by Allan Eckert
Your most obedt servt.,
G. R. Clark
Commander-in-Chief, Western Department
Virginia416
That the Northwest expedition being shaped up by Clark was sorely needed became clear to Gov. Jefferson as the weather warmed in spring and new droves of would-be settlers swarmed down the Ohio. There was a great and frightening increase of attacks by the Indians, especially the Shawnees, upon such boats, and the Ohio’s ominous sobriquet—that dark and bloody river—had never been more accurate.
The blow dealt to the Shawnees by Clark’s militia army last August had demoralized the tribe for a time, and the subsequent Indian attacks during the fall and winter had diminished. With the rebuilding and reoccupation of Chalahgawtha, however, the Shawnees seemed to have regained their confidence and now far more — and far more brutal—attacks were occurring than ever before.
It had become wise for river travelers to remain as close as possible to the Kentucky shore. Travelers in boats coming down along the Ohio side or even in the swift middle current of the river were apt to find themselves targets of Shawnee snipers who rarely showed themselves but were content with methodically picking off individuals in the boats as they floated past. And there were also times now when the seemingly peaceful river would come alive with a dozen or two warrior-filled canoes erupting from little coves or creek mouths to attack individual boats or even flotillas of craft traveling together for mutual security. More often than not there were no survivors.
Matters were little better in the interior of Kentucky and the temperament there was not improved by the fact that the Congress was calling for men to be drafted from the frontier to serve as Continental soldiers in the east. As Col. John Floyd, writing from Louisville in Jefferson County, informed Jefferson in his letter:
You require the Act of Assembly for recruiting this State’s quota of troops to serve in the Continental Army, to be carried into execution here, but for the reasons before mentioned it must be postponed. And when your excellency is informed of the true situation of this county, I am persuaded you will think the law ought not to have extended to it. We are all obliged to live in forts in this county, and notwithstanding all the caution that we use, forty-seven of the inhabitants have been killed and taken by the savages, besides a number wounded, since the first of January last. Amongst the slain is Major William Lyn [Linn]. Whole families are destroyed without regard to age or sex. Infants are torn from their mothers’ arms, and their brains dashed out against trees, as they are necessarily moving from one fort to another for safety or convenience. Not a week passes, and some weeks scarcely a day, without some of our distressed inhabitants feeling the fatal effect of the infernal rage & fury of these execrable blood-hounds. Our garrisons are dispersed over an extensive County and a large proportion of the inhabitants are helpless, indigent widows and orphans who have lost their husbands and fathers by savage hands, and left among strangers without the most common necessaries of life. Of those who have escaped, many have lost all their stocks, and some have not any land of their own, nor withal to purchase. Our dependence to support our families is upon getting wild meat, & this procured with great difficulty and danger, & should it fall to the lot of some in this County, who are thus situated, to serve as regular soldiers according to law, their families must inevitably starve.
[April 27, 1781—Friday]
Lewis Wetzel watched the last of the large squadron of boats beginning to disappear around the bend a mile above the Wheeling Landing and grinned, despite the pain throbbing in his swollen hands. His first participation in a regular military campaign was ended and he decided he never wanted to be part of another; if there was Indian fighting to be done, he preferred doing it on his own.
He still wasn’t entirely sure what prompted him to volunteer as a militia private under Col. Daniel Brodhead for the Coshocton Campaign unless it was the possibility of simply being able to enter Ohio country and kill Indians with relative impunity. The experience had definitely cured him of any further inclination to volunteer for military service.
He and William Boggs, 17, had happened to be in Wheeling earlier this month when the notices were posted that Col. Brodhead was on his way from Fort Pitt to Fort Henry with a force of regulars. Volunteers, the notice said, were needed to accompany the force on its march to destroy the towns of the hostile Indians on the Muskingum and Tuscarawas. At the same time, residents in surrounding areas were again urged to go to the nearest fort for safety, since word had been received that ever more parties of Wyandots were in the process of setting out from the Muskingum towns to strike the smaller settlements.
