That Dark and Bloody River

by Allan Eckert

  Tecumseh looked at his nephew. “When I left the tribe,” he replied slowly, “and took these people with me, I told Catahecassa that if he and the other Shawnee chiefs should put their names to the treaty, our temporary severance from the tribe would become permanent. That has now taken place. I would not return to the villages even were I welcome, because I could not live with what is in my heart and mind and still abide by the leadership of Catahecassa. Our chief has been a satisfactory chief since the death of Chiungalla, but he is weary of war and thinks he is best serving our people by ceding lands instead of lives.” He shrugged faintly. “Perhaps he is correct, but I cannot live with that. This was—is—our land, and it is here that the bones of our fathers and our fathers’ fathers are buried, and if we cannot protect what is ours, what is left to us? No, Spemica Lawba,” he went on, shaking his head sadly, “I will not return to our villages. I will go above the treaty line on the Great Miami, but in a village of my own making, and perhaps not for long.

  “Wehyehpihehrsehnwah,” he said, turning to Blue Jacket, “it has been good seeing you again. And you, Chiuxca. And my good friend, Chaubenee, and our new young friend, Sauganash. Though the news has been painful, I thank you for bringing it.”

  Tecumseh stood and walked to the doorway of the wegiwa and heard the whistling of a chilling wind beyond the buffalo-hide flap. He stood with his back to the others, but they said nothing, knowing he was not yet finished with what he had to say. When he turned back to them he looked no less grim and his voice was laced with a determination as chilling as the wind outside.

  “Only this do I have left to say: My heart is a stone, heavy with sadness for my people; cold in the knowledge that no treaty will keep the whites out of our small lands that we are now left with; hard with the determination to resist for so long as I live and breathe. Now we are weak, and many of our people are afraid. But hear me: A single twig breaks easily, but the bundle of twigs is strong. Someday I will embrace our brother tribes and draw them into a bundle, and together we will win our country back from the whites.”

  Blue Jacket studied him with a piercing gaze and then finally nodded. “I think maybe you will,” he said softly.830

  [January 1, 1799—Monday]

  Peace!

  A new decade was beginning, and at last there was peace in the land; peace in western Pennsylvania and Virginia and Kentucky; peace in the Ohio country and in the Indiana and Illinois territories to the west. And there was peace on the Ohio River. No longer would boats afloat on its never-ending current be subject to sudden and vicious attack. No longer would Indians appearing on its shores be shot merely for being there. No longer would its meandering thousand-mile length be stained with the lifeblood of those who had tried for so long to hold it and those who had finally succeeded in taking it.

  No longer need this sinuous liquid highway to the west be called “that dark and bloody river.”

  There were people who had come along whose lives had become inextricably intertwined with the convolutions of the great river and whose names would evermore be associated with it, whether for good or for bad; Zane, Hokolesqua, Wetzel, Shepherd, Pucksinwah, Greathouse, Monakaduto, Girty, Talgayeeta, Edgington, Pimoacan, McCulloch, Wingenund, Tomlinson, Tarhe, Crawford, Chiungalla, Kenton, Catahecassa, Clark, Shemeneto, Gibson, Bilderback, Tecumseh, Cresap, Thayendanegea, Boone, Blue Jacket, Céloron, Chiksika, Williamson, Cornplanter, Parchment, Michikiniqua, Gist, Montour, Heckewelder, Red Hawk, Plukkemehnotee, Hardin, Netawatwees, Harmar, Scare the World, Knight, Poe, Nonhelema, McKee, Moluntha, Washington, Cuppy, Sagoyewatha, McIntosh, Yellow Hawk, Bonnett, Skootekitehi, Buckangehela, Elliott, White Eyes, Zeisberger, Scotach, Wayne, Brodhead, St. Clair, Slover, White Loon, May, Baker, Croghan, Washburn, Van Swearingen and so many more, including, of course, Brady.

  Samuel Brady heard about the Greenville Treaty early in September and, as so many others were doing, he rejoiced in the peace that had come to the Ohio Valley. It was, however, a quiet rejoicing, expressed in a satisfied smile and a few words of thankfulness from his rocking chair, because Capt. Sam Brady was not a well man.

