Micajah "Big" Harpe, born Joshua Harper (before 1768 (probably, c. 1748) – August 1799) and Wiley "Little" Harpe, born William Harper (before 1770 (probably, c. 1750) – February 8, 1804), were serial killers, murderers, highwaymen, and river pirates who operated in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Mississippi in the late eighteenth century. The Harpes' crimes appear to have been motivated more by blood lust than financial gain, and they are most likely America's first known "serial killers", reckoned from the colonial era forward. The Harpe Brothers are credited with having killed thirty-nine people, and may have killed as many as fifty.