WEBVTT - Ep. 60: The Deathwind - Lewis Wetzel 0:00:05.519 --> 0:00:09.800 In that time. In those years, people were dying by 0:00:10.119 --> 0:00:16.280 the thousands. Death was just everywhere. Every family was touched 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:21.560 directly by death. On this episode of the Bargarase podcast, 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:24.080 will be looking into the life of a man whose 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:28.120 legacy is wrought with conflict. To Americans who lived in 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:31.560 the Ohio River Valley, he was a folk hero, but 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:35.400 to the Native Americans he hated and murdered in cold blood. 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:39.760 He was known as the Death Wind. I went to 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:43.800 the Ohio Valley to interview outdoor writer and author Chip 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:48.479 Gross to learn about the life of Lewis Wetsel. This dark, 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:52.959 deep dive comes at the request of one Steve Rannella 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:56.360 of Meat Eater, who is also a guest on this episode, 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:59.400 and we'll talk about Wetsell's life and the brutality of 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.760 the American Frontier. Lastly, in an effort to understand the 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:08.840 mind frame of Wetzel, I'll interview mental health professional Zack 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:13.600 Knucom to learn if our boy Wetzel was truly a sociopath, 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:17.520 a serial killer, or where his action simply the result 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:20.800 of a life lived in a war zone. And yep, 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:24.679 Zack's my brother. I doubt you're gonna want to miss 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:28.000 this one, and hey, I know a lot of you 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:31.200 folks let your young kids listen to Bargaras, which I 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:35.720 absolutely love, but I'll warn you in this episode we 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:39.440 talked about some pretty gruesome and graphic stuff. There was 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:42.039 no guilt in his mind, there was no regret. It 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:44.880 was just I've got to do this, and it continued 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:58.280 doing it basically until until the day he died. My 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:01.920 name is Clay Nukem, and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:06.480 where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:10.280 and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:15.000 Americans who lived their lives close to the land, presented 0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:20.080 by f HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:23.600 fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:33.760 places we explore. Well. In one of the stories that 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:36.800 I've written about him, I say, if he were alive today, 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:40.160 he would be labeled a serial killer, and he really would. 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:43.880 But he hated Indians. He wasn't killing white people, but 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:47.280 he was killing Indians. He would kill hostile Indians. He 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:51.200 would kill you know, not hostile Indians. He just just 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:54.760 hated them. And where I think this came from is 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:57.400 when he was younger. When he was just thirteen years old, 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:01.600 he and his brother, who was eleven, were taken captive 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:04.560 by Wyandots. He later that night he had his brother 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:07.600 escaped got back home. But he made a vow to 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:10.079 himself when he was a kid that he would kill 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:14.239 Indians anytime he could. And then later in life one 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:18.480 of his older brothers is killed by Indians. His father 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:22.639 is killed by Indians. So he had a real vendetta there. 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:27.440 The Shawnees called him long Knife, the Hurons called him destroyer, 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:31.480 and the Delawares called him death Wind. The death Wind 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:35.280 coming moving fast, crawls to him, and he's been a 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:43.160 looking for the men to burning kill. And when he's coming, 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:45.960 you can fill the death of chill. And he won't 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:49.760 stop blowing to his peace and then not his pal. 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:57.320 In the days of the Sender, we struck to survive 0:03:57.000 --> 0:04:00.640 so that the hunger and me but stay. You know, 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:05.560 a man with a gun, he's stung too. To the people, 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:13.200 he was out of the wind. The cultural impact of 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:16.120 a frontiersman can often be gauged by if they have 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:20.000 a musical ballad written about them. This is one from 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:23.680 a band called the back Roads called the Ballad of 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:27.760 Lewis Wetzel. I love these old songs, and how about 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:30.560 those backup singers, And I'll give you a digital fifth 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:34.080 month if you've ever heard this one before. Louis Wetzel 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:38.000 is a controversial figure, and it's interesting to read about him, 0:04:38.080 --> 0:04:40.880 hear him sung about, and see him honored, and then 0:04:40.920 --> 0:04:42.800 go back into his life to try to make sense 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:45.880 of it. Many Americans in his time viewed him as 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:49.280 a hero, but to somebody was a criminal, a murderer, 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:54.679 a madman. But the confusion isn't surprising. The time period 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:58.159 when the American frontier was being pushed into the middle 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:03.039 ground what is now Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, heroes and 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:07.560 mad men could easily be confused because of overlapping traits. 