  The fall he had taken during the Stillwater Creek deer hunt, when he had struck his head and lain unconscious for so long in the icy waters, had left its mark on him. The cold he had developed as a result of it was very severe, and he had been feverish for a long time. Even when, for a few weeks, he seemed to be getting better, he was still so weak and achy that he could barely move about in his own house. Then, gradually, the cold had come back, and the fever with it, and he suffered badly from the effects, becoming pale and gaunt. Week after week, the cold hung on and then even worsened, eventually developing into pleurisy. By September he was more or less confined to his favorite rocking chair, swathed in blankets and able to eat little more than thin soup. By mid-October he was severely emaciated and bedridden, deeply exasperated with this illness that had hung on so long and that had now incapacitated him, making him dependent upon Drusilla for everything. In late November his fever became worse, and he lapsed frequently into delirium. In mid-December he sat up in bed and clasped his wife’s hand.

  “Our boys …,” he whispered, voice croaky and tremulous, “Dusy, our boys won’t … won’t have to go through what we did.”

  Her eyes overbright, Drusilla shook her head and squeezed his hand. “No, Sam, they won’t. There’s peace in the Ohio Valley now, thanks to you.”

  A faint glimmer of a smile tilted the corners of his mouth, and for a moment a little light of animation came into his eyes. He sank back onto his pillow, and his words were barely audible. “I … I helped, Dusy. I helped it happen.”

  “More than just helped, Sam,” she murmured.

  Brady didn’t hear her, having slipped into unconsciousness as she replied. He continued to fade and had only a few periods of lucidity until Christmas Day, when he became comatose. Still, he hung on.

  Then today, on this first day of a new decade, his breathing became increasingly sporadic, and late in the afternoon 43-year-old Samuel Brady exhaled a final time and died.

  Epilogue

  [October 2, 1811—Monday]

  Among the major eastern rivers of the United States, from the great Mississippi eastward, none resisted discovery and exploration longer than the Ohio River; nor did any other become the scene of such prolonged violence and bloodshed in its conquest as that which occurred along the Ohio’s thousand-mile course before emptying into the midsection of the Mississippi.

  Now, at last, with what was occurring this day at the place where the great Ohio River is formed by the confluence of the Allegheny River from the north and the Monongahela River from the south—at the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—it could be said that a whole new era in the river’s history was beginning.

  No longer was this great stream the perilous ribbon of water through the wilderness it had so long been; no longer the treacherous, terror-filled river that had so long run red with the blood of red men and white alike.

  There had been many changes since the Greenville Treaty 16 years ago, but they had been very gradual changes—faster than in the previous, strife-filled years but relatively slow nonetheless. Gradually the familiar faces began to disappear, the faces of those who had carved their places into the history of this great valley. The names would always be there, a reminder of times that were and the heroism and cowardice, the compassion and brutality, the desperation and perseverance that it took to mold this once-wild frontier into a tamer land and direct it into an altogether different future; not necessarily one that was better but certainly one that was enormously different.

  One of the molders of the future, who had been absent for a long while, finally returned late in 1797. The hopes that had been raised in the mind and heart of Lewis Wetzel by the visit made to him by David Bradford in the New Orleans prison had almost drained away as month after month passed with no further word from him. It had all begun to seem like a cruel trick that had been played on him by the fates to inten
sify his misery.

  When Bradford returned to the upper Ohio, and it became known where Wetzel was, various steps were immediately made to get him freed. A petition had been sent to the Spanish governor in New Orleans asking for Wetzel’s liberation, but no notice was taken of it. Philip Doddridge attempted to bribe Spanish authorities with a $1,000 offer for Wetzel’s release, but he found no takers. Francis McGuire tried the same thing with an offer of $2,000 and similarly failed. Then President Washington was asked to intervene in his behalf. Whether he would have done so, none could say, because as it turned out, he didn’t have to. In December 1796, after five years and five months in the prison, Lewis Wetzel had suddenly and surreptitiously been freed.

