Speaker 1: In that time. In those years, people were dying by
Speaker 1: the thousands. Death was just everywhere. Every family was touched
Speaker 1: directly by death. On this episode of the Bargarase podcast,
Speaker 1: will be looking into the life of a man whose
Speaker 1: legacy is wrought with conflict. To Americans who lived in
Speaker 1: the Ohio River Valley, he was a folk hero, but
Speaker 1: to the Native Americans he hated and murdered in cold blood.
Speaker 1: He was known as the Death Wind. I went to
Speaker 1: the Ohio Valley to interview outdoor writer and author Chip
Speaker 1: Gross to learn about the life of Lewis Wetsel. This dark,
Speaker 1: deep dive comes at the request of one Steve Rannella
Speaker 1: of Meat Eater, who is also a guest on this episode,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about Wetsell's life and the brutality of
Speaker 1: the American Frontier. Lastly, in an effort to understand the
Speaker 1: mind frame of Wetzel, I'll interview mental health professional Zack
Speaker 1: Knucom to learn if our boy Wetzel was truly a sociopath,
Speaker 1: a serial killer, or where his action simply the result
Speaker 1: of a life lived in a war zone. And yep,
Speaker 1: Zack's my brother. I doubt you're gonna want to miss
Speaker 1: this one, and hey, I know a lot of you
Speaker 1: folks let your young kids listen to Bargaras, which I
Speaker 1: absolutely love, but I'll warn you in this episode we
Speaker 1: talked about some pretty gruesome and graphic stuff. There was
Speaker 1: no guilt in his mind, there was no regret. It
Speaker 1: was just I've got to do this, and it continued
Speaker 1: doing it basically until until the day he died. My
Speaker 1: name is Clay Nukem, and this is the Bear Grease Podcast,
Speaker 1: where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight
Speaker 1: and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of
Speaker 1: Americans who lived their lives close to the land, presented
Speaker 1: by f HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and
Speaker 1: fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the
Speaker 1: places we explore. Well. In one of the stories that
Speaker 1: I've written about him, I say, if he were alive today,
Speaker 1: he would be labeled a serial killer, and he really would.
Speaker 1: But he hated Indians. He wasn't killing white people, but
Speaker 1: he was killing Indians. He would kill hostile Indians. He
Speaker 1: would kill you know, not hostile Indians. He just just
Speaker 1: hated them. And where I think this came from is
Speaker 1: when he was younger. When he was just thirteen years old,
Speaker 1: he and his brother, who was eleven, were taken captive
Speaker 1: by Wyandots. He later that night he had his brother
Speaker 1: escaped got back home. But he made a vow to
Speaker 1: himself when he was a kid that he would kill
Speaker 1: Indians anytime he could. And then later in life one
Speaker 1: of his older brothers is killed by Indians. His father
Speaker 1: is killed by Indians. So he had a real vendetta there.
Speaker 1: The Shawnees called him long Knife, the Hurons called him destroyer,
Speaker 1: and the Delawares called him death Wind. The death Wind
Speaker 1: coming moving fast, crawls to him, and he's been a
Speaker 1: looking for the men to burning kill. And when he's coming,
Speaker 1: you can fill the death of chill. And he won't
Speaker 1: stop blowing to his peace and then not his pal.
Speaker 1: In the days of the Sender, we struck to survive
Speaker 1: so that the hunger and me but stay. You know,
Speaker 1: a man with a gun, he's stung too. To the people,
Speaker 1: he was out of the wind. The cultural impact of
Speaker 1: a frontiersman can often be gauged by if they have
Speaker 1: a musical ballad written about them. This is one from
Speaker 1: a band called the back Roads called the Ballad of
Speaker 1: Lewis Wetzel. I love these old songs, and how about
Speaker 1: those backup singers, And I'll give you a digital fifth
Speaker 1: month if you've ever heard this one before. Louis Wetzel
Speaker 1: is a controversial figure, and it's interesting to read about him,
Speaker 1: hear him sung about, and see him honored, and then
Speaker 1: go back into his life to try to make sense
Speaker 1: of it. Many Americans in his time viewed him as
Speaker 1: a hero, but to somebody was a criminal, a murderer,
Speaker 1: a madman. But the confusion isn't surprising. The time period
Speaker 1: when the American frontier was being pushed into the middle
Speaker 1: ground what is now Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, heroes and
Speaker 1: mad men could easily be confused because of overlapping traits.
Speaker 1: Westel was by profession and Indian scout or Indian hunter,
Speaker 1: and he became known as the most effective Euro American
Speaker 1: single combat fighter potentially ever. He was believed to have
Speaker 1: killed in one on one tussles as many as a
Speaker 1: hundred Indians in his short forty five year life. He
Speaker 1: claimed to put a bit of silver in his bullet
Speaker 1: to protect him from Indians. Some of his killing was
Speaker 1: done on the clock, and some of it was done
Speaker 1: with a recreational flair. He took scalps with pleasure, but
Speaker 1: in doing so protected his people, elevating him to a
Speaker 1: folk hero. There's a county and a wildlife management area
Speaker 1: named after him in West Virginia, along with multiple businesses, parks,
Speaker 1: and springs that still carries aim to this day. Born
Speaker 1: in seventeen sixty three, Lewis Wetzel and his family did
Speaker 1: some fighting in the Revolutionary War. It's also believed that
Speaker 1: Lewis Wetsell served as a scout on the Lewis and
Speaker 1: Clark expedition in eighteen o four. He served multiple prison
Speaker 1: sentences and escaped once in a coffin. The Feller had
Speaker 1: quite the resume. If you've been following bargaries, you know
Speaker 1: that I'm prone to tell stories with crescendos of redemption.
Speaker 1: This one doesn't have one. It swoops low, arcing towards darkness.
Speaker 1: But lucky for us, darkness creates a context for light
Speaker 1: to be seen, and I think by looking at the
Speaker 1: roughest examples of a time period, it puts into context
Speaker 1: others that we've learned about, like Boone, who compared to
Speaker 1: Wetsel was the Billy Graham of the middle Ground. He
Speaker 1: was a Saint. Chip Gross, the first voice you heard
Speaker 1: on this podcast, has laid the founder sations of what
Speaker 1: built Louis Wetzel. As a kid who was taken captive
Speaker 1: by Indians and later his father and brother were killed
Speaker 1: in a riverside bush whack. Louis made a vow that
Speaker 1: he'd kill every Indian he ever saw as long as
Speaker 1: he lived, and he proved to be a man of
Speaker 1: his word. If you recall on the Mediator podcast, Steve
Speaker 1: Ornella made a public petition to get me to tell
Speaker 1: the story of Louis Wetzel, which I agreed to do
Speaker 1: as long as he agreed to take to heart some
Speaker 1: friendly advice on how to blow a crow. Call here's Steve.
Speaker 1: Steve RONNELLA, how did you get connected and interested in
Speaker 1: the Wetzel brothers. I'll answer that, but first I want
Speaker 1: to thank you for doing this because I want to
Speaker 1: learn more. I want to learn more about the Wetsels.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by him. Even though I didn't know about
Speaker 1: him that long ago, I became aware of him in
Speaker 1: this way. I was interviewing a Daniel Boone historian and
Speaker 1: in this we were talking about how Daniel Boone and
Speaker 1: was this this very noble, ethical individual somewhat of opportunistically
Speaker 1: pacifist when he could be. He was a pacifist when
Speaker 1: he could be right. He was a friend of the
Speaker 1: Native Americans when he could be sometimes went out of
Speaker 1: his way to be that way. Talked remorsefully about taking
Speaker 1: an Indian's life unnecessarily right. This historian ted Franklin Blue
Speaker 1: then made a comment to me about some real bad
Speaker 1: dudes and mentions the Wetzel Brothers. I didn't know who
Speaker 1: they were, but a body of mine then text me,
Speaker 1: how they do you not know about the wet Cels.