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:13.359 Westel was by profession and Indian scout or Indian hunter, 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:17.240 and he became known as the most effective Euro American 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:22.400 single combat fighter potentially ever. He was believed to have 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:25.719 killed in one on one tussles as many as a 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:30.000 hundred Indians in his short forty five year life. He 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:32.799 claimed to put a bit of silver in his bullet 0:05:32.960 --> 0:05:36.719 to protect him from Indians. Some of his killing was 0:05:36.839 --> 0:05:39.520 done on the clock, and some of it was done 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:44.120 with a recreational flair. He took scalps with pleasure, but 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:48.000 in doing so protected his people, elevating him to a 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:52.039 folk hero. There's a county and a wildlife management area 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:57.599 named after him in West Virginia, along with multiple businesses, parks, 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:01.640 and springs that still carries aim to this day. Born 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:05.240 in seventeen sixty three, Lewis Wetzel and his family did 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:08.080 some fighting in the Revolutionary War. It's also believed that 0:06:08.160 --> 0:06:10.880 Lewis Wetsell served as a scout on the Lewis and 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:15.040 Clark expedition in eighteen o four. He served multiple prison 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:20.320 sentences and escaped once in a coffin. The Feller had 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:24.600 quite the resume. If you've been following bargaries, you know 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:28.160 that I'm prone to tell stories with crescendos of redemption. 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:35.040 This one doesn't have one. It swoops low, arcing towards darkness. 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:39.120 But lucky for us, darkness creates a context for light 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:41.880 to be seen, and I think by looking at the 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:45.840 roughest examples of a time period, it puts into context 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:49.200 others that we've learned about, like Boone, who compared to 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:53.080 Wetsel was the Billy Graham of the middle Ground. He 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:57.640 was a Saint. Chip Gross, the first voice you heard 0:06:57.680 --> 0:07:00.560 on this podcast, has laid the founder sations of what 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:03.600 built Louis Wetzel. As a kid who was taken captive 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:06.120 by Indians and later his father and brother were killed 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:09.760 in a riverside bush whack. Louis made a vow that 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:13.040 he'd kill every Indian he ever saw as long as 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:15.400 he lived, and he proved to be a man of 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:20.120 his word. If you recall on the Mediator podcast, Steve 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:23.480 Ornella made a public petition to get me to tell 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:26.720 the story of Louis Wetzel, which I agreed to do 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:30.360 as long as he agreed to take to heart some 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:34.920 friendly advice on how to blow a crow. Call here's Steve. 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:41.160 Steve RONNELLA, how did you get connected and interested in 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:43.640 the Wetzel brothers. I'll answer that, but first I want 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:45.640 to thank you for doing this because I want to 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:48.480 learn more. I want to learn more about the Wetsels. 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:50.640 I'm fascinated by him. Even though I didn't know about 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:52.880 him that long ago, I became aware of him in 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:56.880 this way. I was interviewing a Daniel Boone historian and 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:00.120 in this we were talking about how Daniel Boone and 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:06.720 was this this very noble, ethical individual somewhat of opportunistically 0:08:06.920 --> 0:08:09.960 pacifist when he could be. He was a pacifist when 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:13.360 he could be right. He was a friend of the 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:16.080 Native Americans when he could be sometimes went out of 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:20.280 his way to be that way. Talked remorsefully about taking 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:25.760 an Indian's life unnecessarily right. This historian ted Franklin Blue 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:29.320 then made a comment to me about some real bad 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:33.440 dudes and mentions the Wetzel Brothers. I didn't know who 0:08:33.440 --> 0:08:36.120 they were, but a body of mine then text me, 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:39.040 how they do you not know about the wet Cels. 0:08:39.400 --> 0:08:43.840 The Indians called him the death Wind, And that's when 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:47.520 I decided to start lobbying you to do a thing 0:08:47.559 --> 0:08:53.679 about the wets You'll hear us throughout this referring to 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:56.760 the Wetzel Brothers. But the most famous Wetzel, and the 0:08:56.760 --> 0:08:59.480 one we're talking about the most is gonna be Lewis Wetzel. 