far taken he made. 
“The people who are opposing Harris are 
ranked, so to speak, behind one John Shaw, who 
is buying fish under bond at Sandberg, near 
Burdick’s dock. One hears that these men get 
about the same amount of fish and game. The 
rivalry is keen, but the prices paid are about the 
same by each. The markets are Cairo, St. Louis, 
Memphis, etc., and the wholesale rates at these 
markets are about three times as much as the 
above price. If $70,000 is the value of the year’s 
catch, at four cents a pound (too much), 1.750,- 
000 pounds is the total catch, or seventy pounds 
to the acre—25,000 acres. I asked for an esti¬ 
mate by Burdick, but did not get it. 
“The fishermen claim that they make ‘lots of 
money—more than some of those white-collar 
fellows in town.’ Storekeepers at Tiptonville 
said that when fishermen came to town they 
made good purchases, about like sixty-acre cot¬ 
ton farmers, which indicates between $700 and 
$2,000 a year. But the farmers are much closer 
fisted than the fishermen, so it is likely the fisher¬ 
men do not run much over $2 a day if they do 
as much. Their ‘rag houses,’ or tents, and their 
looks do not indicate even this much. Stakes 
at the card tables go $100 in sight at once some¬ 
times, and only the best brands of whisky are 
used, as a general rule, ‘to keep off the chills.’ 
A few of them have farms back in the hills to 
which they retreat at times, but others live the 
year round on the borders of the lake or on one 
or the other islands, cultivating a little patch 
of a garden, raising some cane-rooters for pork, 
keeping a cow or two for milk and butter and 
soda biscuit. The stock is put on a raft when 
high water comes, or else ferried to the hills. 
The islands were under water so long this sum¬ 
mer that the cane was killed. 
“In summer a thick green moss, almost im¬ 
penetrable to boats, covers much of the surface 
near the shore or in shallows and is thick 
enough to prevent skiff navigation in some of 
the pockets. The water grows so warm that the 
fish are driven to the deepest waters and even 
there the nets ‘burn’ as in the big river. In 
spite of the plentiful use of tar, nets are de¬ 
stroyed, even if used only during the cold 
months. Poles and hand lines are used during 
the summer and live bait or trolls bring in fine 
bass up to seven or more pounds, it is said. ‘It 
is said’ must be used by the notebook maker 
in regard to what he hears concerning Reelfoot 
Lake. I was told that ‘we make $4 or $5 a day 
all the year round, and it isn’t nothing to have 
a $25 haul at a running of the nets.’ Harris 
warned me not to believe all that I heard about 
the large number of fishermen on the lake and 
their wages. ‘There are 500 of us, and we’ve 
got $20,000 worth of nets in this lake,’ they told 
me. These figures meant $40 per man, of four 
hoop-nets each, at $10 a piece (a liberal value). 
Some fishermen run forty to eighty nets—$400 
to $800 in tackle—so it is said. Figured by the 
forty nets would make the number of fishermen 
fifty. Harris said there were not over sixty 
two or three years ago when his father counted 
them up. A hundred receiving $500 to $700 apiece 
per year would use up the $50,000 to $70,000 
worth of fish the lake probably yields.” 
There was trouble in the Reelfoot Lake coun¬ 
try last spring. Masked men forced John Shaw, 
keeper of the Reelfoot Lake storehouse, and his 
helper, Walter Pleasant, to carry kerosene to 
the storehouses. They called on the guards to 
come out and lined them up under pistols and 
obliged Shaw and Pleasant to set fire to the 
storehouses. These were burned to the ground 
and Shaw and Pleasant were told that they 