Speaker 1: The Indians called him the death Wind, And that's when
Speaker 1: I decided to start lobbying you to do a thing
Speaker 1: about the wets You'll hear us throughout this referring to
Speaker 1: the Wetzel Brothers. But the most famous Wetzel, and the
Speaker 1: one we're talking about the most is gonna be Lewis Wetzel.
Speaker 1: Lewis was born on a section of the Wilderness Road
Speaker 1: in West Virginia in seventeen sixty three, wrapped in a
Speaker 1: union jack flagged his father and mother were on their
Speaker 1: way to homestead on Big Wheeling Creek in the panhandle
Speaker 1: of West Virginia, fourteen miles from the Ohio River. It
Speaker 1: seems your life is usually more exciting if you're from
Speaker 1: the pan handle of a state. Nine states have panhandles.
Speaker 1: That's not relevant. His father was considered by many to
Speaker 1: be reckless or maybe just naive because of how far
Speaker 1: he settled from permanent white settlements. He was way back
Speaker 1: on the very edge of the frontier, and it was
Speaker 1: a time of great instability and constant guerrilla warfare between
Speaker 1: whites and Native Americans. The wet Cels ended up having
Speaker 1: seven children, and they had seven peaceful years before Wyan
Speaker 1: Dots burned their cabin and captured Lewis AND's younger brother, Jacob.
Speaker 1: Four of seven Wetzel children would be captured by Indians
Speaker 1: at one point in their life, and a couple of
Speaker 1: them got captured more than once. That's an incredible stat
Speaker 1: Here's the story of Louis's beginning, and you begin to
Speaker 1: see the inklings of the young Louis's uncanny ability to
Speaker 1: navigate backwoods life. So in seventeen seventy six, he and
Speaker 1: his younger brother, Jacob, who was eleven were kidnapped by
Speaker 1: Native Americans. They're working corn and the boys had seen
Speaker 1: a black bear. They had reported seeing a black bear
Speaker 1: around the cornfields, and Louis thought the black bear looked funny,
Speaker 1: and so he goes back and tells his dad Martin.
Speaker 1: The older brother says, saw bear, and Louis goes, I
Speaker 1: don't think it was a bear. I think it was
Speaker 1: an Indian in a bear skin. And it kind of
Speaker 1: red flagged the family. Well, sure enough, that night they
Speaker 1: hear something and they're kind of on red alert and
Speaker 1: they look outside and they see an Indian coming up
Speaker 1: to him, and the dad shoots and kills the Indian.
Speaker 1: This isn't when he gets kidnapped, Well, it's connected to that.
Speaker 1: That brings retribution from the other Native Americans. Within a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks or a couple of days, he and
Speaker 1: his brother Wetstle thirteen, Jacob Levin are kidnapped, straight up,
Speaker 1: kidnapped by and that's when he got shot. He was
Speaker 1: in a cornfield and a bullet grazed his chest. He
Speaker 1: gets caught and they stay in captivity for two days
Speaker 1: before he makes a pretty daring escape and and he
Speaker 1: showed a lot of intuition inside of situations with Native Americans,
Speaker 1: even from when he was young. Like they had him
Speaker 1: tethered with like leather straps, and they had him tethered
Speaker 1: up at night, he and the brother together and they
Speaker 1: started moaning about the straps being too tight. The guys
Speaker 1: come over and loosen their straps. Long story short, they
Speaker 1: escape after the guys are all asleep. This it sounds
Speaker 1: like five or six guys. It's a detail about this
Speaker 1: escape that that starts really speaking to his sort of
Speaker 1: coolness and also just kind of the person he was
Speaker 1: where the Indians had taken his father's rifle and here
Speaker 1: he is like at any second, as far as he knows,
Speaker 1: he's gonna get tom a hawker or taken and has
Speaker 1: the has the run a gauntlet. You could get killed
Speaker 1: doing that, Like this guy has no idea. He gets away,
Speaker 1: but they don't want to leave without recovering their old
Speaker 1: man's gun. And there's like a detail too that the
Speaker 1: Indians had moccasins that they were drying by the fire,
Speaker 1: but they shrunk up. The boys couldn't get the moccasins
Speaker 1: on their feet and had to go down to the
Speaker 1: creek stole the moccasins, but then had to go down
Speaker 1: to the creek and soak those buckskin, not moccasins, in
Speaker 1: order to get him stretched out enough to pull him
Speaker 1: over to their feet and then take off right. So
Speaker 1: rather running off free, running off barefoot without the old
Speaker 1: man's gun, they get free, get their old man's gun,
Speaker 1: get some footwear, and then take off well. And the
Speaker 1: story was he had to go back, so they they
Speaker 1: escaped and actually left the camp and in they realized
Speaker 1: they didn't have shoes. This is a version Almontel's. They
Speaker 1: didn't have shoes, they didn't have the gun, and they
Speaker 1: go and he and Wetzel sneaks back into the camp
Speaker 1: and gets the stuff and comes back out, which is risky.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, like the guy was laying on something,
Speaker 1: you have to kind of get it off under his head.
Speaker 1: Almond didn't go into that that detail, but that was
Speaker 1: the foundation, which would be the vowel that Lewis Wetzel
Speaker 1: made as a young boy that he was gonna kill
Speaker 1: every you know, Native American that he came in contact with,
Speaker 1: and not in an Don't it sounds so weird to
Speaker 1: seeing an organized fashion, not with the military, not in
Speaker 1: support of like military campaigns, not in support of any
Speaker 1: kind of strategy. It was just like in and of itself,
Speaker 1: even to kill allies. Stuff that happens in a person's
Speaker 1: childhood is always an important player in their life, whether
Speaker 1: good or bad, were foreigned by our experiences, and I
Speaker 1: do believe that we have a choice of how we
Speaker 1: respond to the good and the bad. Later in the
Speaker 1: podcast will hear from a mental health professional on this stuff.
Speaker 1: Here's the account of the first time Louis killed a
Speaker 1: Native American. As a matter of fact, he killed three
Speaker 1: when Louis was sixteen years old, So this is three
Speaker 1: years after he and his brother Jacob had been captured.
Speaker 1: They went on a mission with a bunch of adults
Speaker 1: to retrieve some stolen horses. So a group of Indians
Speaker 1: that stole horses. His dad's horse was in the mix,
Speaker 1: and so they go out. The guy's getting a little
Speaker 1: shoot out with the Indians, and the adults retreat and
Speaker 1: Wetzel goes back and it's like, what are y'all doing?
Speaker 1: And they go, well, YadA, YadA, YadA, and he goes, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going back in and he basically employed a tactic
Speaker 1: that he used most of his life in certain situations,
Speaker 1: and that tactic was they called it being treated when
Speaker 1: in the Indians would retreat but hide and be waiting
Speaker 1: for you. And basically he knew where these Indians were
Speaker 1: hiding out, and he snuck in there, and he put
Speaker 1: his hat on the end of his gun and leaned
Speaker 1: it out from behind the tree. He knew that they
Speaker 1: were watching him, and when they shot and hit his hat,
Speaker 1: they thought they killed him, and so they exposed themselves.
Speaker 1: And he had a loaded musket. So a one shot
Speaker 1: musket was a real big deal back in those days,
Speaker 1: because you pretty much had one shot and then you
Speaker 1: had forty five seconds to two minutes of loading a gun,
Speaker 1: depending on how fast you were. So they shot, they
Speaker 1: thought they killed the guy, and then Wetzel lets him
Speaker 1: get in close, steps out. It's two Indians, shoots one
Speaker 1: in the chest and takes off running. And what they
Speaker 1: didn't know, and what he became known for was he
Speaker 1: could reload on the run. And he became famous throughout
Speaker 1: that part of the world in the Native American tribes
Speaker 1: for always having his gun loaded. But he could he
Speaker 1: could load on the run, and so he runs and
Speaker 1: the these guys already shot their bullet, and so he
Speaker 1: takes after him, and then he runs for however long,
Speaker 1: and then his turns with a loaded gun and shoots,
Speaker 1: and the they've never seen anything like that. And so
Speaker 1: he came back with all these grown men. It was like,
Speaker 1: holy cow, who is this kid? Came back with scalps.
