Logan--Kenton--Girty--Dunmore's ambiguous Conduct--His
grandson, Murray.
LOGAN, the Cayuga chief, assented to the treaty, but, still indignant at
the murder of his family, refused to attend with the other chiefs at the
camp, and sent his speech in a wampum-belt by an interpreter: "I appeal
to any white man to say, if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry and he
gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him
not? During the course of the last long and bloody war Logan remained
idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the
whites that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, 'Logan is
the friend of white men.' I have even thought to have lived with you,
but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in
cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not
sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in
the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have
sought it: I have killed many: I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my
country I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbor a thought
that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on
his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one."
Tah-gah-jute, or Logan, so named after James Logan, the secretary of
Pennsylvania, was the son of Shikellamy, a celebrated Cayuga chief, who
dwelt at Shamokin, on the picturesque banks of the Susquehanna. When
Logan grew to man's estate, living in the vicinity of the white
settlers, he appears, about the year 1767, to have found the means of
his livelihood in hunting deer, dressing their skins, and selling them.
When the daughter of a neighboring gentleman was just beginning to walk,
her mother one day happening to say that she was sorry that she could
not get a pair of shoes for her, Logan, who stood by, said nothing then,
but soon after requested that the little girl might be allowed to go and
spend the day at his cabin, which stood on a sequestered spot near a
beautiful spring (yet known as "Logan's Spring.") The mother's heart
was at the first a little disconcerted at the singular proposal; but
such was her confidence in the Indian that she consented. The day wore
away; the sun had gone down behind the mountains in parting splendor,
and evening was folding her thoughtful wing,--and the little one had not
yet returned. Just at this moment the Indian was seen descending the
path with his charge, and quickly she was in her mother's arms, and
pointing proudly to a beautiful pair of moccasins on her tiny feet, the
product of Logan's skilful manufacture.
Not long afterwards he removed to the far West, and he was remembered by
an old pioneer as "the best specimen of humanity, white or red, that he
had ever seen."[591:A] In 1772 the Rev. Mr. Heckwelder, Moravian
missionary, met with Logan on the Beaver River, and took him to be an
Indian of extraordinary capacity. He exclaimed against the whites for
the introduction of ardent spirits among his people, and regretted that
they had so few gentlemen among their neighbors; and declared his
intention to settle on the Ohio, where he might live forever in peace
with the whites; but confessed that he himself was too fond of the
firewater. In the following year Heckwelder visited Logan's settlement,
below the Big Beaver, and was kindly entertained by such members of his
family as were at home. About the same time another missionary, the Rev.
Dr. David McClure, met with Logan at Fort Pitt. "Tah-gah-jute, or
'Short-dress,' for such was his Indian name, stood several inches more
than six feet in height; he was straight as an arrow; lithe, athletic,
and symmetrical in figure; firm, resolute, and commanding in feature;
but the brave, open, manly countenance he possessed in his earlier years
was now changed for one of martial ferocity." He spoke the English
language with fluency and correctness. The victim of intemperance,
pointing to his breast, he exclaimed to the missionary, "I feel bad
here. Wherever I go the evil Manethoes pursue me;" and he earnestly
enquired, "What shall I do?" Logan's family were massacred by a party of
whites in the spring of 1774, perhaps under the pretext of retaliation
for some Indian murders. But the charge against Cresap appears to have
been unfounded. Logan's family being on a visit to a family of the name
of Great-house, were murdered by them and their associates, under
circumstances of extraordinary cowardice and brutality. The mistake is
one into which Logan might, in view of some recent transactions that had
happened under the command of Captain Cresap, naturally fall, and which
does not at all impair the force of his speech. Mr. Jefferson meeting
with a copy of it at Governor Dunmore's, in Williamsburg, transcribed it
in his pocket-book, and afterwards immortalized it in his "Notes on
Virginia." He gave implicit confidence to its authenticity. Doddridge is
of the same opinion. Jacob, in his Life of Cresap,[592:A] insinuates
that the speech was a counterfeit, and declares that Cresap was as
humane as brave, and had no participation in the massacre. General
George Rogers Clarke, who was well acquainted with Logan and Cresap
both, vouches for the substantial truth of Mr. Jefferson's story of
Logan. Devoting himself to the work of revenge, he, with others,
butchered men, women, and children; knives, tomahawks, and axes were
left in the breasts which had been cleft asunder; females were stripped,
and outraged, too horrible to mention; brains of infants beaten out and
the dead bodies left a prey to the beasts of the forest. The family of a
settler on the north fork of the Holston was massacred, and a war-club
was left in the house, and attached to it the following note, which had
been previously, at Logan's dictation, written for him by one Robinson,
a prisoner:--
"CAPTAIN CRESAP:
"What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for? The white
people killed my kin at Conestoga a great while ago, and I
thought nothing of that. But you killed my kin again on Yellow
Creek, and took my cousin prisoner. Then I thought I must kill
too; and I have been three times to war since; but the Indians
are not angry--only myself.
