That Dark and Bloody River

by Allan Eckert

  “They ain’t takin’ me,” Wetzel murmured, checking the prime in his flintlock’s pan and popping a few extra lead balls into his mouth.

  “Surely you’re not aiming to shoot United States soldiers, are you?” The boat’s captain was aghast.

  “They try to take me,” Wetzel murmured grimly, “they damn well better start prayin’.”

  Intent upon the approaching boat and warning them to stay clear or pay the price, Wetzel did not see the flatboat captain signal his crew and, before he realized what was happening, he was grabbed from behind by the burliest of the six, and the captain snatched the flintlock from his grasp. Wetzel cursed and fought savagely, and it took all six crewmen and their captain to subdue him. By that time the canoe had overtaken them, and Wetzel, coldly furious with his hands tied behind him, was put aboard the smaller craft and quickly returned to Fort Harmar. None of the soldiers mentioned the reward for Wetzel’s capture and the flatboat, at its captain’s command, simply continued floating on its long downstream journey.

  Now, hours later and cloaked by a vast depression, Lewis Wetzel sat morosely in the same guardhouse where he’d been 11 days earlier, outside the main enclosure of the pickets. But this time the military were taking no chances on his escaping again. The sentence of hanging had been reaffirmed, and immediately he had been shackled with cuffs of heavy iron attached to one another with an equally heavy two-foot length of chain. The door was strongly bolted from the outside, and a guard posted there to prohibit anyone approaching the single barred window.

  A steady rain had begun falling just after sunset, and now, darkness having fallen, it continued with persistent, melancholy droning. Wetzel went to the little window and called to the guard in a low voice.

  “Hey, soldier, I got to go.”

  “So go,” the guard said, coming closer. “No one’s stopping you.”

  “They din’t leave no bucket or pot,” Wetzel said, “an’ I really got to go bad.”

  “Well, just piss on the floor.”

  “Pissin’ ain’t what a gotta do. C’mon”—he put an urgent tone to it—“have a heart. This is a small room, an’ it ain’t right t’make me have t’smell my own business all night. So how ’bout it? Just let me out long enough t’go, or I’m gonna’ bust.”

  The guard gave in. He moved to the door and unbolted it, then opened it with one hand, rifle held alertly waist high and pointed at the prisoner. Wetzel emerged hesitantly, the chains clinking faintly as he walked. He paused outside the door and stood with head raised high, letting the rain wash over his face.

  “God, that feels good,” he murmured. Then he moved around to the backside of the small building, the guard only a couple of paces behind, gun still leveled at his prisoner’s back. As soon as they were behind the building and a few paces into the weeds, Wetzel reached to his belt as if to open it and lower his pants. Instead he gripped the double length of chain in both hands and, as the guard averted his eyes to afford Wetzel some privacy, the frontiersman swung the chain in a short vicious arc that caught the guard on his temple and whipped solidly to the back of his head. With only a faint wheezing sound, the guard fell unconscious upon his own gun and, not pausing an instant, Wetzel was off and running, cupping the chain in his hands so its rattling would not betray him.

  He ran to the west, occasionally stumbling in the dark, wondering how long it would be before the guard was found or regained consciousness and the alarm sounded. He did not have long to wait. Before he had gone 300 yards, he heard voices coming faintly behind him and he pushed on even faster, thankful for the rain that was masking his trail.

  At Fort Harmar the alarm had indeed been raised. The guard, having regained consciousness, tried to fire his rifle to attract attention, but the powder had become wet and would not ignite. Staggering, he ran toward headquarters, and soon the whole place was in an uproar. Gen. Harmar, who was holding a private council with some of the more important chiefs, was livid with fury over Wetzel’s second escape and ordered an intensive search by the whole garrison. At the same time he told the chiefs to set their warriors on the trail, and if they found Lewis Wetzel, they could do as they pleased with him and he would neither object nor interfere.