With so many men to be away on Brodhead’s campaign, settlers feared they would become even more vulnerable to attack, either in their own cabins or en route from one place to another. This situation was relieved in part by the arrival at Beeler’s Fort of a company of 53 volunteers—six-months men, as they were called—under Capt. Jeremiah Long. These men, for the next six months, would be parceled out to help guard the various settlements and also to guide and protect those people who had to travel. It helped, but there were still areas exposed to great danger.
Only a few days ago one of those war parties from the Muskingum, under a subchief named Mouse Knife, had struck a few miles above Wheeling, where they killed and scalped an old man and a child. That had occurred virtually on the heels of the attack everyone was now familiar with that had taken place at John Vanmetre’s cabin on Stott’s Run, a little tributary of Buffalo Creek.417
The raiding party of six Wyandots had crossed the Ohio at Short Creek, slipping out of the mouth of Indian Short Creek in their canoes and only minutes later, after crossing the Ohio, hiding their light boats only a distance up the Short Creek on the Virginia side, then striking out overland to the northeast. John Vanmetre was in Wheeling when the marauding party approached his cabin. His two daughters, Mary and Hannah, both in their early twenties, were at the nearby spring washing clothes. The sun bonnets they were wearing restricted their peripheral vision and made them wholly unaware of the Indians coming up behind them. They were simultaneously struck down by tomahawk blows and scalped. Mary was killed instantly. Hannah, though similarly tomahawked, scalped, and left for dead, regained consciousness and managed to crawl beneath the shelter of a large log.
John Vanmetre’s wife, Martha, hearing a slight noise outside and thinking it was her husband returning, opened the door and was instantly shot dead on the threshold. Their three sons—Isaac, 12, Abraham, 10, and Johnny, 6, were inside the cabin and the two older boys immediately leaped out through a small window in the rear and raced away, heading toward the not-far-distant Ramsey’s Fort. They were chased for a little while but managed to elude their pursuers. Johnny, who was too small to reach up to the window and pull himself through, was captured and taken away at once. The attackers immediately returned to Short Creek and crossed the river back into the Ohio country.418 An hour or so later a party of whites from Ramsey’s Fort, led by Andrew Fouts, reached the site and found Hannah unconscious but still alive. Half the whites stayed behind to bury the dead, while the others carried Hannah back to Ramsey’s Fort on a makeshift litter. She did not regain consciousness and died that night.
With an opportunity at hand to avenge such border attacks, Lewis Wetzel and Billy Boggs had impulsively volunteered for a period of militia service not to exceed two months. They became part of the force of 134 volunteers under Col. David Shepherd who joined Brodhead’s army when it arrived. That army, now swelled to 300 strong and—to Wetzel’s disgust—guided by Brodhead’s “pet” Indians, Andrew Montour and Captain Wilson, along with three friendly Delawares, crossed the Ohio the day after its arrival and took up a rapid march overland toward the principal Delaware village of Goschachgunk—called Coshocton by the whites—at the Forks of the Muskingum.
Brodhead’s army met no resistance on their way and saw no Indians. They arrived at Goschachgunk just after sunset on April 19, completely surprising t
he 56 hostile Delaware inhabitants—31 of them warriors—in their lodges. A number of others were in a scattering of lodges across the Muskingum, on its west bank, but they escaped.419 A brief, hot fight broke out but, with odds of about ten to one against the warriors, they had little chance. The warriors lost 15 of their number killed in the first few minutes of the fighting, and the remaining 16, along with 24 old men, women and children, surrendered. Not one soldier in Brodhead’s force was wounded and his only loss was one packhorse killed.
