Often referred to as North-Western Virginia's "Daniel Boone", Lewis Wetzel has long been a subject of controversy. Was he a villain who had lost his sanity or was he a hero and protector of West Virginia's early settlers?

By most accounts, Lewis Wetzel was born in 1764, on the South Branch of the Potomac River in Virginia, the third son and fourth child of John Wetzel and Mary Bonnet. Shortly after his birth, a group of settlers, John Wetzel, Lewis Bonnett, Ebenezer Zane, Silas Zane, Jonathan Zane, Andrew Zane, and the Mercers, moved their families to Ohio County in West Virginia. John Wetzel staked his claim along the Big Wheeling Creek then returned to Rockingham County for his family; his wife Mary and their four children; Martin, Christina, George and Lewis.

This little family continued to grow with the addition of Jacob in 1765, Susanna in 1767, and John about 1770. Knowing the dangers of the area well, John taught his sons and daughters the frontier skills they would need to protect themselves. Lewis learned well and became an expert with a knife and tomahawk, but the skill he was best known for was his ability to load, prime and shoot his long rifle while running at full speed through the woods. This ability is the one that would help keep Lewis alive in his many engagements to come with the Indians.

In 1777, due to the danger of Indian attacks, many of the settlers were staying at nearby Fort Henry, waiting for the season's spate of raids to end. John and Martin, now a young man, had already been involved in the Battle of Point Pleasant and John knew well what could happen if his family stayed on their homestead. So, he had taken them to Fort Henry to join the other families.

John and three of his sons had left the fort and returned to work in their fields. It was about mid-morning when he realized they had forgotten to bring their guns. So, he sent Lewis and Jacob back to the cabin to check on some drying venison and to get his and George's guns. As Lewis opened the door of the cabin to return to the fields, the Indians attacked firing a volley of bullets at them. Lewis was struck in the chest and was in a lot of pain and losing blood when the Indians came in and captured the two boys. They took the guns and some pots and hurried off into the forest, dragging the two boys with them. When all of this was going on, John and George heard the shots and rushed back to the cabin, but they were too late. They knew they couldn't do anything without weapons so they ran to the fort to get more. By the time they returned the trail was cold and they had lost it. Lewis and Jacob were on their own.

The Indians had cared for Lewis' wound, packing it with herbs and leaves and covering it, but he was in considerable pain. He knew that he had to keep up with them or he would be dead so he put on a brave front and managed to keep up with them. By the third night, the Indians had started to trust the boys and the night watch fell asleep. This was the chance Lewis had been waiting for. He woke Jacob and they stole from camp. After going some distance, they realized they couldn't get far with nothing on their feet, so Lewis made Jacob wait quietly while he sneaked back into camp and found two pair of moccasins for their feet. After putting them on, Lewis decided that he had to go back again, so he told his brother to lay low and stay put and he returned to the camp once again and stole back his father's rifle and powder horn.

The Indians came after them, but they managed to elude them three times and finally crossed the Ohio River on a raft they made with logs and strips of bark. Some boys from the Wheeling settlement found the boys and helped them the rest of the way home. They were welcomed by their family and friends with exuberance as if they had returned from the dead. It was this experience that caused both Lewis and Jacob to make a vow to kill every Indian they encountered for the rest of their lives.

1777 was a bad year for the settlement. Martin Wetzel helped defend Fort Henry from attack that year. On September 25, twenty-two men were ambushed and slain while on a scouting expedition. Lewis was there with a group who had taken a different trail, so wasn't injured. Then Martin was assigned the task of helping to bury the dead, which they did by digging one large pit and burying them all in a common grave. When things quieted down, the bodies were eventually moved and given a more decent burial. Somewhere during this time period, three of the Bevans children were killed by Indians also.

The following year didn't prove much better. Lewis went with a friend to see his little farm, but when they arrived they found the cabin burned and his friend's wife missing. They followed the trail which took them across the Ohio River. They were still following them when darkness began to descend so they had decided to give up for the night and pick up the trail again in the morning. But then they smelled smoke and knew they were close by the Indians' camp.

They followed the smell of the smoke and soon found the camp of the Indians. Rose was alive and huddled against a tree, sobbing occasionally. While Lewis' friend, Frazier wanted to fire on them immediately, Lewis was able to convince him to wait until dawn.

They watched and waited all night and formulated a plan to free Rose. They were planning to shoot the first two to get on their feet, with Frazier taking the man on the left and Lewis taking the man on the right. When the first two rose to their feet, one of them being a white renegade, the boys fired their rifles taking both of their victims down. When Lewis and Frazier ran into the camp with their tomahawks raised and yelling loudly, the other two Indians ran, leaving their guns behind. They stopped a short distance away and looked as if they were ready to attack. Lewis then raised his gun and shot one down. The second one immediately charged knowing the gun would be empty, but Lewis had used his skills and while running, reloaded his gun. When the Indian was closing in on him, Lewis turned and fired killing the fourth Indian. Lewis took four scalps, all the weapons, and returned to the river where they used the Indian's raft to re-cross and return to safely.

The attacks continued to escalate and on September 11-13, 1782, Captain John Wetzel, Martin, and Lewis helped defend the second attack on Fort Henry by the British and the Indians. Martin and Lewis had also helped to defend Fort Beeler against the Mohawk and Shawnee Indians in 1782. It was this year also that Lewis' friend, Joseph Mills, was shot by Indians but was able to escape.

Three years later, in 1785, three of the Crow sisters were brutally murdered by Indians on Wheeling Creek. One sister, Lena, escaped, but Susan, Elizabeth, and Katie were bludgeoned to death with tomahawks. A while later, Jacob Crow was shot nine times by the Indians and killed. His two brothers, Martin and Frederick were wounded but managed to escape.