  Wetzel, by this time a mile west of the fort and a few hundred yards from the banks of the Ohio, tumbled headlong over a large fallen tree. The rooted end projected into the air and was heavily overgrown with brambles. As he pulled himself back to his hands and knees, his hands encountered a large cavity on the lower side of the tree. He reached out and explored it further in the darkness and found it was large enough to hold him. He slid inside feet first and squirmed deep inside until he was all but out of sight.

  Less than an hour later he heard the murmur of voices approaching that soon resolved themselves into an Indian dialect. All senses keenly alert, Wetzel thought about what he would do if he were discovered. His only chance would be to grapple with the warrior who found him and try to get his weapon from him. He braced his legs to catapult himself from his hiding place if it became necessary. The voices came closer, and he heard the scuff of feet as one or two Indians stepped up on the log that sheltered him. One came to a stop directly over his hiding place, and he hardly dared breathe, but the darkness kept his haven undetected and the warriors, after a few words to one another, moved off.

  Relieved, Lewis Wetzel relaxed and considered his options. Getting across the big river was clearly his only chance. He was a strong swimmer, but he knew it would be courting disaster to attempt to swim across the Ohio with the weight of the chain and wrist irons hampering him, especially as cool as the river waters had become this late in the season. So the first order of business with the dawn would be to try to rid himself of his irons or, failing that, to locate a boat. If that were not possible, he would have to find a buoyant piece of driftwood and cling to it as he kicked his way across and hope he wouldn’t become chilled beyond functioning.

  Satisfied with his plan, Wetzel grinned, realizing with some amusement that his depression had lifted and he felt good again. He leaned his head against his arms and dozed.

  [November 21, 1788—Friday]

  Lewis Wetzel stood boldly on the shore watching the big canoe filled with Indians approaching. There was a wicked fire in his eyes, and his familiar grin had returned. When it was still 200 yards distant, he called again, repeating the words that had initially brought them toward him from the riverfront before Fort Harmar.

  “C’mon, you red bastards! You’re lookin’ for Lew Wetzel, you’ve damn well found ’im. You think a bunch o’red niggers’ll make me turn an’ run? C’mon!”

  As they shouted back at him angrily and waved their tomahawks in the air, he thought of how lucky he had been this morning, even though it hadn’t started out that way. At the very first vague light of dawn, he had slipped from his hiding place in the log and carefully, watchfully, moved down to the Ohio River shore. Casting about for some way to possibly remove his irons, he had spied a large rock on shore and gone to it, then spent a half-hour pulling the chain back and forth across a jagged edge before giving up without having made the least headway.

  Even more cautiously he had moved back along the shore, keeping to cover, searching, hoping to find a canoe drawn up on the shore. There was none and, as he came closer to the mouth of the Muskingum, he could hear voices of soldiers and Indians. He melted back into deeper cover and retraced his steps farther downstream. Two miles below the fort, his flagging spirits rose as he saw a small boat in the river ahead: It was a canoe with a man in it, evidently white, his hand moving up and down as he bounced a weighted and baited line along the bottom, no doubt trying to catch a catfish. Wetzel’s spirits suddenly soared when, after coming closer and peering from cover, he recognized the man—his old friend Isaac Williams, whose place was across the river.684

  “Isaac! Ike!”

  The fisherman looked up, startled, reaching for his rifle. “Who is it?”

  “Lew. Lew Wetzel. C’mon in
, Ike. I got t’git t’the other side or I’m a goner.”

  Williams had come to shore then and picked him up, and together they had gone to his place, where Williams, using a file and hammer, finally freed Lewis of his irons. Then Wetzel asked if he could have back the flintlock he had sold Williams some months ago. “I’ll see you get your money back for it soon’s I can,” he had promised.

  “No, you don’t have t’do that, Lew,” Williams had said, shaking his head. “I’m glad t’let you have it. Jest don’t tell no one where at y’got it.”

  Williams had furnished him not only with a gun but with shot pouch and powderhorn, knife and tomahawk, plus a blanket. Then he listened while Lewis told him what he was going to do, now that he had a rifle again. Wanting no part of it and strongly advising against it, the settler had wished him luck and quickly gone away. That was when Wetzel had returned to the riverbank and, concealing his gun in a bush close at hand, had called across to the Indians he saw on the far shore, identified himself and shouted the insults that he knew would bring them toward him.