Speaker 1: They they collected scalps like trophies. I don't want to
Speaker 1: glaze over the act of scalping a dead enemy. I
Speaker 1: think it's easy to go numb to the brutality of
Speaker 1: the act. Maybe it's Hollywood books. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: scalping started in Native American warfare, and then as Europeans
Speaker 1: got involved, many took up the practice. Perhaps it was
Speaker 1: unrestrained retribution, or maybe it was to communicate with their
Speaker 1: enemies in a way that they could understand. Anyhow, the
Speaker 1: sixteen year old Wetsel took three e scalps that day
Speaker 1: by what would become known as Wessel Spring near St. Clair'sville, Ohio.
Speaker 1: Lewis's success in guerrilla warfare was that he could load
Speaker 1: his gun extremely quickly. Ship Gross is from the Ohio Valley.
Speaker 1: He's retired. Game Warden authored multiple books and has had
Speaker 1: over one thousand of his articles published about hunting shooting
Speaker 1: in Frontiersman. Years ago he took an interest in Lewis Wetzel,
Speaker 1: and here he'll give us a critical detail of how
Speaker 1: he was able to reload so fast. Now Here, here's
Speaker 1: another wilderness skill that he had, and not many other
Speaker 1: frontiersman had it. Simon Kenton could do it. A few
Speaker 1: others could do it, but reloading on the run, and
Speaker 1: he was very very good at this. And what he
Speaker 1: would do he was he would take two or three
Speaker 1: lead bullets and actually put him in his mouth. Believe
Speaker 1: it or not. Now this was before they knew much
Speaker 1: about lead poisoning. I'm sure it. He didn't seem to care.
Speaker 1: He would carry these extra bullets in his mouth and
Speaker 1: that would help him reload much quicker on the run.
Speaker 1: Some historians in the past have written that Lewis got
Speaker 1: lead poisoning from all the mouth bullet stuff and it
Speaker 1: turned him into a madman. Though that can't be healthy.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's the only culprit to his obsession
Speaker 1: with killing. Here's chip with more unloading a musket fast.
Speaker 1: Once you're the firearm is empty, what you have to
Speaker 1: do is you have to pour powder down the barrel
Speaker 1: and then you step one. That step one. Step two
Speaker 1: is then you have to take a bullet which was
Speaker 1: a round ball, lead ball, and drive it down against
Speaker 1: that powder with a ramrod. And then the last step
Speaker 1: is to take a small amount of powder and put
Speaker 1: it in the pan, the firing pan. That's not easy
Speaker 1: to do, and then you have to hope that everything
Speaker 1: is going to work when you pull a trigger, because
Speaker 1: a lot of times a gun might fire called a
Speaker 1: flash in the pain in, but the powder in the
Speaker 1: barrel doesn't go off, and sometimes that did. That did
Speaker 1: happen with him, And then you're down to hand to
Speaker 1: hand combat, and he was good at that too. He
Speaker 1: had all the wilderness skills. You know, it's interesting now
Speaker 1: we're all used to firearms, and we're used to firearms
Speaker 1: that shoot cartridges that are essentially fail proof. Just pull
Speaker 1: the trigger and a gun goes off. That that's no
Speaker 1: longer a question. But during this time period, a warrior's
Speaker 1: world was dominated by this possibility that his gun wouldn't
Speaker 1: go off when he absolutely needed it to. Number one,
Speaker 1: and then number two, he was dominated by this limitation
Speaker 1: of time. You get one shot, boomb and then you
Speaker 1: have to go through a pretty detailed sequence of events
Speaker 1: to get it loaded again. And so that was actually
Speaker 1: a tactic of Wetzel in his fighting, was that he
Speaker 1: could reload so quick that the Indians knew that if
Speaker 1: a guy shot, there was a span of time when
Speaker 1: he couldn't shoot again, and they would rush in. They
Speaker 1: would they would draw the volley of their their enemies
Speaker 1: and then they would say, Okay, now we've got a
Speaker 1: minute before they can reload, and we're gonna go in
Speaker 1: and take him hand to hand or whatever. And that's
Speaker 1: where Louis Wetzel, I mean, that was his trick, was
Speaker 1: that he he could I mean, it would be interesting
Speaker 1: to actually have the data on it. I mean, could
Speaker 1: he do it? Could he do it twice as quick?
Speaker 1: Could he do it? Of the time? Louis being able
Speaker 1: to reload his gun fast was probably his most valued skill.
Speaker 1: I want to read you an excerpt from the book
Speaker 1: The Life in Times of Lewis Wetzel by C. B. Almond.
Speaker 1: This book was published in nineteen thirty one. At the
Speaker 1: age of seventeen, Wetzel maybe said to have entered on
Speaker 1: his life's work, that of hunting Indians the warfare with
Speaker 1: the Reds was not restrained by proclamations or politicians. It
Speaker 1: was a free fight. Anybody could enter and keep at
Speaker 1: it as long as he liked. The rules were simple
Speaker 1: and consisted of get his scalp. Wetstel was a stern, sober,
Speaker 1: silent sort of person, never boasting of his exploits, but
Speaker 1: pursuing his way with the tennacy, which made his name
Speaker 1: as much feared by the foe as they were hated
Speaker 1: by him. He shunned the company of other people and
Speaker 1: was never so content as when roaming the forest like
Speaker 1: a wild animal. Wetzel's picturesque appearance, joined with his growing
Speaker 1: reputation for daring, added to his popularity with border folks.
Speaker 1: Five ft ten inches tall, unusually strong and well developed
Speaker 1: in arms and shoulders, slight and active of limb, with
Speaker 1: piercing black eyes, scowling brow, and black hair, which, when
Speaker 1: combed out, hung to his knees. This ranger was the
Speaker 1: ject of much approval on part of the young ladies
Speaker 1: at the settlement. Graceful, morose, fascinating, and blind to their charms,
Speaker 1: the dashing youth doubtless reeked considerable havoc among the feminine
Speaker 1: hearts not recorded by tradition or listed in printed tales
Speaker 1: of the Frontier. His true love was the long trail
Speaker 1: and the thrill of the encounter. End of quote. The
Speaker 1: intel that we have about Wetzel is sparse, and many
Speaker 1: authors have published contradicting stories. There are three main books
Speaker 1: about Wetzel that I found. One is CB Almond's book
Speaker 1: The Life and Times of Louis Wetzel, which I thought
Speaker 1: was pretty good. Another by Robert Myers, published in eighteen ninety,
Speaker 1: was called Lewis Wetzel, which honestly I didn't think was
Speaker 1: that well written, sorry man. And the latest was in
Speaker 1: nine called That Dark and Bloody River by the famed
Speaker 1: author Alan Eckhart. It's not all out Wetzel, but he
Speaker 1: talks about the Wetzel brothers. Lastly, the author who's attributed
Speaker 1: with making Lewis's nickname the Death Wind famous was a
Speaker 1: novelist named Zane Gray, which in his book The Spirit
Speaker 1: of the Border used the nickname because Gray's novels, which
Speaker 1: were fiction, used the Wetsel brothers as characters, which is
Speaker 1: kind of confusing, so it's not a clear where the
Speaker 1: nickname came from. But a poem called the Ballad of
Speaker 1: Lewis Wetzel, written by Glenn Baker, gave me the only
Speaker 1: true citation of the Death Wind that I could find.
Speaker 1: Chip is a native Ohioan and he has studied Wetzell
Speaker 1: a lot. And here's him describing what he knows about
Speaker 1: the nickname the Death Wind. And the death Wind name
Speaker 1: was kind of interesting because where that comes from is
Speaker 1: you probably know, if you take a muzzle loading rifle
Speaker 1: and you blow over the into the barrel, you get
Speaker 1: kind of a hollow sound, like blowing over a bottle,
Speaker 1: you know, empty bottle, that type of thing. And he
Speaker 1: would he would use that to mess with the Indians
Speaker 1: if he got up to a group of Indians, maybe
Speaker 1: an Indian camp, and there was too many for them
Speaker 1: for him to take on. He would get within hearing
Speaker 1: distance and he would blow across the top of that
Speaker 1: muzzle to let him know I'm here, you know, and
Speaker 1: I may be coming for you tonight, and me may
Speaker 1: the next night and maybe down the road, you know,
Speaker 1: two or three months. And so that's where death Wind comes.