  It had ultimately been the doing of David Bradford as well as the many friends and relatives Wetzel had on the upper Ohio. Bradford had returned to New Orleans with the considerable funds that he was able to collect from those who wished to aid Lewis Wetzel, and the lawyer had many meetings with the Spanish governor, winning his respect and confidence, even friendship. The governor finally agreed to help effect Wetzel’s release, but he said the only way it could be done was to quietly spirit him away and see that it was reported that he was dead. For his own part, Wetzel would have to go along with the clandestine scheme and immediately, upon release from the prison, leave the Spanish Dominion forever. This was done. He was smuggled out of the prison, provided with a new set of clothing and sent on his way.831 He walked all the way upriver to Natchez and remained there for a while and then continued all the way back to Wheeling, to the great joy of his family and friends.

  But the upper Ohio that Lewis Wetzel returned to was not the upper Ohio that he had left. People moved about freely on and near the river, without fear for their lives, and Indians were rarely if ever seen—only a few who had become the hangers-on to the coattails of white civilization, doing odd jobs here and there, spending what little they earned in the taverns, where whiskey-soaked minds created a fog that smothered the memories of what had once been theirs in this great river valley.

  For Wetzel, there was no danger, no excitement, no raiders to pursue, no Indians to kill. And so he drifted back down the Ohio to the Mississippi, where he worked as a hired hunter in the Indiana and Illinois country, occasionally finding a solitary Wea or Piankeshaw or Kickapoo Indian he could track down and kill. When, very soon, the Spanish secretly sold the Louisiana Territory back to the French and then France, in turn, broke their agreement with Spain to retain it themselves and sold it to the United States, Wetzel returned to New Orleans and started making quiet inquiries. It took him a long while, but he finally got information that put him on the trail of Pedro Hermoso. He found the old Spanish counterfeiter living in seclusion somewhere between New Orleans and Natchez and paid him a brief visit. No one ever saw Hermoso again.832

  A year or so after that, Wetzel was living on two acres on the Big Black River in the Mississippi Territory, about 35 miles above its mouth at the Mississippi River and some 80 miles up the Big Black from Natchez.833 There he lived alone in a little cabin he’d built and grew a small amount of corn and some garden vegetables for his own use. Benjamin Wells, who had been born on the Buffalo Creek tributary of the upper Ohio, paid him a visit there, and Wetzel, who had never seen him before, welcomed him, immediately recognized him as a Wells and correctly guessed he was the son of an old upper Ohio companion, Absalom Wells. Benjamin visited him numerous times after that and was fond of listening to Wetzel tell stories of his old Indian hunting days. Though only in his midforties, Wetzel looked much older, and his hair, now nearly waist length, was beginning to gray.

  One day, as Wetzel was sitting in front of his cabin with Wells, reminiscing about the old days, he suddenly caught a glimpse of movement on the Big Black River. He looked back at Wells, who was watching him curiously.

  “K’n you keep a secret, son?” Wetzel asked.

  “I guess I can,” Wells replied, “if it’s necessary.”

  “Well, it is necessary,” Wetzel said. He stood up, stepped into the cabin and got his rifle off the hooks on the wall, checked the load and then walked casually down to the riverbank and took a position behind a large tree. That was when Wells, for the first time, saw the canoe coming downriver between them and the island, being paddled by a pair of Choctaw Indians.

  Wetzel very calmly raised his rifle, took a bead on the one in the stern and shot him. Slammed backward by the heavy ball, the Indian fell overboard. Then Wetzel smoothly and expertly reloaded, all the while keeping his eye on the canoe and the remaining Indian, who was paddling about in a circle, looking for his companion and wondering what was happening. His companion did not reappear and, as if suddenly realizing he was in danger himself, he began rapidly paddling toward shore, but it was too late. Wetzel leveled his rifle again and shot a second time, putting a ball through the Indian’s head and dropping him into the canoe.

  Young Wells, stunned and speechless, expected Wetzel would recover the canoe and scalp the Indian in the boat, but Wetzel simply reloaded while looking at the drifting boat and said, “Let them go. Somebody’ll prob’ly pick ’em up downstream. Y’know, Benjamin,” he said, returning his attention to the young man, “the gum’mint might do as it please an’ make all the treaties it wants with th’Injens, but I ain’t never made peace with ’em and ain’t never goin’ to, not fer as long as I live. Reckon I’ll jest continue killin’ all I can, ever’ chanct I git, so long as there ain’t too many of ’em in one bunch. Four, five’s ’bout as much as I can handle at one go.”