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:03.240 Lewis was born on a section of the Wilderness Road 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:07.120 in West Virginia in seventeen sixty three, wrapped in a 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:10.800 union jack flagged his father and mother were on their 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:14.120 way to homestead on Big Wheeling Creek in the panhandle 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:17.880 of West Virginia, fourteen miles from the Ohio River. It 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:20.600 seems your life is usually more exciting if you're from 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:24.600 the pan handle of a state. Nine states have panhandles. 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:28.240 That's not relevant. His father was considered by many to 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:32.320 be reckless or maybe just naive because of how far 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:36.320 he settled from permanent white settlements. He was way back 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:39.040 on the very edge of the frontier, and it was 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:42.880 a time of great instability and constant guerrilla warfare between 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:46.120 whites and Native Americans. The wet Cels ended up having 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:50.400 seven children, and they had seven peaceful years before Wyan 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:54.280 Dots burned their cabin and captured Lewis AND's younger brother, Jacob. 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:59.600 Four of seven Wetzel children would be captured by Indians 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:02.400 at one point in their life, and a couple of 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:06.760 them got captured more than once. That's an incredible stat 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:11.480 Here's the story of Louis's beginning, and you begin to 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:16.000 see the inklings of the young Louis's uncanny ability to 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:21.560 navigate backwoods life. So in seventeen seventy six, he and 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:25.440 his younger brother, Jacob, who was eleven were kidnapped by 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:30.200 Native Americans. They're working corn and the boys had seen 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.280 a black bear. They had reported seeing a black bear 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:38.600 around the cornfields, and Louis thought the black bear looked funny, 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:41.880 and so he goes back and tells his dad Martin. 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:44.920 The older brother says, saw bear, and Louis goes, I 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:46.640 don't think it was a bear. I think it was 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:49.160 an Indian in a bear skin. And it kind of 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:53.240 red flagged the family. Well, sure enough, that night they 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:56.240 hear something and they're kind of on red alert and 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:59.880 they look outside and they see an Indian coming up 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:02.240 to him, and the dad shoots and kills the Indian. 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:07.040 This isn't when he gets kidnapped, Well, it's connected to that. 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:11.080 That brings retribution from the other Native Americans. Within a 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:13.240 couple of weeks or a couple of days, he and 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:17.000 his brother Wetstle thirteen, Jacob Levin are kidnapped, straight up, 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:20.040 kidnapped by and that's when he got shot. He was 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:24.000 in a cornfield and a bullet grazed his chest. He 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:27.600 gets caught and they stay in captivity for two days 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:31.880 before he makes a pretty daring escape and and he 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:36.080 showed a lot of intuition inside of situations with Native Americans, 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:38.719 even from when he was young. Like they had him 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:41.920 tethered with like leather straps, and they had him tethered 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:44.240 up at night, he and the brother together and they 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:48.560 started moaning about the straps being too tight. The guys 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:51.760 come over and loosen their straps. Long story short, they 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:55.439 escape after the guys are all asleep. This it sounds 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:57.520 like five or six guys. It's a detail about this 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:01.240 escape that that starts really speaking to his sort of 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:03.439 coolness and also just kind of the person he was 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:08.000 where the Indians had taken his father's rifle and here 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:10.360 he is like at any second, as far as he knows, 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:13.320 he's gonna get tom a hawker or taken and has 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:15.680 the has the run a gauntlet. You could get killed 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:18.599 doing that, Like this guy has no idea. He gets away, 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:21.000 but they don't want to leave without recovering their old 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:24.320 man's gun. And there's like a detail too that the 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:28.480 Indians had moccasins that they were drying by the fire, 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:31.640 but they shrunk up. The boys couldn't get the moccasins 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:33.040 on their feet and had to go down to the 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:35.920 creek stole the moccasins, but then had to go down 