Speaker 1: And another part he grew his hair very long. He
Speaker 1: was a big man. Crew his hair which was totally
Speaker 1: black as long as he could, which was knee length,
Speaker 1: and he was basically taunting the Indians, come take it
Speaker 1: from me if he can, and none ever did. It's
Speaker 1: striking to imagine a buckskin frontiersman with cold black hair
Speaker 1: down to his calves, and apparently he wore his hair
Speaker 1: this long until his death. Glenn Baker's poem agrees with
Speaker 1: chips version of what death wind means. But I've heard
Speaker 1: three possible sources of the nickname. Number one being blowing
Speaker 1: over the end of a muzzle to intimidate Indians. Number two,
Speaker 1: someone inferred that he had a trademark screamed that he
Speaker 1: made when he killed an Indian, and the escape ees
Speaker 1: said it was like a death wind. Lastly, some have
Speaker 1: thought it just meant he swept quietly through the woods,
Speaker 1: dealing out death like a death wind. Here's Steve on
Speaker 1: Lewis's start as an Indian scout. At age seventeen, he
Speaker 1: became a full time Indian scout. It was like an employment.
Speaker 1: I don't know how he gets the settlements would have
Speaker 1: you know, you hear him described as militia, and then
Speaker 1: there was so you had like these informal militias. Then
Speaker 1: you had rangers which were more tightly like like Samuel
Speaker 1: Bray who was a contemporary at Lewis wetzel Um who
Speaker 1: was under employ of the army, like underemployee with the army,
Speaker 1: but ran a group of frontiersmen who were known as rangers.
Speaker 1: But these were guys who were just on the lookout
Speaker 1: for raiding parties. And the thing they might do is
Speaker 1: they might just travel the north shore or the south
Speaker 1: shore of the Ohio and pick up tracks going one way,
Speaker 1: follow those tracks to see if they had stolen anything,
Speaker 1: intercept tracks of Indians that were coming south, and alert villages,
Speaker 1: alert settlements of what's coming. If there was were kidnappings
Speaker 1: or burning of buildings, they might get on the trail
Speaker 1: and follow to go get retribution. And at any given
Speaker 1: time there were any any small collection of these groups
Speaker 1: out doing like the scouting or these groups, these frontiers
Speaker 1: might also ally themselves with the military, and when the
Speaker 1: military is going to do like a formal campaign, they're
Speaker 1: out ahead to find where they're camped to make sure
Speaker 1: they don't fall into ambushes. Um saying, like like a
Speaker 1: in Vietnam, the long range reconnaissance patrollers, they were just
Speaker 1: out in the jungle, listening, looking, gathering intelligence. When you
Speaker 1: understand that too, it helps understand why these guys. You
Speaker 1: give some context for why they were doing what they
Speaker 1: were doing, and why that these guys would be potential
Speaker 1: folk heroes, not even folk heroes, like just legitimate cultural heroes,
Speaker 1: because they were the ones that were protecting quote unquote
Speaker 1: the first line of defense and also delivered. Imagine you're
Speaker 1: a Euro American, you're a white setter at this time,
Speaker 1: your child's abducted, and someone delivers your child back to you.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's one of the things that made Boon famous.
Speaker 1: It's the most kind of like iconic hero tales what's
Speaker 1: never looked back after becoming an Indian scout. Here will
Speaker 1: learn some of his exploits that made him a folk
Speaker 1: hero of the region amongst the whites. Wetzel, there's two
Speaker 1: times that he was documented on having saved somebody's wife,
Speaker 1: and it was the same story. Both times, He's out
Speaker 1: hunting with somebody or traveling with a man and the
Speaker 1: woman was back home, you know, with a family. Two
Speaker 1: different times he went back with the guy and found
Speaker 1: the cabin burned and the family gone. And usually the
Speaker 1: usually the women were spared, and the children also painting
Speaker 1: an idea for just the brutality of the era. The
Speaker 1: first guy, his last name was Touch. He was hunting
Speaker 1: with his a young guy, and I don't even think
Speaker 1: they had kids. But there was an extended family there
Speaker 1: with some men and the man's new wife. And they
Speaker 1: they they're going to have dinner, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're like coming home. And they get there and they
Speaker 1: see smoke, and they come and they find the dead
Speaker 1: bodies of all the men scattered about, and the hogs
Speaker 1: had gotten loose their their tame hogs and had eaten
Speaker 1: the bodies, like had just mangled the bodies. And then
Speaker 1: but the woman is missing, and Lewis wets I mean
Speaker 1: it sounds like a movie, you know, Louis Wetstell finds
Speaker 1: the tracks of a size six woman shoe going off
Speaker 1: with the moccasins, you know, and so they know that
Speaker 1: she's alive. And so it takes them two days, but
Speaker 1: they catch them and kill the Indians and save the lady.
Speaker 1: And I mean that was a common story. It's hard
Speaker 1: for us to put ourselves into the shoes of people
Speaker 1: who lived in an era with such brutality. Here Chip
Speaker 1: will tell us the story, showing us that Louis's killing
Speaker 1: of Indians was motivated by far more than it being
Speaker 1: his employment. He was cold blooded. There was a time
Speaker 1: he was living in the Marietta area, which Mariette is
Speaker 1: a town right on the Ohio River. It's the oldest
Speaker 1: town in Ohio. I think it's the oldest town in
Speaker 1: the Northwest Territory. At one point, the people there were
Speaker 1: getting tired of the Indian wars and so forth, and
Speaker 1: they decided, we have to try and settle this, you know,
Speaker 1: make a treaty or do something. So they got ahold
Speaker 1: of a bunch of tribes and they said, let's get together.
Speaker 1: Let's let's have a piece of about three months. And
Speaker 1: the tribes agreed, and they camped about two miles north
Speaker 1: of the river and would walk back and forth to
Speaker 1: Marietta for meetings and that kind of thing. Well, there
Speaker 1: was one Seneca chief who always walked by himself, which
Speaker 1: was not good. Guess who was living there and noticed
Speaker 1: this Lewis. And Lewis knew that these were, you know,
Speaker 1: not hostile Indians at this time, but he didn't care.
Speaker 1: So at one one day he lays for this chief,
Speaker 1: and as soon as he got within you know, fifty yards,
Speaker 1: he steps out from cover, didn't say anything, just pulls
Speaker 1: his rifle up and shoots and hits him in the chest.
Speaker 1: Of course, the chief goes down, he runs up, he
Speaker 1: scouts him, runs off, and everybody knows who this guy.
Speaker 1: Had long black hair, he had a particular colored hat,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. So they go grab Lewis. They put
Speaker 1: him on trial and they bluntly asked him, Lewis, did
Speaker 1: you did you kill this Indian? Yes? I did, and
Speaker 1: he he wasn't didn't feel guilty about it, no remorse,
Speaker 1: no nothing. So the judgment was, well, you're you're going
Speaker 1: to hang for this. What I haven't told you yet
Speaker 1: is that this wasn't the first time that Lewis killed
Speaker 1: an emissary of peace. In Lewis Tomahawk, the Delaware chief
Speaker 1: that was involved in peace talks, but the war, combined
Speaker 1: with weak Backwoods justice, meant that nothing was done to Lewis.
Speaker 1: The murder Chip told us about took place in Sight nine,
Speaker 1: and Lewis was sentenced to hang for the murder of
Speaker 1: the Seneca chief to Gunta. However, he broke out of
Speaker 1: jail two consecutive times and was recaptured, but was ultimately
Speaker 1: released and functionally acquitted of the murder when the famous
Speaker 1: backwoodsman Simon Kenton brought a large gang of Ruffians to
Speaker 1: the jail and demanded Wetsel be left free. Are they
Speaker 1: taken by force? So they let him go. Kenton coming
Speaker 1: to Wessel's aid shows the favorable reputation that he had
Speaker 1: in the region. This wouldn't be the last time that
Speaker 1: Wetzel ended up in jail though. Here's Chip with more
Speaker 1: insight into Wetzel's tactics for killing that showed his brutality
Speaker 1: and the mind frame he had. And this is interesting too.
