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Lewis Wetzel: Warfare Tactics on the Frontier By George Carroll Volume 50 (1991), pp. 79-90 |
Military involvement in Vietnam reacquainted the American public with guerrilla or partisan styles of warfare. In 1976, one scholar labeled the 1782 massacre of Christian Delaware Indians on the Muskingum River as the "My Lai of the American Revolution," and characterized George Rogers Clark as acquiescing to his 1782 Miami Valley campaign because "sadistic frontiersmen . . . made it impolitic to oppose such action." This author concluded, "The White man's pathological hatred of the Indian would not allow him to distinguish friendlies from enemies."1 Certainly this interpretation is in agreement with that of James Buchanan, Esq., who in 1824 was His Majesty's Consul for the State of New York, and defended the British use of Indian allies during the War of 1812.
So overpowering and awful is the solemn gloom of an American forest, that to an European, under ordinary circumstances, the effect is a strange sensation of loneliness and inability to move in any direction without being immediately bewildered; . . . it is no reflection upon the high character of our troops to observe, . . . they are neither calculated by their habits nor discipline to contend with the riflemen of Kentucky. . . . If the mode of warfare of the Indians was ferocious, that of the enemy with whom we had to contend was equally so. Every man who has served in that country can attest the fact, that the Kentuckians invariably carry the tomahawk and scalping knife into action, and are dexterous in using them.2
Irregulars or detached units of regular troops operating with loose central control are frequently prone to actions described as atrocities. This is especially true when communications are poor, no stabilizing "front" can be distinguished, and small-group surprise raids predominate. It was within such an atmosphere of constant isolation and emergency that Lewis Wetzel and others, such as Samuel Brady and Simon Kenton, became military operatives representing the EuroŸAmerican settlements of the Upper Ohio Valley during the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
The task of an adequate scale of judgment for assessing the homicidal actions of Lewis Wetzel is difficult to establish apart from the frontier society he inhabited. By the time of his first captivity by the Indians in 1778, he and his brother Jacob were barely teenagers.3 In effecting their escape, Lewis demonstrated some of his precocious aptitude for border warfare.
The two boys were captured while tending corn at the Wetzel clearing. They had been given their father's rifle and powder horn and sent to the cornfield while the rest of the family remained under threat of Indian attack at Fort Shepherd in Ohio County. The Indians surrounded the two boys and fired upon Lewis. A ball grazed his breastbone, but caused no serious damage. His captors soon brought the bleeding under control by binding powdered and chewed sassafras leaves to the wound. With the eldest weakened, the two boys were hustled toward the Ohio River. On the second night, after crossing the river, Lewis and Jacob succeeded in slipping their bonds. They took their father's rifle and each secured a pair of moccasins before creeping away. Lewis had sufficient presence of mind and dexterity to retrieve the powder horn and shot pouch before fleeing the camp. The Indians conducted a search which the boys evaded, several times hiding within earshot of their captors. Upon returning to the Ohio River, they constructed a crude raft and made their crossing. It was after arriving safely at Fort Henry, Wheeling, that Lewis supposedly made his public vow to make Indian hunting his vocation.4
Several members of the Wetzel family were the victims of an ambush in 1786 when they were attacked while in a canoe. Lewis refused surrender demands and managed to get the canoe out of rifle range, but not before his father John Wetzel, Sr. and brother George were mortally wounded. His brother Martin suffered a flesh wound in the shoulder which did not prove serious. Clarence B. Allman, Lewis Wetzel's most devoted and recent biographer, contends that from this date, as concerned their forays against the Indians, "he and his brothers now hunted for sport and vengeance."5
Judgment of Wetzel by his contemporaries is revealing. General Josiah Harmer was outraged when in 1791 Wetzel shot and seriously wounded QueŸshaw-say, a Delaware chief and peace emissary to Fort Harmer, Marietta, Ohio. On July 9, 1791, Harmer wrote Secretary of War Henry Knox concerning the incident.