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:39.440 to the creek and soak those buckskin, not moccasins, in 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:41.679 order to get him stretched out enough to pull him 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:44.680 over to their feet and then take off right. So 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:48.520 rather running off free, running off barefoot without the old 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:51.720 man's gun, they get free, get their old man's gun, 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:54.839 get some footwear, and then take off well. And the 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:57.200 story was he had to go back, so they they 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:01.160 escaped and actually left the camp and in they realized 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:04.040 they didn't have shoes. This is a version Almontel's. They 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:06.719 didn't have shoes, they didn't have the gun, and they 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:09.760 go and he and Wetzel sneaks back into the camp 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:12.560 and gets the stuff and comes back out, which is risky. 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:14.880 I mean, you know, like the guy was laying on something, 0:13:15.040 --> 0:13:16.600 you have to kind of get it off under his head. 0:13:16.679 --> 0:13:19.920 Almond didn't go into that that detail, but that was 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:23.600 the foundation, which would be the vowel that Lewis Wetzel 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:26.720 made as a young boy that he was gonna kill 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:30.400 every you know, Native American that he came in contact with, 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:33.719 and not in an Don't it sounds so weird to 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:37.600 seeing an organized fashion, not with the military, not in 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:42.040 support of like military campaigns, not in support of any 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:45.240 kind of strategy. It was just like in and of itself, 0:13:45.840 --> 0:13:50.680 even to kill allies. Stuff that happens in a person's 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:55.120 childhood is always an important player in their life, whether 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:58.319 good or bad, were foreigned by our experiences, and I 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:01.160 do believe that we have a choice of how we 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:04.760 respond to the good and the bad. Later in the 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:08.760 podcast will hear from a mental health professional on this stuff. 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:12.960 Here's the account of the first time Louis killed a 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:18.080 Native American. As a matter of fact, he killed three 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:22.280 when Louis was sixteen years old, So this is three 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:24.880 years after he and his brother Jacob had been captured. 0:14:25.520 --> 0:14:28.320 They went on a mission with a bunch of adults 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:31.680 to retrieve some stolen horses. So a group of Indians 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:34.120 that stole horses. His dad's horse was in the mix, 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:37.080 and so they go out. The guy's getting a little 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:41.760 shoot out with the Indians, and the adults retreat and 0:14:42.040 --> 0:14:44.280 Wetzel goes back and it's like, what are y'all doing? 0:14:44.560 --> 0:14:47.000 And they go, well, YadA, YadA, YadA, and he goes, well, 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:52.080 I'm going back in and he basically employed a tactic 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:55.360 that he used most of his life in certain situations, 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:59.880 and that tactic was they called it being treated when 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:05.640 in the Indians would retreat but hide and be waiting 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.720 for you. And basically he knew where these Indians were 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:12.240 hiding out, and he snuck in there, and he put 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:15.280 his hat on the end of his gun and leaned 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:17.840 it out from behind the tree. He knew that they 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:21.920 were watching him, and when they shot and hit his hat, 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:25.760 they thought they killed him, and so they exposed themselves. 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:29.320 And he had a loaded musket. So a one shot 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:31.640 musket was a real big deal back in those days, 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:34.040 because you pretty much had one shot and then you 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:38.240 had forty five seconds to two minutes of loading a gun, 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:41.720 depending on how fast you were. So they shot, they 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:44.400 thought they killed the guy, and then Wetzel lets him 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.560 get in close, steps out. It's two Indians, shoots one 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:50.360 in the chest and takes off running. And what they 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:52.360 didn't know, and what he became known for was he 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:57.240 could reload on the run. And he became famous throughout 0:15:57.280 --> 0:15:59.840 that part of the world in the Native American tribes 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:02.760 for always having his gun loaded. But he could he 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:05.400 could load on the run, and so he runs and 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:07.920 the these guys already shot their bullet, and so he 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:10.160 takes after him, and then he runs for however long, 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:12.560 and then his turns with a loaded gun and shoots, 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:15.040 and the they've never seen anything like that. And so 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:17.520 he came back with all these grown men. It was like, 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:21.160 holy cow, who is this kid? Came back with scalps. 