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Well, I attended the yearly Shortline Reunion in Wetzel County -
home of Lewis Wetzel Park, Lewis Wetzel Wildlife Management Area, Lewis
Wetzel Personal Care Center, etc. - and it struck me that my boyhood
home probably is the only county in America named for a deadly killer
who hunted humans, stalking them like prey.
Lewis Wetzel, called "Deathwind," was a hero to pioneer Ohio
Valley settlers in the late 1700s because he exterminated raiding
Indians and brought back their scalps. Later in life, he became
controversial, seen by some as a madman. Regardless, he holds a solid
spot in West Virginia's history.
The State Archives at the Cultural Center has a dozen books and
historical treatises about him, and several others have been written.
Western novelist Zane Grey - a descendant of Zane's who helped found
Wheeling and Zanesville, Ohio - made the dark, silent Wetzel a central
figure in three books: Betty Zane, The Spirit of the Border and The Last
Trail. From several of these sources, I gleaned this account: Wetzel's
father came from southwest Germany as an indentured servant and married a
military captain's daughter, with whom he had seven children as they
lived on farms in colonial Virginia and Pennsylvania.
In 1768, the Iroquois signed a treaty with British governors giving
whites all land east of the Ohio River as far south as the Kanawha.
However, the land wasn't occupied by the Iroquois, but by Shawnee,
Miami and Delaware clans, who didn't want to surrender their homeland.
Settler families rushed to get free land under the treaty. The
Wetzels carved out a farm on Big Wheeling Creek about 14 miles from the
Ohio.
But the newcomers suffered frequent Indian attacks. Frontier families learned to fight to survive.
When Lewis was 13, Indians raided his farm, wounded him with a
bullet that grazed his chest, and hauled him and a younger brother into
captivity, swimming the Ohio to Indian territory. On the third night,
the captors relaxed their guard, and the boys sneaked barefoot out of
the camp. Lewis sneaked back to steal moccasins drying by a fire, then
sneaked back again to retrieve his father's flintlock and powder, which
had been taken in the raid. Upon their return to the settlement, they
were hailed as heroes.
The following year, Lewis helped a neighbor pursue and kill four
Indians who had abducted the neighbor's wife. They returned with four
scalps and the unhurt wife. This tale was recounted in an 1850 book, The
Forest Rose.
Two years later, Wetzel joined a posse of settlers who went into
Ohio to recover stolen horses. Eventually, the others quit the chase,
leaving the 16-year-old to face the Indians alone. By this time, the
muscular youth had developed combat skills. He waggled his hat from
behind a tree, and when Indians fired, he pretended to fall dead. As the
Indians approached, he rose suddenly and shot the nearest. Then he
fled, reloading the flintlock on the run - an extremely difficult feat -
and whirled and shot the next pursuer. The others ran off. Wetzel
returned to the settlement with two scalps and the lost horses.
Apparently, the young man made a vow to spend the rest of his life
killing Indians. Historian James Pierce wrote in The Early America
Review (Spring 1997): "From then on, Lewis Wetzel lived primarily as an
Indian hunter. He never 'settled down.' He never took up land, built a
cabin of his own, farmed, or did any other sort of usual work. There's
no record of him ever forming a permanent relationship with a woman.
They said he was a good fiddle player who was always welcome in taverns
and at dances. He got along well with dogs and children, but not so much
so with adults..
..
"Mainly, he roamed the forests across the Ohio country hunting
Indians and carrying out one-man raids.... Between 1779 and 1788, he
collected the scalps of 27 Indians that he said he personally killed.
"Accounts of his exploits as told by others put the total at more than 100." Some tribes called him "Deathwind," a lethal force flowing silently through the forest.
Wetzel served as a guide for land speculators venturing into unsafe
regions. "Indians killed John Madison, brother of future President James
Madison, in the spring of 1786 while he was traveling with Wetzel on a
land surveying expedition along the Little Kanawha River in today's West
Virginia," Pierce wrote. He continued: "As the years passed, Wetzel
became more and more eccentric. He took to wearing tassels in his split
earlobes. His carefully tended hair, when combed out, hung almost to his
knees. He said he wanted to give his enemies a scalp worth the effort
it would take to get it. Indian fighting became the sole focus of his
life. People became even more uncomfortable with him; they began to
doubt his sanity." As the Revolution ravaged the eastern seaboard,
Wetzel ravaged Indians inland. He bitterly opposed efforts to negotiate
peace treaties with the natives, because he wanted to destroy them all.
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