This George Washington is a trusty confidential Indian and was wounded by some vagabond whites from the neighborhood of Wheeling. He is well known to Governor St. Clair, and I believe there is not a better Indian to be found. The villain who wounded him I am informed is one Lewis Whitzell. I am in hopes to be able to apprehend him and deliver him to Judge Parsons to be delt with; but would much rather have it in my power to order such vagabonds hanged up immediately without trial.6
Harmer was doubly incensed when the citizens of nearby Mingo Bottom, whom he was presumably to protect, refused to allow Wetzel to be arrested and tried. When Captain Kingsbury arrived with a company of soldiers, settlers who had gathered for a rifle match became so threatening that Kingsbury retreated to avoid a general engagement between army and citizenry.7
Not all opinion was as favorable toward the Wetzels as was that of the riflemen of Mingo Bottom. Hamilton Karr, grandson and namesake of the Hamilton Karr who was a contemporary of the Wetzels, wrote in 1867 to Lyman C. Draper that he had been told emphatically several times that his grandfather "ever avoided the Wetzels not because they were not brave men but because they were rash men subjecting themselves and their companions to danger and difficulty."8 R. L. Stevenson communicated to Draper in 1863 that the Indian war veterans whom he knew during his youth,
. . . would say but little about what many of them thought was murder as they were mostly all of them Calvinistic Presbyterians. . . . But they would tell about Brady. They would all agree that he was brave but was not fit to command but was of a solitary turn like Wetzel who never made truce or peace but would kill and scalp an Indian for pastime [sic] when he had the opportunity.9
Samuel Brady (1756-1800) was somewhat older than Lewis Wetzel, but their characters and abilities seemed to be matched in conducting daring and ruthless assaults upon the Indians. J. C. Plumer recounted to Draper a story he had from his father concerning Brady. During a cabin raising a Scottish immigrant with a broadsword declared that Brady's reputation with a rifle far outstripped his actual accomplishments. With no more rationale than the immigrant's dare to match scalps taken, both men attacked an Indian camp on the headwaters of Yellow Creek in eastern Ohio. Brady reappeared alone with a scalp in hand. Plumer concluded that "many men in the neighborhood did not relish the trick, and but seldom would Brady speak of it."10
For pure audaciousness, no joint exploit of Brady and Wetzel has more appeal than their dressing as Indians and boldly walking into the Sandusky villages for the purpose of ascertaining Indian strength. After some time the ruse was detected, but both scouts succeeded in fighting their way out and avoided pursuit.11 The matter of Indian costume addresses issues of both tactics and appearance as regarded scouts generally, and Lewis Wetzel particularly. When the aged George Roush, who served under Captain Samuel Brady at Pittsburgh from 1777-80, made application for a military pension in 1855, he described the following dress requirements:
That such Indian dress became generally utilized is attested by Joseph Doddridge in his 1824 accounting of early settler social practices in western Virginia and Pennsylvania.Declarant states that in obedience to the order of his said Captain Brady, he proceeded to tan his thighs and legs with wild cherry and white oak bark and to equip himself after the following manner, to wit, a breechcloth, leather leggins, moccasins, and a cap made out of a raccoon skin, with the feathers of a hawk, painted red, fastened to the top of the cap. Declarant was then painted after the manner of an Indian warrior. His face was painted red, with three black stripes across his cheeks, which was a signification of war. Declarant states that Captain Brady's company was about sixty-four in number, all painted after the manner aforesaid.12
In the latter years of the Indian war our young men became more enamored of the Indian dress throughout, with the exception of the matchcoat. The drawers were laid aside and the leggins made longer, so as to reach the upper part of the thigh. The Indian breech clout was adopted. This was a piece of linen or cloth nearly a yard long, and eight or nine inches broad. This passed under the belt before and behind leaving the ends for flaps hanging before and behind over the belt. These flaps were sometimes ornamented with some coarse kind of embroidery work. To the same belts which secured the breech clout, strings which supported the long leggins were attached. When this belt, as was often the case, passed over the hunting shirt the upper part of the thighs and part of the hips were naked.