At the commander’s order, Goschachgunk was first plundered and then put to the torch. As the village burned, 40 head of cattle belonging to the Indians were killed and similarly a very large number of domestic chickens, ducks and geese. Col. Brodhead then directed the troops to hold a council of war to determine what should be done with the prisoners. It was decided that the 24 noncombatants would be marched back to Fort Pitt and held prisoner there for possible trade later on for white prisoners among the Indians. However, the 16 warriors who had surrendered were marched under heavy guard a short distance south of their camp and methodically executed and scalped, Lewis Wetzel and Billy Boggs participating in this grisly affair with great satisfaction.
The next morning an Indian called from across the Muskingum, asking for the big chief of the whites. Using Montour as interpreter, Brodhead asked what he wanted. The warrior called back saying they wanted peace and that Chief White Eyes would come over alone and talk if assured he would not be killed. Brodhead gave the promise and the warrior disappeared. Moments later old Chief White Eyes came into view, stepped into a canoe and began paddling across. The current of the Muskingum, swiftened by recent rains, swept him downstream farther than anticipated and he came ashore around a small bend several hundred yards below. As he beached the canoe and stepped out, then turned to walk to the white commander who was now out of sight behind trees and underbrush, Lewis Wetzel leaped from hiding and sank his tomahawk in the old chief’s skull, killing him instantly.
Brodhead was irked by the incident but was unable to discover who had committed the murder. Putting the matter behind him, he set his army in motion and marched up the east fork of the Muskingum—the Tuscarawas River. In four miles they came to the Delaware town called Indayochee.420 It was abandoned and Brodhead’s advance force reported to the commander that a hostile they captured there had told them that 40 warriors had been in the village the previous night. They had been drinking heavily in celebration of the successful raids from which they had just returned with a number of Virginia captives and scalps but, upon learning of the surprise attack and victory of the whites at Goschachgunk, they had crossed the Tuscarawas with their prisoners and trophies.
Brodhead immediately ordered a detachment to cross the river and follow, but the heavy rains farther upstream had so swollen the river that a crossing without boats was deemed impracticable and the detachment was recalled. Indayochee was looted and burned and here, too, large numbers of poultry were destroyed.
The army then moved upstream another seven miles and camped, Brodhead deciding he would attempt to procure boats from the Moravian Indians at Salem, which some were calling Newcomerstown, or Gnadenhütten in order to transport his troops across the Tuscarawas in pursuit of the Indians who had fled, possibly up to Schoenbrun, but more likely toward the Sandusky Towns.421 However, when Brodhead announced this plan to his troops, the volunteers were adamantly opposed, considered it nothing short of suicidal and said they were ready to head for home.
The army marched on to the Moravian village of Salem. By now the militiamen had concluded that all these Moravian villages were launching sites for many of the raids against the Virginia frontier and that they ought to destroy them and their inhabitants. Cols. Brodhead and Shepherd, however, quickly overruled such a notion and ordered that no one should in any way attempt to harm them.
There were 30 Moravian Indians on hand when they arrived at the Salem mission, and they treated the army very cordially, generously providing the men with a sufficient supply of cured meat and corn to sustain them until they reached the Ohio River again. Chief Killbuck presented himself to Brodhead, and they shook hands warmly. This was the converted Delaware who had so often in the past sent intelligence to the Americans about the activities of the hostiles.
Killbuck told Brodhead that he and another Delaware convert of Salem, Captain Luzern, having been informed of the attack on Goschachgunk and the flight of the hostile Delawares from Indayochee, had immediately pursued the latter and managed to overtake and kill a subchief named Kopechi, who had been prominent in leading many of the recent raids against the Virginia settlers. Killbuck presented Kopechi’s scalp to Col. Brodhead as proof of his feat and of his continued support of the Americans. He asked and received permission to return to Fort Pitt with the army. However, noting the hard looks Killbuck was getting from many of the militia, who considered him a treacherous man, Brodhead—remembering how White Eyes had been slain—placed a protective guard of his regulars around him.
