Introducing... Free Men by Katy Simpson Smith

Introducing books through the first chapter or so...

About this time, a bloody transaction occurred in the territory of the present county of Conecuh... The party consisted of a Hillabee Indian, who had murdered so many men, that he was called Istillicha, the Man-Slayer-- a desperate white man, who had fled from the States for the crime of murder, and whom, on account of his activity and ferocity, the Indians called the Cat-- and a blood-thirsty negro, named Bob.

Albert James Pickett, History of Alabama, and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period (1851)

-- Free Men by Katy Simpson Smith