The Spirit of the Border

Zane Grey wrote the historical novel The Spirit of the Border, which was first released in 1906. The events depicted in the book are those that took place in the Ohio River Valley in the late eighteenth century. It tells the story of Lewis Wetzel, a historical figure who devoted his life to eliminating Native Americans and defending emerging European settlements in that area. The plot centers on the attempt by Moravian Church missionaries to convert Indians to Christianity and the divergent routes that the lives of the two brothers take when they cross the border.However, when the Village of Peace, a Christian utopian settlement, is destroyed, the settlers know they will have to hunt him down. The evil Girty brothers urge Indians to commit a succession of killings.The author doesn't mean to defend the story's "brutality," as some readers may see it, but rather to emphasize that the story's wild spirit is genuine to the life of the Western frontier as it was known just a little more than a century ago.