Samuel Ross Mason[a] (November 8, 1739 – 1803), was an American Revolutionary War veteran, Virginia militia captain, justice of the peace, frontier leader, and later, a figure associated with river piracy and highway robbery.

His gang was involved in various illegal activities, including piracy and robbery, and was associated with notorious sites such as Red Banks, Cave-in-Rock, Stack Island, and the Natchez Trace.

According to Lyman Draper, in the 1750s Mason got his earliest start in crime as a teenager by stealing the horses of Colonel John L. Hite, in Frederick County, Virginia, being wounded and caught by his pursuers.

According to Ohio County court minutes dated January 7, 1777, Mason was recommended to Patrick Henry, the Governor of Virginia, to serve as captain of the militia.

[4] On January 28, Mason was present and cited as a captain from Ohio County at a "council of war" held at Catfish Camp,[5] located at or near present-day Washington, Pennsylvania.

[7] From August 11 to September 14, 1779, Mason, while at Fort Henry, accompanied Colonel Daniel Brodhead and his 8th Pennsylvania Regiment of the Continental Army, combined with militia troops from Fort Pitt, to destroy ten tribal villages of the pro-British Seneca tribe in northeastern Pennsylvania during the Sullivan Expedition, in retaliation for the devastating Iroquois attacks in the Cobleskill, Wyoming Valley, and Cherry Valley massacres of 1778.

During this period, the frontier was a place of mounting social and political tension, as exemplified by events like the Whiskey Rebellion, which may have influenced Mason through the widespread discontent with federal taxes and central authority.

In the early 1790s, Mason moved his family to the Red Banks on the Ohio River, near present-day Henderson, Kentucky, where he began his full-time criminal activities.

Mason and his gang stayed at Cave-in-Rock until the summer of 1799, when they were expelled by the "Exterminators", a group of regulators under the leadership of Captain Young of Mercer County, Kentucky.

Although he claimed he was simply a farmer who had been maligned by his enemies, the peculiar presence of $7,000 in currency and twenty human scalps found in his baggage was the damning evidence that convinced the Spanish he was indeed a river pirate.

In the 1956 Walt Disney television series Davy Crockett and the River Pirates, a Hollywoodized version of Samuel Mason is portrayed by American actor Mort Mills, who appears alongside the Harpe brothers.

In the 1962 John Ford Western epic film How the West Was Won, a Samuel Mason-like frontier outlaw leader of a gang of river pirates is portrayed by Walter Brennan, as the fictional character of Colonel Jeb Hawkins, which alludes to the historical Cave-In-Rock.