This adventure story uses Robeson County and the Lowry
Band as a setting and minor backdrop to the romance and intrigue of
wealthy white characters. The story has the same title and was published
in the same year as George Alfred Townsend's The Swamp Outlaws
(see The Lumbee Indians: an annotated bibliography, item 1078).
Townsend’s book is a compilation of articles by New York Herald
correspondents who were sent to Robeson County to cover the Lowry Band
incidents. Like Townsend’s compilation, this story features a white
woman who was captured by the outlaws.
This story devotes most of its attention to Nellie
Brown; her spurned suitor, John Middleton (who devises a plot to have
the Lowry Band—here called the Budds—kidnap her in order to
force her marriage to him and help him get his father’s property,
which had been willed to Nellie); and Nellie’s true love, Robert
Howard. The Henry Berry Lowry character is named Jim Budd; his wife
is Moll. The story makes several references to the beautiful Lumber
River, turpentine distilleries and sloops, and fights and pursuits in
the impenetrable swamps.
The following quotations illustrate Morris’s portrayal
of the Lowry Band:
“The Budds are a set of bloody thieves and villains
that haunt the swamp that lies off here afore us. There’s a desperate
crew of them, half white and half nigger, that spend their time robbing
and plundering, and they’ve killed a dozen men at different times
. . . . Oh, the devil himself couldn't track them through the swamp
. . . . Old Allen Budd and his son Bill were killed, but the rest got
off, and they've been murdering and plundering ever since.” (January
6, 1872)
The following describes the outlaw's encampment in
the swamp: “In the central portions of this space stood several
low huts. No men were visible, but two women appeared; one engaged in
domestic labors near the huts, the other walking down toward his side
of the clearing. She was of the yellow hue of a mulatto, dressed in
a garment, dirty now and ragged, but evidently of rich material, while
her ears and fingers were adorned with jewels, little in keeping with
her general aspect. He had plainly stumbled upon a headquarters of the
outlaws, and this finery was the result of some of their forays.”
(January 13, 1872)
In a discussion of how the outlaw band came to live
in the swamp and carry on their crimes, the white characters explain:
“You see it was mostly during the war. They were jined by a set
of deserters, and some escaped Yankee prisoners, and there weren’t
men enough left in the country to watch them. They had things pretty
much their own way . . . . The father of the flock was a Portugee, and
they was one time decent farmers, living on the edge of the swamp. But
for a hundred years back they’ve been mixin’ with Injun and
nigger till now they’re a reg’lar conglomeration. Old Allan
Budd was more Injin than anything else, an’ there’sa nigger
in the gang now, George Milkwhite, who’s as black as a coal, an’
is married to one of the Budd girls. So you see they’re a sweet
set. During the war the people come together, and caught them outside
their holes. It was a right smart fight we had. Joe an’ me had
a hand in it. Old Budd an’ his oldest son was killed, but the rest
got off. There’s been some of them hung since, but there’s
seven or eight left, an’ that’s as good as fifty with the
swamp to hide in.” (January 20, 1872)