The young warrior instead of being abashed by this nudity was proud of his Indian like dress. In some few instances I have seen them go into places of public worship in this dress. Their appearance, however, did not add much to the devotion of the young ladies.13
Descriptions of Lewis Wetzel's appearance are similar to other accounts of contemporary white and Indian scouts. Christian Cackler recalled, "Lewis Wetzel was a man about six feet and well porportioned rather raw boned & active dark and swarthy. I have seen Indians since I thought was about as white as he was."14 Lewis Bonnett remembered him as possessing very muscular arms and shoulders with well-proportioned legs and smallish feet, braided hair carefully knotted around his shoulders which reached nearly to his calves when combed out, extremely piercing black eyes, swarthy complexion much pitted by smallpox, and pierced ears from which he wore silk tassels and other ornaments.15
Wetzel's legendary athletic prowess was attested by Caleb Wells. When attacking an Indian camp with Wetzel, Wells began chasing an Indian only to be outrun by Lewis. By the time Wells reached the stricken Indian, Wetzel had tomahawked and scalped him. Since Wells had considered himself swift of foot, he later challenged Wetzel to a race of one hundred yards. Not only did Lewis easily win the race, but he discharged his rifle at the beginning, reloaded as he ran, and fired again as he reached the finish line.l6
Foremost among Wetzel's skills was his ability to load a rifle while running at top speed to avoid capture. His adroitness was illustrated by his escape after Colonel Crawford's defeat on the Sandusky in 1782. Thomas Mills implored Wetzel to return and assist him in retrieving a valuable horse. Although Wetzel warned Mills that the Indians might lay in ambush for just such an attempt, he persisted. Lewis accompanied him only to see his worst fears realized. Mills was shot while reaching for the animal's tether rope. After shooting one of the assailants, Wetzel outdistanced all but four of the most determined Indians. They laid aside their guns, assuming the white man would never succeed in reloading. Lewis accomplished this near-impossible feat three times, and shot as many of his pursuers. The fourth gave up the chase with the exclamation, "No catch [th]at man, gun always loaded."17
Wetzel's ability to reload on the run is an exploit not even claimed by Samuel Brady. A rifle, its barrel interior configured with raised and spiraling lands, presents a more difficult task of normal reloading than does a smoothbore weapon. This is especially so after an initial discharge due to the heavy residue of black powder. Present-day students of material culture are perplexed at providing a probable explanation for this phenomenon so generally attributed to Wetzel. One possibility is, when making his famous races against death, Wetzel loaded with unpatched balls of considerably less size than the caliber of his rifle. He might then have seated the powder and ball by bouncing the butt of his rifle on the ground as he ran, as well as striking the breech area of the barrel with the heel of an open palm. This would avoid the cumbersome use of a ramrod. An enlarged touchhole could also allow the flintlock pan to have become self-priming.
Jacob Wetzel was credited with a quick reload during the late 1780s when Indians attacked a cabin occupied by himself and his sister Susannah. After Jacob cleverly used a wooden head decoy to attract the first shot, the Indians rushed the cabin on the assumption that he had been killed. "Jacob shot one dead on his approach--and Susan quickly shut and bolted the door. Jacob soon had powder in his gun and roling two naked bullets down, and fired out a porthole just as the Indian was in the act of making off--the two balls taking effect in the Indian's back which soon brought him to the ground." This quick reload employing "two naked bullets" clearly suggests no use of a ramrod or the normal greased patch.18
Jeptha R. Simms published an account of Nathaniel Foster, born about 1767 in Vermont, who became a much-noted hunter in the vicinity of Herkimer, New York, by the early 1790s. Foster is credited with an ability to fire six shots per minute with his rifle.
While hunting he usually wore three rifle balls between the fingers of each hand, and invariably thus in the left hand, if he had that number of balls with him. He had a large bony hand, and having worn such jewels a long time, they had made for themselves cavities in the flesh which concealed them almost as effectively as they were, when hid in the moulds in which they were run from the fused lead. The superficial observer would not have noticed them.
Foster's quick shooting was in the days of flintlocks. He had a powder flask with a charger, and with six well pared balls between his fingers, he would pour in the powder, drop in a ball that would just roll down without a patch, and striking the breech of his gun with his hand, it was primed; soon after which the bullet was speeding to its mark. These rapid discharges could only be made at a short distance, as to make long shots it became necessary to patch the balls and drive them down with a rod, the latter being dispensed with the former case.19
Such patches were usually linen but sometimes buckskin, and were saturated with bear or other animal grease. They provided a much needed lubricant to overcome load resistance from the black powder residue and the spiral of the rifling.
Lewis accomplished his reloads while being chased at full speed over unfamiliar wilderness terrain. If he used unpatched balls of lesser caliber, he could not have relied upon the patched ball accuracy of normal rifle shooting. It would have been necessary to allow his adversaries to get within near reach of himself, and fire at what must often have been point-blank range. During the Thomas Mills's horse episode, one of the three Indians succeeded in grasping Wetzel's barrel before he could shoot. Joseph Doddridge quotes Wetzel as saying that "he and the Indian had a severe wring" before he forced the muzzle to the Indian's breast and fired.20
After the loss of his father and brother during the 1786 canoe ambush, Lewis made his home for some time with Lewis Bonnett's father, then living on Wheeling Creek. From this base he crossed the Ohio River as opportunity presented itself.