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:29.040 They they collected scalps like trophies. I don't want to 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:32.920 glaze over the act of scalping a dead enemy. I 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:35.520 think it's easy to go numb to the brutality of 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:39.680 the act. Maybe it's Hollywood books. I don't know, but 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:44.360 scalping started in Native American warfare, and then as Europeans 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:48.280 got involved, many took up the practice. Perhaps it was 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:53.680 unrestrained retribution, or maybe it was to communicate with their 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:58.280 enemies in a way that they could understand. Anyhow, the 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:01.400 sixteen year old Wetsel took three e scalps that day 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:06.160 by what would become known as Wessel Spring near St. Clair'sville, Ohio. 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:10.600 Lewis's success in guerrilla warfare was that he could load 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:16.400 his gun extremely quickly. Ship Gross is from the Ohio Valley. 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:20.160 He's retired. Game Warden authored multiple books and has had 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:24.119 over one thousand of his articles published about hunting shooting 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:28.600 in Frontiersman. Years ago he took an interest in Lewis Wetzel, 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:32.720 and here he'll give us a critical detail of how 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:38.120 he was able to reload so fast. Now Here, here's 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:41.960 another wilderness skill that he had, and not many other 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:44.880 frontiersman had it. Simon Kenton could do it. A few 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:47.639 others could do it, but reloading on the run, and 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:49.600 he was very very good at this. And what he 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:51.840 would do he was he would take two or three 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:55.600 lead bullets and actually put him in his mouth. Believe 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:58.440 it or not. Now this was before they knew much 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:01.000 about lead poisoning. I'm sure it. He didn't seem to care. 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:04.239 He would carry these extra bullets in his mouth and 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:07.480 that would help him reload much quicker on the run. 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:11.200 Some historians in the past have written that Lewis got 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:14.760 lead poisoning from all the mouth bullet stuff and it 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:18.159 turned him into a madman. Though that can't be healthy. 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:21.199 I don't think that's the only culprit to his obsession 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:26.399 with killing. Here's chip with more unloading a musket fast. 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:30.320 Once you're the firearm is empty, what you have to 0:18:30.359 --> 0:18:32.800 do is you have to pour powder down the barrel 0:18:33.280 --> 0:18:35.760 and then you step one. That step one. Step two 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:39.000 is then you have to take a bullet which was 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:42.760 a round ball, lead ball, and drive it down against 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:45.600 that powder with a ramrod. And then the last step 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:48.520 is to take a small amount of powder and put 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:51.879 it in the pan, the firing pan. That's not easy 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:54.639 to do, and then you have to hope that everything 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:56.560 is going to work when you pull a trigger, because 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:59.240 a lot of times a gun might fire called a 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:02.320 flash in the pain in, but the powder in the 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:05.400 barrel doesn't go off, and sometimes that did. That did 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:07.439 happen with him, And then you're down to hand to 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:09.720 hand combat, and he was good at that too. He 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:13.240 had all the wilderness skills. You know, it's interesting now 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:16.240 we're all used to firearms, and we're used to firearms 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:20.560 that shoot cartridges that are essentially fail proof. Just pull 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:22.480 the trigger and a gun goes off. That that's no 0:19:22.520 --> 0:19:26.040 longer a question. But during this time period, a warrior's 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:31.520 world was dominated by this possibility that his gun wouldn't 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:34.200 go off when he absolutely needed it to. Number one, 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:38.080 and then number two, he was dominated by this limitation 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:42.320 of time. You get one shot, boomb and then you 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:45.720 have to go through a pretty detailed sequence of events 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:49.040 to get it loaded again. And so that was actually 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:52.800 a tactic of Wetzel in his fighting, was that he 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:55.719 could reload so quick that the Indians knew that if 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:58.760 a guy shot, there was a span of time when 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:01.199 he couldn't shoot again, and they would rush in. They 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:04.400 would they would draw the volley of their their enemies 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:07.159 and then they would say, Okay, now we've got a 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:10.480 minute before they can reload, and we're gonna go in 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:13.160 and take him hand to hand or whatever. And that's 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:16.040 where Louis Wetzel, I mean, that was his trick, was 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:19.440 that he he could I mean, it would be interesting 0:20:19.480 --> 0:20:23.000 to actually have the data on it. I mean, could 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:25.600 he do it? Could he do it twice as quick? 