Speaker 1: I think Lewis was at times just over the edge.
Speaker 1: You can be courageous, but you can also be stupid sometimes.
Speaker 1: And he got to the point where he didn't care
Speaker 1: if he was outnumbered two or three to one. He'd
Speaker 1: figure out a way to kill those Indians. And there's
Speaker 1: several times where he was tracking Indians and might come
Speaker 1: across a group of just two or three. So he
Speaker 1: figured out that instead of just charging in the camp,
Speaker 1: just let him go to sleep. You're going they're going
Speaker 1: to go to sleep sooner or later. And there's several
Speaker 1: times this story is told. But after they were asleep,
Speaker 1: he would slip in there with knife in one hand
Speaker 1: and tomahawk and the other and drive the knife into
Speaker 1: the heart of one, tomahawk the other and if the
Speaker 1: third one heard something and jumped up, he'd get the
Speaker 1: same thing and he would kill all three. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was that obsessed with with killing Indians, and he
Speaker 1: was that good at it. Uh, it's scary to talk about.
Speaker 1: He was very much a warrior, you know, he really was.
Speaker 1: And uh. And again there was no there was no
Speaker 1: guilt in his mind, there was no regret. It was
Speaker 1: just I've got to do this. And he continued doing
Speaker 1: it basically until until the day he died. I heard
Speaker 1: them mention and and this put it into context for me,
Speaker 1: is that he viewed killing an Indian no different than
Speaker 1: he viewed killing a bear, which is a kind of
Speaker 1: a wild thought. The cultures were so different that they
Speaker 1: a lot of people back at that time, What's Will
Speaker 1: probably included, did not think of Indians as human beings.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you can do that, and we
Speaker 1: certainly today aren't there. But there was a time in
Speaker 1: history when people thought that that they're not humans. They're
Speaker 1: like us, but they're not humans, so we can we
Speaker 1: can go ahead and kill them. Yeah, and it's it's
Speaker 1: hard for us in to put our mind there. Well really,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a trend inside of human nature. And
Speaker 1: it makes it easier to kill your enemy if you
Speaker 1: think they're not human. That's part of this archeological aspect
Speaker 1: of it. If that person is not a person and
Speaker 1: they're a bear, that's a lot easier. Yeahs almost like
Speaker 1: a coping mechanism for guilt. And you build that into
Speaker 1: your culture, and your dad tells you that, and his
Speaker 1: dad told him that, And it's time you're young, you're
Speaker 1: taught that, you know, and then the more you do it,
Speaker 1: the less you're bothered by it. The human story is
Speaker 1: wrought with tragedy, and in North America, the de humanization
Speaker 1: of indigenous people is one that happened here, but to
Speaker 1: be historically accurate, many Native American ideologies didn't believe the
Speaker 1: white man to be fully human either. The Shawnees believed
Speaker 1: that whites were of a lesser order and were created
Speaker 1: by an inferior god to the one that made them,
Speaker 1: and in turn, they were often extremely brutal towards the
Speaker 1: white interlopers who invaded and took over their ancestral lands.
Speaker 1: Was a bloody and wild time period. I think this
Speaker 1: would be a good time to talk briefly about some
Speaker 1: of the other Wetzel brothers, because you're gonna need to
Speaker 1: just know they were there. Louis's older brother, Martin, was
Speaker 1: the second most notorious of the brothers. He once executed
Speaker 1: sixteen Native captives with his tomahawk, and he once snuck
Speaker 1: up behind an Indian in the midst of a peace
Speaker 1: negotiation and literally split his skull with a tomahawk. Martin
Speaker 1: was once captured by Native Americans and was their captive
Speaker 1: for over a year, and by deceit he gained their
Speaker 1: trust and then escaped after murdering one by one the
Speaker 1: three Indians he was hunting. With John Wetzel Jr. Another brother,
Speaker 1: He once infiltrated an Indian village by dressing like an Indian.
Speaker 1: He stayed undercover for several days before he murdered two
Speaker 1: Indians outside the village and later complained about only bringing
Speaker 1: home two scalps. All the Wetzel brothers were involved in
Speaker 1: this war and in murder and Indians. Now, let's talk
Speaker 1: about a critical moment in the Wetzel Brothers young adult life.
Speaker 1: The biggest marker and understanding who Lewis Wetzel was and
Speaker 1: all the Wetzel brothers and why they did what they
Speaker 1: did was when their father was killed. And it was
Speaker 1: in seven and it was Louis, his brother Martin, his
Speaker 1: brother George, and his dad. So four Wetzel's father and
Speaker 1: three sons. They're in a canoe on the Ohio River
Speaker 1: or some type of boat on the Ohio River, and
Speaker 1: they get ambushed from the bank for no apparent reason
Speaker 1: and essentially kill John wetzl Sr. And George Wetzel. And
Speaker 1: so the two that are alive are Martin and Lewis,
Speaker 1: and they survive in kind of a wild story of
Speaker 1: jumping in the water and being on the back side
Speaker 1: of the boat. And they go and make retribution for
Speaker 1: their father and kill a couple of the Indians that
Speaker 1: were a part of this. And they say that that
Speaker 1: was that was the thing that solidified his vow. So
Speaker 1: he's made this vow when he was a young boy,
Speaker 1: after being captured when he's thirteen, he becomes a scout
Speaker 1: when he's seventeen and then at twenty three, his dad
Speaker 1: and brother get killed in front of him. They bury
Speaker 1: him in a shallow grave on the banks of the
Speaker 1: Ohio River and Hickory bark coffins, so that that that
Speaker 1: like solidified the next twenty years of his life. Before
Speaker 1: he died of of he was just gonna kill everybody
Speaker 1: that he could find. This is a great place to
Speaker 1: try to venture into the mind of Lewis Wetzel. Zach
Speaker 1: Nukem is a clinical social worker, but he has also
Speaker 1: served as the clinical director of a psychiatric hospital. He
Speaker 1: spent his career in the mental health field, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to get some clarity on the possible conditions of
Speaker 1: somebody with a resume like Wetzel. And yep, Zack is
Speaker 1: my brother, older brother. You know, as you described for
Speaker 1: me Wetzel, in his life, a couple of things pop
Speaker 1: out that would that I would want to explore deeper.
Speaker 1: One would be his the initial childhood trauma that he experienced.
Speaker 1: You've got to go there. To me as a as
Speaker 1: a clinician, I'm gonna you know, PTSD is something that's
Speaker 1: going to be strong on my radar. Honestly, with trauma
Speaker 1: like that it would be hard for me to believe
Speaker 1: that there's not PTSD there, right, Sure, I mean that's
Speaker 1: pretty you know, post traumatic post traumatic stress disorder from
Speaker 1: as a child being distressed by confrontation with these Indians
Speaker 1: being kidnapped. Yep. Absolutely, it just grew through his life
Speaker 1: probably yep. So you've got that trauma right there, which
Speaker 1: changes a man, right, that changes a human being. And
Speaker 1: then as you described to me the environment he lived in,
Speaker 1: which my understanding, I mean he was basically that was
Speaker 1: his profession, was to kill Native Americans. And so as
Speaker 1: you described that to me, the first thing that comes
Speaker 1: to my mind is, I mean, that's not that's not
Speaker 1: an environment in any of us, at least in the
Speaker 1: US live in today for the most part. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a war zone. What you're describing to me as
Speaker 1: a war zone. And so you know, so if you're
Speaker 1: assessing anisocial personality disorder or or is somebody a sociopath,
Speaker 1: you know it is a soldier a sociopath for doing
Speaker 1: what he does in on the battlefield. Right, So those
Speaker 1: are things you're gonna have to take into account. So
Speaker 1: the context matters, The context matters, The context matters, that's
Speaker 1: good to know. I asked Zack if he would be
Speaker 1: able to diagnose Wetzel, and here's what he said after
Speaker 1: he almost slapped me. So it would be unethical. It
Speaker 1: is unethical for me to diagnose someone who's not in
Speaker 1: front of me, that I'm not actively assessing. So when
Speaker 1: people ask me these things, Hey, this character from the past,
Speaker 1: or this that and the other or there, you know,
Speaker 1: it happens to me all the time, like, hey, my
Speaker 1: brother is doing these things, or my boyfriend or my girlfriend,
Speaker 1: are they a psychopath? Right? I can kind of look
Speaker 1: at things, little story worries, and they're all kind of
Speaker 1: anecdotal right at this point in time, and I can say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, if they were coming into my office
Speaker 1: and I had this information, I can say, you know what,
Speaker 1: these are things I'd be looking for. Okay, man, Okay.