  Not long after that, Wetzel paid a visit to Fort Massac on the lower Ohio. While there he saw a drunken Kickapoo Indian sleeping off the effects of his overindulgence beneath a tree not far from the fort. Mingling with the fort’s soldiers for a while in the evening, Wetzel took a ramrod from one of the soldiers’ guns and slipped off with it unobserved. Putting a heavy charge of powder in his own rifle, he put the stolen ramrod into the barrel and went back to where the drunken Kickapoo was still lying. Holding the point of the projecting ramrod to the sleeping Indian’s rectum, Wetzel squeezed the trigger and sent the rod deep into his body, killing him. Then Wetzel disappeared in the darkness.

  The shot had been heard, and soldiers came to investigate. The body was quickly found and the end of the ramrod seen projecting from his posterior. The commanding officer and his subordinate officers assembled the garrison and checked the gun of each soldier to see which had the missing ramrod. When it was found, its owner was quickly court-martialed, found guilty and sentenced to be immediately shot. A dozen soldiers were formed as a firing squad to carry out the execution, and they were on the point of doing so when Wetzel’s voice called out from one side, addressing the commanding officer.

  “You best not shoot that poor soldier, ’cause he ain’t guilty. I stole his ramrod and kilt that damn drunken red nigger sum’bitch myself. An’ iffen you want t’ketch me, you’re sure as hell welcome to try.”

  With that he was off and running, and though they searched for him, he was never found. Nor did he ever again return to his cabin on Big Black River.834

  Martin Wetzel was now 54 and, having married and raised his own family, was still living on Wheeling Creek, but his health had taken a downturn in the past few months, and there were those who said he’d probably be lucky to last another year.835 Johnny Wetzel, youngest of the Wetzel brothers and now himself 41 years old, stopped by to see him fairly regularly and often brought meat he had downed in his hunting.836 Jacob Wetzel was no longer on the upper Ohio. He had served for several years as a justice of the peace and even a two-year term as Ohio County’s high sheriff, but then he fell on hard times. In 1803 he lost all his property because of faulty claims and moped about for a few years after that, usually staying with either Martin or Johnny. Then, four years ago, in 1807, he moved with his wife, two sons and three daughters to the White River in the Indiana country. Now 45, he was still there.837

  Both Simon Kenton and Daniel Boone had
moved away from the Ohio River. Boone, as long planned, had moved to Missouri and sunk new roots on the Missouri River not terribly far from St. Louis.838 Simon Kenton moved into Ohio, settling first at Springfield, and he was now living at the town of Urbana in the heart of what had once been the Shawnee country.839

  Simon Girty had taken up residence close to Alexander McKee and Matthew Elliott, establishing his own farm near the mouth of the Detroit River on the Canadian side, a few miles below Amherstburg and the British western headquarters, Fort Malden.

  Maj. Gen. Anthony Wayne, en route to the east from Detroit, was taken ill aboard a ship and dropped off for medical treatment at Presque Isle on the southern shore of Lake Erie. His conditioned worsened and he died. Wayne was buried within the fort with little fanfare, and not even a suitable marker erected over his grave.

  In Wheeling, huge crowds had turned out recently for the funeral of the very first white settler in the Ohio Valley, who had probably helped more people get settled on the upper Ohio than any other individual—Ebenezer Zane. Founder of Wheeling, Zane had just died of jaundice at the age of 64.

  So, while many of the old faces were gone or going, their names continued to live on up and down the whole length of the Ohio River. And though there was peace in the Ohio Valley now, and Ohio itself had become a state in its own right in 1803, another war with the British was a very real possibility in the near future. Equally disturbing, a new Indian war appeared to be imminent at this very moment. The Shawnee leader Tecumseh, who had never made peace with the whites and who had, for the past decade, been forming a great amalgamation of tribes as brother Indians regardless of tribal affiliations, had now formed a huge village on the Wabash River at the mouth of the Tippecanoe. There, it was rumored, he already had thousands of warriors poised and ready to strike when he gave the word, which might be any time now.840