He discovered an Indian camp near the west bank of the Ohio river. The fire was still burning and Wetzel concealed himself nearby waiting with patience the return of an Indian. At last there were three that made their appearance. One was an old Indian carrying his rifle and a deer skin. The other two were young lads, probably his sons, carrying their bows and arrows. Lewis waited with anxiety until they got safely around their fire. The old Indian put his gun in the back of the camp. Lewis concluded that the proper time had come, and he took deliberate aim at the old Indian with his old "kill devil." As soon as he pulled the trigger he rushed on the young Indians calling aloud to come on, signifying that there were more with him. The young Indians took to flight. Lewis pursued and soon had his gun reloaded. He could easily outrun the young braves and coming up close to them he shot one through the body. The young Indian sank to the ground the blood coming from his mouth. Lewis soon dispatched him with his tomahawk, and made his way back to the camp, scalped the one there and made his way for home. Upon his return he was asked what luck he had, his reply was I treed three but got only two of them, at the same time pulling the two scalps from his shot pouch.21
No action could illustrate any better what a skillful and remorseless terrorist Lewis Wetzel had become by his mid-twenties.
In mounting guerrilla-style forays against the Indians, Wetzel was certainly not unique to the era. Other successful trans-Appalachian scouts adopted not only the dress but the tactics of their adversaries. A "spoils of war" motive often accompanied the public service aspect of a venture. The famous rifleman Tim Murphy, who in the 1777 Saratoga Campaign picked off British General Simon Frazer on specific orders from Daniel Morgan, was described two years later by Lieutenant Colonel Adam Hubley. Hubley, commander of the llth Pennsylvania Regiment in General John Sullivan's 1779 expedition against the Iroquois, noted in his campaign journal on September 13, "this Murphy is a noted marksman, and a great soldier, he having killed and scalped that morning, in the town they were at, an Indian, which makes the three and thirtieth man of the enemy he has killed, as is well known to his officers, [in] this war."22 S. E. Fouts likewise described his brother Daniel Fouts's activities during the border war period to Lyman C. Draper in the following terms: "my Br. never had much to say about his Indian hunts. When persons would speak of Indian signs he would inquire the particulars and soon be missing some times for 2 or 3 days[.] [A]fter returning he would be seen with some Indian trinkets which would lead persons to suspect where he had been."23
The spoils from a fortunate raid could be of considerable value by frontier standards. Indian trinkets were frequently silver, and often became a circulating medium of exchange in frontier fur trading communities, which were chronically short of hard cash. James Hollister recounted to Draper an episode wherein after pursuing Indians to the vicinity of present St. Clairsville, Ohio, it was determined that further chase was futile because the Indians were all mounted. So abruptly had the Indians departed that members of the expedition "found an Indian head dress hanging on a bush at the spring[,] which when Wetzel saw [it] he declared that it was on the head of the Indian that caught him and it was given to Lewis Wetzel[.] [I]t contained 60 silver brooches about the size of an American quarter of a dollar I have seen 5 or six of these brooches which he give to his brothers children. . . ."24 When interviewed in 1855, John Morgan remembered that his brother Levi had killed an Indian in October 1778 on Booth's Creek in present-day West Virginia. The Indian "had an elegant gun, considerable ammunition, a tomahawk and scalping knife, and between forty and fifty dollars in gold and silver, which fell to Levi, according to the custom of the times, which he divided with father."25
So accustomed to adventure and spoils were some elements of both the Indian and white populations, that they mutually resisted efforts at peace settlements. The same Levi Morgan indignantly reported to Virginia Governor Robert Brooke on November 14, 1795:
. . . when I was on my way home from escorting prisoners I met with two men who live in Mason County in the State of Kentucky on the Ohio near a place called Limestone, who told me they were on their way to the Indian Country to steal horses from the Indians. I strove to dissuade them from it telling them we and the Indians had now made peace and a conduct like they were about to engage in might irritate the Indians and likely provoke them to distress some hapless families, on the frontier . . . before I left that country . . . I saw one of the same two men who then told me they had taken off three of the Indians valuable horses, two of which they got into Kentucky and sold them, and they had pushed up river until the alarm (if any should be made) was over.26
Noted Mohawk leader Joseph Brant wrote similarly in 1788 from the other side of the conflict. Peace negotiations which he was attempting to foster were jeopardized due to ". . . the Shawnees, Miamis, and Kickapoos, who are now so addicted to horse-stealing that it will be a difficult task to break them of it, as that kind of business is their best harvest, will of declare for war, . . ."27 Thus, the opposition between peace and war factions was evidenced in both Indian and Euro-American societies during the early national period in the Old Northwest.