Speaker 1: So it's unethical to go back and diagnose someone that
Speaker 1: you can't actually speak with. That is good to know.
Speaker 1: So now let's learn about sociopaths psychopaths and how both
Speaker 1: of these fall under the category of anti social personality
Speaker 1: disorder and people throw around like you just throughout the
Speaker 1: like sociopath sociopath is not an official diagnosis. It's a
Speaker 1: just kind of a term to describe a set of behaviors, right,
Speaker 1: and so sociopath and psychopath fall into under the category
Speaker 1: most of the time of antisocial personality disorder. So what
Speaker 1: is the sociopath? So, if you're looking at sociopath versus psychopath,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the easiest way to see them,
Speaker 1: sociopath would be somebody who you know, they lack empathy
Speaker 1: for others. Generally speaking, the sociopath is aggressive, Like there's
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of anger outbursts, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of aggression. The sociopath, they can be uh, demonstrative and
Speaker 1: and and people explosive. But also, like what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to get at is people can you know, enjoy their
Speaker 1: company to a certain degree because they're they're wild and
Speaker 1: crazy and fun. Okay, so they could be like almost
Speaker 1: normal people in some social settings. Yeah, Now the psychopath
Speaker 1: more the contrast of that would be the psychopath would
Speaker 1: again not have the the emotional connection to people, not
Speaker 1: really feel empathy, but generally speaking, would be able to
Speaker 1: discern I'm gonna laugh and smile to manipulate this person,
Speaker 1: but really they're not laughing and inside that's a psychopath,
Speaker 1: have very clinical, very very unfeeling. So do you think
Speaker 1: a guy that would have killed this many humans, he
Speaker 1: could fall under a category of a sociopath. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so somebody like Wetzel could be considered a sociopath. But
Speaker 1: this is the main source of the problem, this antisocial
Speaker 1: personality disorder. We need to learn what this is, alright,
Speaker 1: So and that social personality disorder. And this is straight
Speaker 1: from the ds M five, which is the diagnostic manual.
Speaker 1: This is straight from the textbook. This is textbook. So
Speaker 1: somebody from them to meet that criteria, they have to
Speaker 1: meet three or more of the following. Okay, Failure to
Speaker 1: conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, as
Speaker 1: indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest,
Speaker 1: so check. Check. Deceitfulness as indicated by repeated lying, use
Speaker 1: of aliases or conning others for personal profit or pleasure.
Speaker 1: I would say, check, would you okay, you know him
Speaker 1: more than me? Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead. Man,
Speaker 1: I might fit into that one, see that one. At
Speaker 1: least based on the story. Those those three things, No,
Speaker 1: there's more. There's a list of seven here. That will go.
Speaker 1: He's got to have at least oh, he's got to
Speaker 1: have at least three, at least three of the sew.
Speaker 1: We can't diagnose him because that wouldn't be Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna do it. But this is like a
Speaker 1: good guideline. Irritability and aggressiveness as indicated by repeated physical
Speaker 1: fights or assaults chick. See okay, I mean he compulsed,
Speaker 1: he killed people just constantly. Yeah, but in the context
Speaker 1: of war. Yeah, so then reckless disregard for safety of
Speaker 1: self or others. Check. Consistent irresponsibility is indicated by repeated
Speaker 1: failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations. Check. Counterfeiting. Uh.
Speaker 1: Lack of remorse as indicative by being indifferent to or
Speaker 1: rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, they're stolen from another. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: triple check. So based on those criteria, those seven, well,
Speaker 1: he for sure had six. This is a diagnosis. But
Speaker 1: these are the things Zach would be looking into if
Speaker 1: Louis Wetzel came into his office. So as we move forward,
Speaker 1: the definition of a serious killer is simply someone who
Speaker 1: has murdered more than one person. Here are Zack's final
Speaker 1: thoughts from everything I'm hearing in our conversation. If you
Speaker 1: very potentially have the labeling of a serial killer, you
Speaker 1: very potentially have the labeling of a sociopath or somebody
Speaker 1: with antisocial personality disorder, uh, and you highly likely have
Speaker 1: some post traumatic stress disorder. We're going to learn that
Speaker 1: Wetzeld got into some serious trouble with some counterfeit money
Speaker 1: later in his life. But I think this general checklist
Speaker 1: is pointing us in the right directions we try to
Speaker 1: understand it. What I learned about this antisocial personality disorder
Speaker 1: is that it's very serious and that really less than
Speaker 1: five percent of the population could be diagnosed with it.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't mean that you don't like being in
Speaker 1: public or don't like talking to people. It actually doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that at all. It means that a person wouldn't
Speaker 1: comply with the very basic premises of society, and a
Speaker 1: high percentage of people in prison have this this order.
Speaker 1: But let's get back into Wenzel's life and look at
Speaker 1: the only thing we have, which are the stories that
Speaker 1: are recorded about him. We're gonna tell two stories of
Speaker 1: cold blooded bushwhacken murder that had to do with turkey hunting.
Speaker 1: But first Steve will discuss the hazy nature of human storytelling.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're talking about how stories get a
Speaker 1: little messed up in the telling. Yeah, I have a
Speaker 1: friend who tells me a great story that involves him. Okay,
Speaker 1: so my buddy Ronnie tells me a story about Ronnie.
Speaker 1: I then tell my friend a story that happened to Ronnie.
Speaker 1: A couple of years goes by. My friend is talking
Speaker 1: to Ronnie, telling Ronnie a story that happened to me.
Speaker 1: Towards the end of the story, Ronnie says, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: that didn't happen to Steve. That's my story. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: bring that up where there's a there's like this apocryphal
Speaker 1: Wetzell's story about a Native American who is hunting whites
Speaker 1: by mimicking the sound of a wild turkey gobbling and
Speaker 1: lures and and kills too. Who are He's targeting people
Speaker 1: who are out hunting turkeys in the spring. He gobbles
Speaker 1: when they come slipping in, he kills them. Lewis Wetzel
Speaker 1: gets wind of this, sneaks into the area where he
Speaker 1: knows this individual is hanging out, throws a rock to
Speaker 1: make a noise. The individual who's masquerading as a turkey
Speaker 1: reveals himself to see what the noise was, and Wetzel
Speaker 1: out smarts the guy who's out smarting everything, and they
Speaker 1: call that guy the gobbler Indian. And it's like, did
Speaker 1: that really happen? You know what I mean? It's like
Speaker 1: so crazy, but also so it's like a perfect story.
Speaker 1: Alman tells that story, and he staked out where he
Speaker 1: believes this Indian was. He got up in a bluff,
Speaker 1: and there's actually a photo in this book of a
Speaker 1: bluff that is believed to be where he shot the
Speaker 1: Indian from. And so it's like a place that they
Speaker 1: think it happened, but it winds up being it's like,
Speaker 1: how many adventures is one guy get to have? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well that and that's where it just starts to stack
Speaker 1: up thick, because listen to this one, Steve. So somehow
Speaker 1: they knew that there was some Native Americans hunting over
Speaker 1: in this area and that they were keyed in on turkeys.
