Samuel Brady (1756–1795) and Lewis Wetzel (1763–1808) were both born in Pennsylvania and were both scouts, spies, and “Indian fighters” in southwestern Pennsylvania and northwestern Virginia during the Revolution and postwar American Indian Wars. Brady, of Scots-Irish ancestry, enlisted in the Continental Army in 1775 and served in the Northeast until 1778, when he was transferred to Fort Pitt and joined Daniel Brodhead's Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment as captain of scouts. Thereafter he commanded scouts in numerous western campaigns, including Anthony Wayne's expedition in 1792. Wetzel, whose forebears came from Germany or the Netherlands, had experienced Indian captivity (1776) and the first siege of Wheeling (1777) before serving as a scout in expeditions to Ohio in 1780–1781. After the Revolution he was active in the campaigns in the “Old Northwest ” (mostly in the Ohio River region) from 1789 to 1795. His brothers, Martin, Jacob, and John, were also well known “Indian combatants”. Both Brady and Lewis Wetzel were sometimes reputed to have sworn eternal enmity to all Native Americans, Wetzel after his boyhood captivity and Brady after his brother James Bardy in 1778 and his father Captain John Brady in 1779 were killed by Native Americans. “Many traditions and legends of courage, cunning, and audacity developed around the daring deeds of Brady and of the Wetzel family.”