The overall effectiveness of the guerrilla tactics in achieving desirable military outcomes has been questioned. In characterizing the Indian's "primitive war," which the scout frontiersmen are acknowledged to have learned, H. H. Turney-High has commented upon the extreme individualism which, ". . . overdeveloped the war honor concept almost everywhere. It is valuable always, but the practice of war for its own sake rather than the achievement of some socio-economic end is militarism. The Americas were, paradoxically, continents rife with militarism but with little war."28
While acknowledging General Washington's preference for a professionalized standing army, George Athan Billias nevertheless credits the American Revolution's citizen-soldiers with successfully employing thin skirmish lines, the aimed fire of rifles versus volley firing, and the general utility of fast, light infantry which "demonstrated more military flexibility in employing swiftly moving forces for hit and run tactics."29
In his recent study of Indian military tactics, Leroy V. Eid has concluded that Indian military maneuvers of the late eighteenth century were effective. Indian tactics depended upon the existence of partisan raids as normal social procedure, and "a general military preparedness resulted from these partisan or private war parties. When national war was called for by the political arm, it could count on officers and soldiers trained in petite war."30 C. B. Allman's assessment of the role of frontier society in the employment of Lewis Wetzel and others was essentially correct. "We may not agree that the settlers were right in their view of the correct principle of protection, but we must confess that they had no other adequate protection than that which they took in their own hands."31
An evaluation of Lewis Wetzel's place in the military history of the Old Northwest is inextricably tied to an analysis of guerrilla warfare tactics. One need not be unsympathetic with the decent and unoffending citizenry described by Hector St. John de Crevecoeur on Pennsylvania's frontier as he lamented, "from the mountains we have but too much reason to expect our dreadful enemy; the wilderness is a harbour where it is impossible to find them." Crevecoeur insisted that any man still possessing abstract ideals of patriotic military devotion should test them by ". . . being situated where I am . . . his house perpetually filled, as mine is, with miserable victims just escaped from the flames and the scalping knife, telling of barbarities and murders that make human nature tremble. . . ."32 The plea of humanity notwithstanding, Crevecoeur's testimony is clearly suggestive of how effectively unnerved much of the American rural population was, and how much food producing western territory was depopulated by guerrilla warfare which in reality employed few armed forces. Would that the large armies of the Revolution had been as effective.
Richard Slotkin has insisted that the frontier partisans have bequeathed us a lethal national mythology which ". . . has blinded us to the consequences of the industrial and urban revolutions and to the need for social reform and a new concept of individual and communal welfare."33 The problem is not a national but an international issue. Virtually every society in the world has a memory record of national or regional partisans. In discussing Daniel Morgan's use of snipers in the Saratoga Campaign and the criticism engendered, Don Higginbotham decided that "as an Indian fighter, Morgan had concluded there was nothing chivalrous about war: it was ugly business, with one's chances of victory enhanced by crippling an opponent in any way possible, not by observing time honored rules and customs."34 Should comparison with Vietnam be entertained it is conceivable that we would not have been caught so emotionally and tacticaly off balance had we remembered our own traditions. The best assistance might well have been to confine our efforts to guerrilla-style forces.
As for Lewis Wetzel, his name and fame were perpetuated into the twentieth century by Zane Grey's first three novels--Betty Zane (1903), The Spirit of the Border (1906), and The Last Trail (1909). The novelist expressed the hope that his treatment of Wetzel "softens a little the ruthless name history accords him." Grey insisted that "the border needed Wetzel. The settlers would have needed many more years in which to make permanent homes had it not been for him. He was never a pioneer; but always a hunter of Indians."35
However damaging a national legacy Wetzel and his cohorts may have left us, according to the Richard Slotkin model, John Hollow believes the literary character type to have been well and firmly established. "Zane Grey's character, for whom Wetzel is just the first of many names, went even further west. He became all those lonely gunfighters in Grey's other novels."36
1. James O'Donnell, "The Plight of the Ohio Indians During the American Revolution," in The Historic Indian in Ohio, ed. by Randall Buchman (Columbus: Ohio Historical Society, 1976), 18Ÿ19.