Speaker 1: Louis Wetzel had killed the turkey the day before, cuts
Speaker 1: off its foot, it's wingbone, and puts it in his pouch,
Speaker 1: it said, and whether he was using that to turkey
Speaker 1: hunt because he was a good hunter too. I mean
Speaker 1: he was making a living hunting essentially, I mean just
Speaker 1: for his own food. And you know when he was
Speaker 1: in the frontier at least, and but he knows that
Speaker 1: there's guys around, and what he does is he takes
Speaker 1: the track. I'm pretty sure Lyman Draper is the one
Speaker 1: that recorded this, so it would have been like third hand,
Speaker 1: Like Louis, it's a told a guy and that guy
Speaker 1: told Draper, so you know, it's about as good as
Speaker 1: we can get. And Louis said that he made turkey
Speaker 1: tracks in the snow bank, so he didn't leave his tracks.
Speaker 1: He left turkey tracks and went up on the hill,
Speaker 1: staked out a hundred yards away in a clearing, and
Speaker 1: he made the sound of a fly up a turkey
Speaker 1: flying up to roost by slapping the wing strategy used
Speaker 1: by a modern but you use the wing to make
Speaker 1: the fly down. But the difference between us and them,
Speaker 1: we hunt him in the daylight, and they would hunt
Speaker 1: him oftentimes sometimes in the dark. Well, he made this
Speaker 1: the loud sound of a turkey flying up to roost,
Speaker 1: and then he had a wingbone call. And I mean
Speaker 1: the guy the Native American appears and starts tracking those tracks,
Speaker 1: and he shoots him, kills him dead. I mean, so
Speaker 1: it's wild. You know, these stories, I think you have
Speaker 1: to can with a grain of salt, but you know
Speaker 1: they come from I mean, that may be just the
Speaker 1: way it happened, but it also might have been a
Speaker 1: fraction of the truth as well. What we know is
Speaker 1: that in that time, in those years, people were dying.
Speaker 1: By the thousands. Death was just everywhere. Every family was
Speaker 1: touched directly by death. You could not get through years
Speaker 1: without seeing dead people laying around. You couldn't get through
Speaker 1: life without seeing mutilated corpses. You couldn't. Yeah, so was
Speaker 1: every one of these little murder incidents or whatever he said, like,
Speaker 1: is it? Like, I don't know. But what we do
Speaker 1: know there was a lot of people killing a lot
Speaker 1: of people during those years and that part of the country.
Speaker 1: Think about being in the spring Turkey woods here in
Speaker 1: a gobble and trying to decide if somebody's trying to
Speaker 1: lure you into kill you. That is next level. Here's
Speaker 1: the suite of stories that continued to paint a picture
Speaker 1: of Wetzel's wild life. There's a story of once of
Speaker 1: him escaping from Indians swimming. He swimming the Ohio River
Speaker 1: a lot. You know, Whelan, West Virginia was right on
Speaker 1: the edge of the Ohio River and then the Ohio
Speaker 1: Territory was where a bunch of the stuff was going down.
Speaker 1: Multiple times he swam the Ohio River in bad conditions
Speaker 1: and once he and a buddy escaped. They had one horse.
Speaker 1: They the buddy takes the horse for whatever reason, I
Speaker 1: guess he was riding it. The horse takes him across
Speaker 1: the Ohio River swimming. Wetzel has to swim, and I
Speaker 1: mean they're fleeing for their life. And he gets across.
Speaker 1: It's in the dead of winter and he's dieing a
Speaker 1: hypothermia and a story as they kill the horse, split
Speaker 1: it down the middle, Wetzel crawls in the horse and
Speaker 1: survives hypothermia inside the horse. That's kind of a throwback
Speaker 1: to the old you know, you wonder where the guys
Speaker 1: at Star Wars got that when they killed There's there's
Speaker 1: there's accounts as well of hide hunters, buffalo hide hunters
Speaker 1: surviving storms inside you know, inside the abdominal cavities of
Speaker 1: buffalo they kill. They didn't get it from Star Wars. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm saying the Star Wars got Star Wars Spielberg. He
Speaker 1: got it from those boys. Okay, in my knowledge of Wetzel,
Speaker 1: this was his most cold blooded move ever. So in
Speaker 1: his adult life, Lewis was captured by Indians and he
Speaker 1: he stayed with them for some period of time, and
Speaker 1: they capture him and they know who he is. And interestingly,
Speaker 1: inside of Native American culture, if they capture a great warrior,
Speaker 1: even from the enemy, they treat him different, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, like you'd think with us, it might be
Speaker 1: like kill him immediately, good, different always Because you know
Speaker 1: the story of Jacob great House, him and his wife,
Speaker 1: Jacob great House, the o're bad very much in the vein,
Speaker 1: very much in the vein of Wetzel. Jacob Great Else
Speaker 1: commit some atrocities, and when they caught him, they took
Speaker 1: him and his wife and they opened their bellies right
Speaker 1: above the pubic line, pulled out the lower intestine, tied
Speaker 1: it to a sapling, and made him go round and
Speaker 1: round in circles. The wife died pretty young, but they
Speaker 1: say Jacob grey House went so far he pulled his
Speaker 1: own stomach out before he died. Because he had done
Speaker 1: some bad stuff, and he knew him and he paid
Speaker 1: for the bad things he did. In his case is unprovoked.
Speaker 1: Unprovoked killing of friendly people. Yeah, well, in the account
Speaker 1: that is told by Wetzel, because he was the only
Speaker 1: one there, they are trying to figure out what to
Speaker 1: do with him, because they've got a real trophy on
Speaker 1: their minds. This is a great warrior, and he can
Speaker 1: hear him, and he can speak Delaware, and he can
Speaker 1: speak multiple Native American languages fairly well, so he can
Speaker 1: understand what they're saying. And they say, well, we're gonna
Speaker 1: burn him at the state tomorrow. Pretty much, that's what
Speaker 1: they decide. But there is a war chief that didn't
Speaker 1: like that idea, and in the night came and turned
Speaker 1: Wetzel loose, freed him and actually gave him a gun
Speaker 1: and gave him a horse. And in his mind, a
Speaker 1: great warrior, even if it was a warrior against his
Speaker 1: own people, didn't deserve to die that way. What does
Speaker 1: Wetzel do shoots the guy that's turned him loose. That's
Speaker 1: cold blooded, brother. If you remember I mentioned that Louis
Speaker 1: and his family participated in the Revolutionary War. Here's a
Speaker 1: war story. This is an interesting story. This is a
Speaker 1: revolutionary war story. Martin and Lewis are at Fort Bealer
Speaker 1: in West Virginia. That they were in a log fort.
Speaker 1: The fort was being attacked by Native Americans, which they
Speaker 1: were on the side of the British, and so and
Speaker 1: and there was they saw where some guys were digging
Speaker 1: a tunnel under the wall. And Lewis is standing there
Speaker 1: with his tomahawk and the first guy makes it under
Speaker 1: the wall, tomahawks him in the head. They go ahead
Speaker 1: and pull him through under the wall. Well, the Indian
Speaker 1: behind that guy just sees his feet go under the wall.
Speaker 1: And there's a war going on, so they can't hear
Speaker 1: much and there's a thick wall there. Well, the second
Speaker 1: Indian goes under the wall, comes up, there's Louis Wetsel
Speaker 1: walk hits him, kills him. They kill six guys crawling
Speaker 1: under the wall and just stacking the bodies before they
Speaker 1: finally figured out what was You know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: they quit coming under the wall. Isn't that wild brutal?
Speaker 1: There are just too many stories to tell about Wessel,
Speaker 1: but I can't take a swing and telling you about
Speaker 1: his life without telling you about this one. He ended
Speaker 1: up in Louisiana and got involved in this counterfeiting money scam.