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:30.560 Could he do it? Of the time? Louis being able 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:34.119 to reload his gun fast was probably his most valued skill. 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:39.520 I want to read you an excerpt from the book 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:44.040 The Life in Times of Lewis Wetzel by C. B. Almond. 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:48.919 This book was published in nineteen thirty one. At the 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:52.399 age of seventeen, Wetzel maybe said to have entered on 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:56.840 his life's work, that of hunting Indians the warfare with 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:01.520 the Reds was not restrained by proclamations or politicians. It 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:05.160 was a free fight. Anybody could enter and keep at 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:08.119 it as long as he liked. The rules were simple 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:13.880 and consisted of get his scalp. Wetstel was a stern, sober, 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:18.399 silent sort of person, never boasting of his exploits, but 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:21.680 pursuing his way with the tennacy, which made his name 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:24.600 as much feared by the foe as they were hated 0:21:24.640 --> 0:21:28.199 by him. He shunned the company of other people and 0:21:28.320 --> 0:21:31.439 was never so content as when roaming the forest like 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:37.000 a wild animal. Wetzel's picturesque appearance, joined with his growing 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:41.680 reputation for daring, added to his popularity with border folks. 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:46.679 Five ft ten inches tall, unusually strong and well developed 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:50.679 in arms and shoulders, slight and active of limb, with 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:55.760 piercing black eyes, scowling brow, and black hair, which, when 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:59.720 combed out, hung to his knees. This ranger was the 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:02.600 ject of much approval on part of the young ladies 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:07.480 at the settlement. Graceful, morose, fascinating, and blind to their charms, 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:13.119 the dashing youth doubtless reeked considerable havoc among the feminine 0:22:13.119 --> 0:22:17.400 hearts not recorded by tradition or listed in printed tales 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:21.040 of the Frontier. His true love was the long trail 0:22:21.359 --> 0:22:27.239 and the thrill of the encounter. End of quote. The 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:30.680 intel that we have about Wetzel is sparse, and many 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:35.080 authors have published contradicting stories. There are three main books 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:39.000 about Wetzel that I found. One is CB Almond's book 0:22:39.160 --> 0:22:41.560 The Life and Times of Louis Wetzel, which I thought 0:22:41.560 --> 0:22:45.600 was pretty good. Another by Robert Myers, published in eighteen ninety, 0:22:45.880 --> 0:22:49.399 was called Lewis Wetzel, which honestly I didn't think was 0:22:49.440 --> 0:22:52.600 that well written, sorry man. And the latest was in 0:22:52.760 --> 0:22:57.080 nine called That Dark and Bloody River by the famed 0:22:57.160 --> 0:23:01.119 author Alan Eckhart. It's not all out Wetzel, but he 0:23:01.160 --> 0:23:05.280 talks about the Wetzel brothers. Lastly, the author who's attributed 0:23:05.359 --> 0:23:09.080 with making Lewis's nickname the Death Wind famous was a 0:23:09.160 --> 0:23:12.920 novelist named Zane Gray, which in his book The Spirit 0:23:13.000 --> 0:23:17.680 of the Border used the nickname because Gray's novels, which 0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:21.639 were fiction, used the Wetsel brothers as characters, which is 0:23:21.720 --> 0:23:26.040 kind of confusing, so it's not a clear where the 0:23:26.160 --> 0:23:30.040 nickname came from. But a poem called the Ballad of 0:23:30.119 --> 0:23:33.560 Lewis Wetzel, written by Glenn Baker, gave me the only 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:37.520 true citation of the Death Wind that I could find. 0:23:38.840 --> 0:23:42.240 Chip is a native Ohioan and he has studied Wetzell 0:23:42.280 --> 0:23:45.960 a lot. And here's him describing what he knows about 0:23:45.960 --> 0:23:51.800 the nickname the Death Wind. And the death Wind name 0:23:51.920 --> 0:23:55.840 was kind of interesting because where that comes from is 0:23:56.080 --> 0:23:58.679 you probably know, if you take a muzzle loading rifle 0:23:59.040 --> 0:24:00.880 and you blow over the into the barrel, you get 0:24:00.920 --> 0:24:04.600 kind of a hollow sound, like blowing over a bottle, 0:24:04.760 --> 0:24:07.479 you know, empty bottle, that type of thing. And he 0:24:07.560 --> 0:24:10.040 would he would use that to mess with the Indians 0:24:10.400 --> 0:24:12.760 if he got up to a group of Indians, maybe 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:16.440 an Indian camp, and there was too many for them 0:24:16.520 --> 0:24:19.399 for him to take on. He would get within hearing 0:24:19.440 --> 0:24:21.880 distance and he would blow across the top of that 0:24:22.240 --> 0:24:25.480 muzzle to let him know I'm here, you know, and 0:24:25.520 --> 0:24:27.679 I may be coming for you tonight, and me may 0:24:27.760 --> 0:24:29.840 the next night and maybe down the road, you know, 0:24:29.960 --> 0:24:33.359 two or three months. And so that's where death Wind comes. 0:24:34.160 --> 0:24:37.800 And another part he grew his hair very long. He 0:24:37.840 --> 0:24:40.719 was a big man. Crew his hair which was totally 0:24:40.760 --> 0:24:43.399 black as long as he could, which was knee length, 0:24:44.119 --> 0:24:47.320 and he was basically taunting the Indians, come take it 0:24:47.440 --> 0:24:52.760