  Now, seeing him as unarmed, they approached within range. Wetzel leaned over almost casually and extracted his rifle from the bush. He methodically aimed and put a bullet through the heart of the warrior in the bow, who toppled into the river and disappeared. There was immediate consternation in the canoe as the Indians tried to shield themselves by ducking and, at the same time, paddle out of range as quickly as possible.

  It was not quickly enough. With the swiftness for which he was noted, Wetzel reloaded and immediately brought down another of the warriors with a bullet through the head. He, too, fell overboard. Wetzel loaded a third time and fired, but by now the canoe was drawing out of range, and though he hit and wounded another, who fell into the boat, he doubted that the wound was mortal.

  As the canoe moved back into midriver and somewhat downstream, Wetzel bowed extravagantly, waved and then loped up the bank and disappeared into the brush.

  [December 7, 1788—Sunday]

  The competitive shoot in progress at the Mingo Bottom Settlement this bright Sunday had attracted bordermen from many miles up and down the river, not only because of the frontier skills competition, which they always enjoyed, but because it was known that Lewis Wetzel would be on hand.

  The story of Wetzel’s escape from jail at Fort Harmar, not once but twice, had been on everyone’s lips, and their admiration for this indomitable 24-year-old frontiersman was boundless. Which was why, in the midst of the competition today, the jovial atmosphere suddenly turned ugly when it was learned that a detachment of soldiers from Fort Harmar were approaching to take Wetzel into custody and return him to the mouth of the Muskingum to be hanged. The bordermen quickly had a meeting, and within minutes they made an angry and all but unanimous resolve: They would ambush the detachment and kill them all.

  The officer in charge of the detachment of 30 soldiers in three canoes was Capt. Jacob Kingsbury. He had been summoned by Gen. Harmar the morning after Wetzel’s second escape and less than half an hour after the report was brought to headquarters that Wetzel had just killed two more Indians and wounded a third who were crossing the Ohio to capture him. Though Kingsbury had been in Harmar’s command for a considerable while, he had never seen his general so infuriated. Wetzel had last been seen heading upriver on shore, presumably to return to his old haunts in the Wheeling area. Gen. Harmar had then ordered Capt. Kingsbury to take 30 men and pursue the fugitive and the sense was implicit in the order, if not spoken, that he had better not return without him … or at least his body.

  Capt. Kingsbury’s detachment had stopped first at Grave Creek, where they spent two days searching the area and questioning the Tomlinsons and other residents but with unsatisfactory results, except that one settler mentioned he had heard Wetzel was in Wheeling. That had been the detachment’s next stop, but again without success. Various rumors put Wetzel at Shepherd’s Fort, Vanmetre’s, Holliday’s Cove, Washington village, even Pittsburgh. Acting on a hunch that the fugitive might simply have gone home, the detachment ascended Wheeling Creek first to Shepherd’s Fort at the Forks, then upstream another seven miles to the Wetzel place. Lew Wetzel, they learned, had been there a week ago but was gone now. At Lewis Bonnett’s place, where they checked next, they were advised to try at Washington village, but again it hadn’t panned out, and now it was becoming apparent that these settlers were very much pro-Wetzel and had been deliberately misdirecting the pursuers.

  At last, having been gone from Fort Harmar for over a fortnight, Capt. Kingsbury finally got a reliable tip: Lewis Wetzel was going to participate in the frontier competition at Mingo Bottom. He headed there at once, cautioning his men to be prepared for anything, though he hardly expected to run into anything so drastic as an ambush directed against himself and his men.

  When the three canoes touched ashore at Mingo Bottom a few minutes ago and Kingsbury stepped ashore, he saw that the targets were all set up. There were numerous on shore canoes, but no one was visible. For the first time Kingsbury felt stirrings of apprehension, and he ordered his men to stay in the boats but keep their weapons at ready. A moment later two unarmed men emerged from the woods nearby and strode toward them. One was Maj. William McMahan of Beech Bottom Settlement. The other was Lewis Wetzel.