Speaker 1: Some say he got romantically involved with the Spanish officer's
Speaker 1: wife and was framed. I would imagine the black locks
Speaker 1: down to his calves would have been hard to look
Speaker 1: away from him for some women. But that's neither here
Speaker 1: nor there. But however it went down, he went to
Speaker 1: prison twice for counterfeit money. However, just like the first
Speaker 1: time he went to prison, he found a way to
Speaker 1: get out. But the wild thing is is so the
Speaker 1: second time that he escaped from confinement, and he was
Speaker 1: in a real prison at this time, was he got
Speaker 1: someone on the outside to bribe the head of the
Speaker 1: prison paid him money, and Lewis Wetzel fakes being sick
Speaker 1: and fakes his own death and they carry him out
Speaker 1: in a coffin like Louis Wetzel's dead. I mean, the
Speaker 1: prison is like Wetzell's dead. They're carrying him out in
Speaker 1: the pine box they probably did, and then he gets
Speaker 1: out and escapes, and it's just I mean, that's pretty bizarre.
Speaker 1: But as far as I can tell, that is like
Speaker 1: a fairly well documented thing that happened. Man the coffin
Speaker 1: prison escape. That's classic. Man. If I'm ever wrongfully imprisoned,
Speaker 1: and if i am, you guys will probably hear about it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna remember this little stunt. With all the outlaw
Speaker 1: and talk of late on this bargrease, I might need
Speaker 1: to be thinking ahead. I still think Brent Reeves is
Speaker 1: after me. But hey, we're all friends here and you
Speaker 1: are the only ones who know about this, So y'all
Speaker 1: be looking for me walking down the side of the road.
Speaker 1: Here's Chip with some deep thoughts. What do you make
Speaker 1: of the idea that at the time he was a hero,
Speaker 1: he was a hero of the frontier. But then now
Speaker 1: we look back at him and we see that he
Speaker 1: was essentially a serial killer, was killing Native Americans for sport.
Speaker 1: How do we What do you make of that? Let
Speaker 1: me say this, and it's very difficult for us now
Speaker 1: in midern times to put ourselves back on the frontier.
Speaker 1: And I make this statement in one of my stories.
Speaker 1: I said, and again I said, if he were alive today,
Speaker 1: he would be labeled a serial killer. But early pioneers
Speaker 1: living in the Upper Ohio River Valley and the late
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds, he was considered an avenger because they were
Speaker 1: losing family friends to Indians and they didn't know how
Speaker 1: to stop it. The only way they could stop it
Speaker 1: is moved back east. And that's what where they came from.
Speaker 1: When they didn't want to do that. They wanted the
Speaker 1: land that was here. They wanted to live here. And
Speaker 1: so for those families, here's a guy out front that
Speaker 1: is killing the people that are killing us. So that's
Speaker 1: the way they looked at it. And it was a
Speaker 1: time period of significant warfare and conflict constant, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't today to think of all these people
Speaker 1: dying and houses being burned down, and I mean it
Speaker 1: wet sold so many times told stories or there were
Speaker 1: stories involved of his peers being their their houses being
Speaker 1: burned down, their families being murdered, and I mean think
Speaker 1: about that today, like if that happened one time in
Speaker 1: my life, would be a big deal. Oh it would.
Speaker 1: I'd write a book about it. But how traumatizing that
Speaker 1: would be and how that would affect society, create instability,
Speaker 1: I mean like internal personal crisis. You know, here we've
Speaker 1: had our gas prices are you know, five dollars a gallon,
Speaker 1: and people are nervous and getting crazy. Well, what if
Speaker 1: there was a pretty good chance that your house at
Speaker 1: some point in your life was going to be burned
Speaker 1: down and a fair chance that your family might even
Speaker 1: be murdered. Like what, who would you then look up to?
Speaker 1: Who would you look to for security? And here's this
Speaker 1: guy that is taken on the threat And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not justifying it. I'm just trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of it. But you're right, if we were back in
Speaker 1: those times, our heroes back then would be a lot
Speaker 1: different than they are now. Our hero now are sports figures,
Speaker 1: you know, people like that. That wouldn't have been the
Speaker 1: case back then because those people were dealing with life
Speaker 1: and death every day. I like what you said there,
Speaker 1: that our heroes are sports figures today. Back then they
Speaker 1: would have been the frontiers. We're always looking for heroes,
Speaker 1: aren't We's human nature. Here's Steve with his final synopsis
Speaker 1: of Wetzel and the time period he lived in. I
Speaker 1: think I think about with Wetzel is informed by our
Speaker 1: understanding now of what happens to veterans, first responders, law
Speaker 1: enforcement individuals who are just subjected to these like really
Speaker 1: traumatic experiences. Were now very versed in this idea of
Speaker 1: of PTSD. Um. I know that my own father, from
Speaker 1: his experiences in the war, suffered from PTSD. Right, I
Speaker 1: think that some sort of future historians, some kind of
Speaker 1: future like physician slash historian individual. Well, someday look get like,
Speaker 1: how is all of that death and violence to what
Speaker 1: extent was it scrambling the brain of all those people involved?
Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean? If you now came
Speaker 1: and said, if you're talking about a guy down the road, Oh,
Speaker 1: he was shot, kidnapped and shot, escaped, watched his father die,
Speaker 1: watched his brother die, lost all this family to all
Speaker 1: this bloodshed, siblings were kidnapped, and then you learned that
Speaker 1: he went on to be a mass murderer, a serial killer.
Speaker 1: What would be the first thing that would come out
Speaker 1: of your mouth? Figured, yeah, and and and it's it's
Speaker 1: like when you if you grow up watching like westerns,
Speaker 1: you know and I know you have and I haven't.
Speaker 1: Warror movies with the heroes are celebrated for their indifference
Speaker 1: to it. Right, you shoot the bad guy down and
Speaker 1: go have a drink, play some cards. But there there
Speaker 1: must have just been a lot of I don't like
Speaker 1: to run around. You know, I'm not one of the
Speaker 1: people that runs around like attributing everything around me to
Speaker 1: some version of childhood trauma. But this isn't that. This
Speaker 1: is dismembered hog eating tomahawks, bodies, man of relatives and
Speaker 1: stuff on both sides of this. Let's call the war
Speaker 1: just mass I mean, ruthless, inhumane atrocities, right, And it's like,
Speaker 1: to what degree was all that just fueling itself? M Like,
Speaker 1: to what degree where all these people or many of
Speaker 1: these people just kind of, you know, suffering from these things,
Speaker 1: Like it's unimaginable to us now, had to have scrambled
Speaker 1: their brains out. They were tougher than us. But how
Speaker 1: tough can you be? Man? Humans weren't supposed to live
Speaker 1: that way. Well, that's the thing. That's that's the part
Speaker 1: is I think about all the time. Lewis Wetzel, the
Speaker 1: Death Wind himself ended up near Natchez, Mississippi, and died
Speaker 1: at his cousin's house in eighteen o eight at the
Speaker 1: age of forty five, probably from yellow fever. He was
Speaker 1: buried in Mississippi, but in nineteen forty two, a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty four years after his death, they exhumed his
Speaker 1: grave and moved his remains back to McCreary Cemetery in
Speaker 1: Marshall County, West Virginia. That's a bold move. They claimed
Speaker 1: his kathleenked hair was still visible and that there was
Speaker 1: a musket lyne beside him in the coffin. This grave
Speaker 1: movement was likely connected to the author saying Gray re
Speaker 1: igniting an interest in the old frontiersman, and then a
Speaker 1: bunch of these other guys right and about him. Man,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to start talking about some lighthearted stuff
Speaker 1: on the Bear Grease podcast to pull ourselves out of
Speaker 1: the dark ditch that we found ourselves in. As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, the next episode it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: deep dive into the life of Mr Rogers. Or I
Speaker 1: guess we could just move on and know that we've
Speaker 1: all come from a dark and bloody past as full
Speaker 1: of some wild stuff. The wild nature, physical hardship, and
Speaker 1: brutality of the lives of those on the American Frontier
Speaker 1: continue to put my life in modern times into perspective.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening to Bear Grease. I feel
Speaker 1: like a giant monkey is off my back now that
Speaker 1: Steve has his podcast on the death wind. Hey be
Speaker 1: sure to check out the meat Eater dot com for
Speaker 1: all kinds of hunting, camping and outdoor apparel stuff. You
Speaker 1: could even get a super cool bear, grease or believer
Speaker 1: hat there. And thanks again for listening and have a
Speaker 1: great week. M