2. James Buchanan, "Sketches of the History, Manners and Customs of North American Indians," The London Quarterly Review 61(Dec. 1824): 102-03.
3. Lyman C. Draper, Draper Manuscripts Collection, 1728-1891, 20(Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1982), S84 and S64. Hereafter cited as Draper MSS, with relevant internal citation. Lewis Wetzel's birth is typically cited as 1764, but Lewis Bonnett informed Lyman C. Draper that Lewis was born in August 1763. The use of the term "Indian" in this article rather than "Native American" or "Amerindian" is due to the fact these alternatives are themselves as broad as to pose additional problems.
4. Ibid., 11E96, 97, 98, 99, 100. Original spelling adhered to in all direct quotations.
5. C. B. Allman, Lewis Wetzel, Indian Fighter (New York: DevinŸAdair Co., 1971), 109.
6. Gayle Thornbrough, ed., Outpost on the Wabash (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1957), 208.
7. Wills De Hass, History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of Western Virginia (Wheeling: H. Hoblitzell, 1851), 357Ÿ58. De Hass offered a detailed accounting of the confrontation between Captain Kingsbury and the settlers, but unfortunately identified his informant simply as an "eyeŸwitness."
8. Draper MSS, 5E69.
9. Ibid., 5E70.
10. Ibid., 5E36.
11. Ibid., 6E82.
12. John C. Dann, ed., The Revolution Remembered (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980), 259.
13. Joseph Doddridge, Early Settlement and Indian Wars of Western Virginia and Pennsylvania (1824; reprint, Parsons: McClain Printing Co., 1960), 92-93.
14. Draper MSS, 6E39.
15. Ibid., 11E132; Allman, Lewis Wetzel, 192-95. When Wetzel's skeleton was exhumed near Natchez, Mississippi, by Dr. Albert W. Bowser in 1942, the grave was identified by the remains of his rifle and shot pouch contents with which he was known to have been buried. The skeleton revealed a broad-shouldered man of five feet nine inches in height. Dr. Bowser, who was familiar with forensic medicine, found the mid-forties male skeleton to match Wetzel's age at death.
16. Draper MSS, 5E55.
17. Doddridge, Early Settlement and Indian Wars, 231.
18. Draper MSS, 5E55.
19. Jeptha R. Simms, Trappers of New York, or a Biography of Nicholas Stoner and Nathaniel Foster; . . . (Albany, New York, 1860), 249Ÿ50, as quoted in [The Engages], "The Long Hunters of New York," The Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly 5(Summer 1989): 5Ÿ6.
20. Doddridge, Early Settlement and Indian Wars, 231.
21. Draper MSS, 11E84. As quoted in Allman, Lewis Wetzel, 80, Lewis Bonnett's correspondence of 3 Nov 1846 to Draper is shortened and the grammar standardized.
22. Adam Hubley, "Journal of Lieut.ŸCol. Adam Hubley," in Journals of the Military Expedition of Major General John Sullivan Against the Six Nations of Indians in 1777, ed. by Frederick Cook (Auburn, NY: Knapp, Peck & Thompson, 1887), 162.
23. Draper MSS., 5E61.
24. Ibid., 7E34.
25. Ibid., 7E58.
26. Ibid., 1E110.
27. Quoted in Randolf C. Downes, Council Fires on the Upper Ohio (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), 304.
28. Harry Holbert TurneyŸHigh, Primitive War; Its Practice and Concepts (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1949), 104.
29. George Athan Billias, ed., George Washington's Generals (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1964), xiv.
30. Leroy V. Eid, "A Kind of Running Fight: Indian Battlefield Tactics in the Late Eighteenth Century," The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 71(April 1988): 150.
31. Allman, Lewis Wetzel, 145.
32. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters From An American Farmer (New York: New American Library, 1963), 195, 200Ÿ01.
33. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1973), 5.
34. Don Higginbotham, "Daniel Morgan: Guerrilla Fighter," in George Washington's Generals, 300.
35. Zane Grey, The Spirit of the Border (New York: A. L. Burt Co., 1906), 4.
36. John Hollow, "Deathwind: Zane Grey's Wetzel," The Old Northwest 7(Summer 1981), 124.