At both Newcomerstown and Gnadenhütten, Brodhead conferred with the Moravian missionaries and their converts. “I strongly advise you people,” he told them, “and this goes for those upstream at Schoenbrun, to leave this valley. You are in a dangerous position between two fires and you would be very wise, for your own safety, to break up these settlements and return with us to Fort Pitt.”
The offer was appreciated but declined, the missionaries stating that no matter where they were nor in what circumstances, God would protect them as faithful members of His flock. Brodhead simply shrugged and resumed the homeward march.
Yesterday—April 26—the army reached Fort Henry at Wheeling, jubilant at their own successful return. The plunder that had been taken at Goschachgunk and Indayochee was auctioned and brought in £80. The militia was discharged, the regulars bivouacked, and then, for their own protection, Brodhead ordered that Killbuck and the Indian prisoners be placed in the guardhouse for the night.
Lewis Wetzel and Billy Boggs watched closely and then put their heads together. Fifteen-year-old Jacob Wetzel joined them. Lewis declared that he had been watching Killbuck closely ever since the Indian had joined them at Newcomerstown and had become convinced Killbuck was one of the party of Indians who had shot him and then captured him and Jacob four years ago. He proposed that they kill him. Boggs, who had also been a captive of the Indians some years ago, thought it a great idea. Jacob, however, objected, pointing out that the Indians who had captured Lewis and himself had been Wyandots and Killbuck was a Delaware, but this reasoning was wasted on his older brother.
Late in the evening, when the militia guard opened the guardhouse door to carry in food, Lew Wetzel and Billy Boggs slipped inside behind him, tomahawks concealed under their hunting shirts. Lewis quickly located Killbuck, who was sharing a room with his namesake nephew, Young Killbuck. The two lads walked in and, before the Delawares were even aware they were in any danger, Lewis buried his tomahawk to its shaft in Killbuck’s skull. Young Killbuck, convinced he was to share the same fate, began crooning the ululating tones of the death song and bent his head down to receive the death blow. Lewis, however, was unable to free his tomahawk from Killbuck’s skull and, after a few moments of trying to pull it free, left it embedded and both he and Billy ran out.
It was about nine P.M. when Col. Brodhead was presented with the murder weapon and informed of what had occurred. He was furious and immediately made extensive inquiries but no one could—or would—identify the tomahawk’s owner and, though several people admitted Lewis Wetzel was the most likely candidate to have committed such an act, no one came forth as an actual witness. Nevertheless, Brodhead sent out a squad of soldiers to bring Wetzel to him for questioning.
From midnight until about two o’clock this morning, the 17-year-old Wetzel was questioned but denied any involvement in the matter. From two A.M. until dawn, the questioning continued with sterner measures. A thumbscrew was brought into use and screwed down first on his thumbs and t
hen his fingers, one by one, causing excruciating pain and considerable tissue damage, yet through it all, young Wetzel maintained his stance of knowing nothing about the murder of Killbuck.
In the end, muttering a few dire threats, Col. Brodhead finally released Wetzel, turned the tomahawk over to Col. Ebenezer Zane with instructions to continue trying to find the owner, then gave his troops orders to prepare to leave for Fort Pitt. Lewis Wetzel walked down toward the Wheeling Landing and watched expressionlessly as the blanket-wrapped body of Killbuck was sunk in the Ohio River. He remained there, continuing to watch as the troops got the boats ready and then finally placed the Delaware prisoners aboard and embarked upstream.
Now, watching the last of those boats disappear around the bend to the north, the tall, dark-haired young man lifted his badly swollen hands and looked at them. He grinned crookedly and shook his head.
“Reckon it’ll be a little while,” he muttered, “ ’fore I do any reloadin’ on the run.”
[June 17, 1781—Sunday]
Talgayeeta—Chief Logan—approached his cabin on the headwaters of the Scioto with no suspicion that anything was amiss. This was the cabin that Simon Kenton and Simon Girty had helped him build two years ago during that brief time when Girty had temporarily rescued Kenton from captivity.422