An Elk River Boy made good

Lewis Wetzel Chronicles

In the late 1700s, Indians could attack settlements in present day West Virginia, burn some cabins, kidnap some people, steal some stuff, and feel safe once they crossed the Ohio River.

Before Lewis Wetzel, that is.

When Lewis was a young man, he was a likeable enough fellow to have around. The older he got, however, the crazier he got and with each passing year he became more eccentric. He had tassels hanging from his split earlobes. He grew his hair down to his knees so that any Indian who took his scalp would have a scalp worth the extra effort it would take to kill him. Everybody knew he was a nut, but folks were glad to have him around.

Wetzel was a scout during Virginia Col. Daniel Brodhead's campaign against the Delaware on the Muskingum River in 1781. General George Washington himself had ordered the expedition to maintain some control over the Ohio River while the Continental Army fought the British farther east.

There were the typical Indian-warfare attrocities, Brodhead burned the Delaware village of Coshocton and killed 15 Delaware warriors after they had surrendered. The Delaware took nine Kentuckians they'd captured and burned them at the stake.

With the young nation fighting for its independence, the last thing Washington needed was Indian uprising in Ohio, so the official policy was to crush the British-allied Indians if possible, but more importantly, make peace if possible.

So when a Delaware chief agreed to negotiate terms of peace, it was good news for America. The chief had been invited to the American camp in a white-flag sort of arrangement. As the chief arrived at the camp and got out of his canoe, Wetzel ran up behind him and killed him with a tomahawk blow to the head. The result was disastrous, but the rank-and-file militiaman was so supportive of Wetzel, Brodhead could not punish him.

When Marietta was founded in 1788, General Josiah Harmar, who commanded the army fort at Marietta, Fort Harmar, needed the best woodsman and Indian fighter he could find to work as a scout and hunter. His No. 1 choice, obviously, was Wetzel, who took the job.

At the time, Fort Harmar was the setting of the negotiations that would lead to the Treaty of Fort Harmar, an extremely important treaty that governed the federal government's Indian policy from the Ohio to present-day Minnesota.

Among the Indians in Marietta for the negotiations were the Senecas and among them was Tegunteh, an important leader who had worked for years making peace between the Americans and the Senecas. The negotiations were very sensitive and had been in the workings for years. One morning, Tegunteh left the Seneca camp to resume negotiations at the fort. He never arrived. He was found laying alone along a trail with a mortal gunshot wound, his scalp cut and ripped from his skull. He lived long enough to tell a story everyone knew had to be true: as he walked to the Fort alone, Wetzel stepped out onto the trail and shot him, scalped him and left him for dead. He described Wetzel well, including the tri-color hat he was wearing and the evil grin on his face as he assualted Tegunteh.

Some might say that Wetzel killed the wrong Indian, that he simply wasn't thinking or didn't realize the Indian he was attacking was a vital negotiator. Wetzel, however, knew exactly what he was doing. Tegunteh was a key figure of peace, something Wetzel abhorred and it was cold-blooded murder, even by the standards of his day, to de-rail peace negotiations and get the Indians in uprising again.

At that point, Wetzel, as far as the federal government was concerned, was public enemy No. 1. Wetzel had this god-like complex, so instead of fleeing, he just camped on an island near town (maybe Buckley Island) ­ and the army just went over there and captured him. They put Wetzel in chains... that's where we'll pick up next week.