(Note: after peace was made with the Indians, these same Indians came begging at the Crow home. They were recognized by Lena, and her brothers went after the Indians and killed them.)

A real tragedy for the Wetzel family came on June 19, 1786 near Bakers Station. They had gone out on a hunting expedition and on their return were ambushed and confronted by Indians. They refused to surrender and paddled their canoes as fast as they could to get away. Captain John Wetzel was critically wounded, George was shot and killed, Martin was slightly wounded and Lewis was unhurt. As soon as they made it to the bank, John Wetzel died from his wounds. He and George are both buried there at Bakers Station.

It was following the deaths of his family members that Lewis really seemed to have lost some of his sanity. He never married, but spent much of his time out in the woods searching for Indians to kill. He roamed the forests across the Ohio country hunting Indians and carrying out one man raids. He would trail small bands of Indians and then would wait until they had made camp and were asleep when he would swoop down on them in the middle of the night with his knife and tomahawk and kill and scalp as many as he could before the others woke up.

He loved his friends, but hated their enemies. He was rude, blunt and a man of few words before company, but when with friends was a good companion. When asked, Lewis claimed he had collected 27 scalps between 1779 and 1788, but others say it was well over a hundred.

He was five feet ten inches tall and stood very erect, broad across the shoulders, had an expansive chest, his limbs denoted great strength. He had raven black hair which was usually kept braided in two braids, but when combed out reached well below his knees. His complexion was dark and pitted by smallpox, and he had eyes of the most intense blackness, wild, rolling, and "piercing as the dagger's point, emitting when excited such fierce and withering glances as to cause the stoutest adversary to quail beneath their power".

Lewis never owned any land or settled down or did any other sort of work. He was a good fiddle player who was always welcome at dances and in taverns. He got along well with dogs and children, but not very well with adults. He was not a good speaker and sometimes seemed strange and unstable. Some people thought he had lost his sanity. He would often appear at competitions of skills when there was one and he always won.

Lewis had been hired to travel with John Madison, brother of the future president James Madison, on a land surveying expedition. Unfortunately, John was killed by Indians on this trip.

Lewis was involved in more skirmishes with the Indians and each time he returned home with his scalps, he was proclaimed a hero. The settlers still felt that anyone who killed the Indians, a savage subhuman race, was doing them a valuable service.

Lewis was accused of murdering two Indians. The first one was a Delaware Chief who was acting as a peace emissary. He had been invited to come to the American's camp under safe conduct and had just gotten out of his canoe when Wetzel tomahawked him from behind. The Militiamen approved so much of his action that nothing was ever done to punish him.

The second Indian he murdered was Tegunteh, a key Seneca leader who had worked hard with Colonel Josiah Harmar to bring about peace between the Indians and the settlers. But Lewis didn't want peace to come because he wanted to kill all of the Indians, not make peace with them. One morning when Tegunteh left his camp alone to travel to the Fort, Wetzel stepped out in front of him and shot him, scalped him and left him for dead. Teguneteh died, but not before he gave a description of Lewis Wetzel.

Colonel Harmar posted Lewis as wanted for murder and he became a fugitive. He was captured and put in leg and hand irons and kept in jail where after three days, he could stand it no more. He called for Colonel Harmar and convinced him that he needed to be allowed to go outside for fresh air. So, he was taken outside. He managed to escape them and made it across the Ohio River where friends cut off his irons and gave him provisions and weapons. He was free for a while, but was then recaptured and taken to Fort Washington where he was locked up to await his trial. The settlers, 200 strong, gathered outside the fort. They demanded that Lewis be set free or they were going to rescue him by force. The Territorial judge John Symmes resolved the dilemma by freeing Wetzel on a Writ of Habeas Corpus. The judge then conveniently forgot to ever call him back for trial.

Peace finally came to Ohio County and with no Indians to kill, Lewis went west and south into Spanish territory. While there he spent several years in prison for being a part of a counterfeit ring. When he was released he returned to Ohio County.

In 1804, he was hired by Clark of the Lewis & Clark Expedition to accompany them as a scout. He went with them for three months, but then refused to go any further and returned home.

He then went to live with his cousin, Phillip Sikes (Sycks) in the vicinity of Natchez, Mississippi. In 1808 he fell ill, probably with yellow fever, and died. He was just forty five years old.

Some say he was nothing more than a psychotic serial killer who enjoyed killing. Others say he was a defender of the settlers and that he was a hero. Perhaps he was a "product of his times". He was a man who had been exposed to much violence at an early age plus the tragedy of the brutal deaths of so many who he loved that maybe it did affect his sanity. He had been able to defeat the Indians when others couldn't. And when he returned with the scalps of his victims, who the settlers believed were nothing more than savages, they treated him like a hero.

Lewis Wetzel had made a vow of vengeance against Indians. When he was successful in carrying out his vow and the settlers reacted the way they did, it may have only urged him on. With all of these things put together, it was almost like his life's path had been laid out before him and he had no choice but to follow that path.

Notes: Lewis was buried in the front yard of Sike's cabin. In 1942, Dr. Albert W. Bowser came down from Chicago and found his unmarked grave. He took the remains of Lewis back to Moundsville, West Virginia, where he rests beside his older brother, Martin, in the McCreary Cemetery, just two miles from the old Wetzel homestead.

Jacob became the sheriff of Marshall County in 1803.  
Then in 1818, he moved his family to Morgan County.

West Virginia created Wetzel County in 1846 from 
Tyler County and named it for Lewis Wetzel.  There is 
also a state highway named after Lewis Wetzel 
and a Wetzel Hunting Ground in Wetzel County.