  “Sir,” Kingsbury said when the pair stopped 20 feet from him, “I hope you have approached to surrender Mr. Wetzel, who is a fugitive from justice, as I have orders from the commanding general to take him into custody and return him to Fort Harmar, where he is to be executed for killing Indians.”

  “To attempt doing so, Captain Kingsbury,” McMahan said mildly, “would be a very serious mistake. I arrived here myself only a short time ago and found that the more than one-hundred-fifty men gathered here have determined to prevent you from doing any such thing. They had planned to ambush you as your detachment stepped ashore, and I have managed to prevail upon them to hold their fire until I could inform you of the situation and give you an opportunity to peaceably withdraw.”

  Capt. Kingsbury lifted his hand and pointed it at Wetzel. “I’m sorry, sir, but this man is guilty of murder and has been sentenced to be hanged. I have my orders; I must take him in.”

  McMahan shook his head. “Perhaps you didn’t fully understand me, Captain. The men here are all excellent shots. They have, all of them, at one time or another lost family members or friends to the marauding Indians, and they do not consider it a crime to kill the people who brought such tragedy into their lives. They have attached to Mr. Wetzel the stature of a hero—deservedly so, I should add—and should you and your men attempt to take him against his will, they will open fire, and you and your men will surely be killed.”

  Kingsbury licked his lips and glanced about nervously, then let his gaze settle on the fugitive. “Mr. Wetzel,” he said, “I must ask you now if you will surrender yourself to us voluntarily.”

  “Hell no, I won’t,” Wetzel said, grinning.

  “We will then,” the captain said, returning his attention to the militia major, “have to take this man into custody by force. I cannot believe, sir, that your people here—assuming that they are, in fact, here—would presume to raise their weapons against a detachment of the United States Army in the performance of its legal orders.”

  “I commend you, Captain Kingsbury,” Maj. McMahan said, an edge to his voice now, “on your intention to faithfully execute your orders, as well as on your courage, but I do not think you have yet fully comprehended the gravity of your position.” He raised his right hand high and issued a shrill whistle.

  Instantly just over 150 bordermen stepped into sight from the cover behind which they had been hidden, their rifles trained unwaveringly at the detachment. Capt. Kingsbury paled noticeably.

  “At least five rifles are aimed at every member of your party, Captain,” McMahan went on as he lowered his arm, “including yourself. If I raise my arm again, they will fire and, I assure you, marksmen that they are, few if any will
miss. Nothing, at this point, will save you and your men from massacre except a very hasty return to Fort Harmar. You now have to the count of ten to return to your men and push off from shore. If you have not done so by the time I reach that number, I promise you, I will raise my arm. One … two … three … four …”

  Grim-faced, Capt. Kingsbury turned about and strode back to his canoe, entered it and ordered his men to shove off. They did so as Maj. McMahan’s count reached eight. The captain turned and regarded the fugitive as the current gripped the three canoes and sent them downstream.

  “Mr. Wetzel,” he called, “you have humiliated General Harmar, and he is not a man who will forgive and forget. My advice to you is to leave this country as quickly as you can.”

  [January 9, 1789—Friday]

  The peace talks that had been going on at Fort Harmar since December 13 finally came to an end today, to the apparent satisfaction of no one except Gov. Arthur St. Clair and Gen. Josiah Harmar, both of whom deluded themselves into thinking something of significance had been accomplished. It had not.

  With the Miamis—including all their subtribes—and the Shawnees and Kickapoos still maintaining an attitude of war with the United States and the other tribes still vacillating among themselves about whether to side with them, remain neutral or make peace with the Americans, the fragile unity between the tribes was rapidly disintegrating. To a large extent, that was what the United States was hoping for: By fueling the differences and magnifying the grievances developing between the tribes, they were seriously undermining the Confederacy among them. What this might mean, in the end, was exactly as George Washington had outlined in his master plan—that when the time came for the United States to take harsh measures against the tribes standing in the way, as it most assuredly would, the enemy would be only one or two tribes instead of a powerful union of them all.