"CAPTAIN JOHN LOGAN.
"July 21st, 1774."
Thirty scalps it was known that he took in these murderous raids, but
he joined not in open battle.
Simon Kenton, a native of Fauquier County, a voyager of the woods, was
employed by Dunmore as a spy (together with Simon Girty) during this
campaign, in the course of which he traversed the country around Fort
Pitt, and a large part of the present State of Ohio. His history is full
of daring adventure, cruel sufferings, and extraordinary turns of
fortune. He was eight times made to run the Indian gauntlet; three times
bound to the stake. He was with Clarke in his expedition against
Vincennes and Kaskaskia; and with Wayne in the campaign of 1794. He died
in Ohio, in poverty and neglect, his once giant frame bowed down with
age.[593:A] Girty, after playing for a time the spy on both sides in the
revolutionary contest, became at length an adherent of the enemy, and
proved, toward his countrymen, a cruel and barbarous miscreant, in whom
every sentiment of humanity appears to have been extinct. Kenton and
Girty are both good subjects for a novelist.
Suspicions were not wanting in the minds of many Virginians, especially
the inhabitants of the west, that the frontier had been embroiled in the
Indian war by Dunmore's machinations; and that his ultimate object was
to secure an alliance with the savages to aid England in the expected
contest with the colonies; and these suspicions were strengthened by his
equivocal conduct during the campaign. He was also accused of fomenting,
with the same sinister views, the boundary altercations between
Pennsylvania and Virginia on the northwestern frontier. These charges
and suspicions do not appear to be sustained by sufficient proof. It is
probable that in these proceedings his lordship was prompted rather by
motives of personal interest than of political manoeuvre. His agent,
Dr. Conolly, was locating large tracts of land on the borders of the
Ohio.
By the Quebec Act of 1774 Great Britain, with a view of holding the
colonies in check, established the Roman Catholic religion in Canada,
and enlarged its bounds so as to comprise all the territory northwest of
the Ohio to the head of Lake Superior and the Mississippi. This attempt
to extend the jurisdiction of Canada to the Ohio was especially
offensive to Virginia. Richard Henry Lee, in congress, denounced it as
the worst of all the acts complained of. In Virginia, Dunmore's avarice
getting the better of his loyalty, he espoused her claims to western
lands, and became a partner in enormous purchases in Southern Illinois.
In 1773 Thomas and Cuthbert Bullet, his agents, made surveys of lands at
the falls of the Ohio; and a part of Louisville and of towns opposite to
Cincinnati are yet held under his warrant.
Murray, a grandson of the Earl of Dunmore, and page to Queen Victoria,
visited the United States partly, it was said, for the purpose of making
enquiry relative to western lands, the title of which was derived from
his grandfather. Young Murray visited some of the old seats on the
James, and makes mention of them in his entertaining "Travels in the
United States."
The assembly, upon the return of Dunmore to Williamsburg, gave him a
vote of thanks for his good conduct of the war--a compliment which it
was afterwards doubted whether he had merited. His motives in that
campaign were, to say the least, somewhat mysterious. There is a curious
coincidence in several points between the administration of Dunmore and
that of Berkley, one hundred years before.
FOOTNOTES:
[591:A] Tah-gah-jute, or Logan, and Captain Michael Cresap: a Discourse
by Brantz Mayer. (Balt., 1851.)
[592:A] Kercheval's Hist. of Valley of Va.
[593:A] McClung's Sketches of Western Adventure, 92.