e was to chronicle the fight of these
sturdy, travelers toward the setting sun. The story of their stormy
lives, of their heroism, and of their sacrifice for the benefit of
future generations is too little known.

It is to a better understanding of those days that the author has
labored to draw from his ancestor's notes a new and striking
portrayal of the frontier; one which shall paint the fever of
freedom, that powerful impulse which lured so many to unmarked
graves; one which shall show his work, his love, the effect of the
causes which rendered his life so hard, and surely one which does
not forget the wronged Indian.

The frontier in 1777 produced white men so savage as to be men in
name only. These outcasts and renegades lived among the savages, and
during thirty years harassed the border, perpetrating all manner of
fiendish cruelties upon the settlers. They were no less cruel to the
redmen whom they ruled, and at the height of their bloody careers
made futile the Moravian missionaries' long labors, and destroyed
the beautiful hamlet of the Christian Indians, called Gnaddenhutten,
or Village of Peace.

And while the border produced such outlaws so did it produce hunters
Eke Boone, the Zanes, the McCollochs, and Wetzel, that strange,
silent man whose deeds are still whispered in the country where he
once roamed in his insatiate pursuit of savages and renegades, and
who was purely a product of the times. Civilization could not have
brought forth a man like Wetzel. Great revolutions, great crises,
great moments come, and produce the men to deal with them.

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 after Indians. When not on
the track of the savage foe, he was in the settlement, with his keen
eye and ear ever alert for signs of the enemy. To the superstitious
Indians he was a shadow; a spirit of the border, which breathed
menace from the dark forests. To the settlers he was the right arm
of defense, a fitting leader for those few implacable and unerring
frontiersmen who made the settlement of the West a possibility.

And if this story of one of his relentless pursuits shows the man as
he truly was, loved by pioneers, respected and feared by redmen, and
hated by renegades; if it softens a little the ruthless name history
accords him, the writer will have been well repaid.

Z. G.