“We are driven back,” said an old warrior, “until we can retreat no further. Our hatchets are broken; our bows are snapped; our fires are nearly extinguished; a little longer, and the white man will cease to persecute us:—for we shall cease to exist.”
Speech of an Indian Captain to his Warriors, by Adair.
“Your chief knew, that your guns were burning in your hands; that your tomahawks were thirsting for the blood of your enemies; that your trusty arrows were impatient to be on the wing; and lest delay should burn your hearts any longer, I say: Join the holy ark; and away to cut off your devoted enemies.”
“In the spring of 1774,” says Thatcher’s Indian Biography, referring to Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, “a robbery and murder occurred in some of the white settlements on the Ohio, which were charged to the Indians, though perhaps not justly; for it is well known, that a large number of civilized (?) adventurers were traversing the frontiers at this time, who sometimes disguised themselves as Indians, and who thought little more of killing one of that people (the Indians) than shooting a buffalo. A party of these men, land-jobbers and others, undertook to punish the outrage in this case, according to their custom, as Mr. Jefferson expresses it, ‘in a summary way.’
“Colonel Cresap, a man infamous for the many murders he had committed on that much-injured people, collected a party, and proceeded down the Kanawa in quest of vengeance. Unfortunately a canoe of women and children, with one man only, was seen coming from the opposite shore, unarmed, and not at all suspecting an attack from the whites. Cresap and his party concealed themselves on the bank of the river, and the moment the canoe reached the shore, singled out their objects, and at one fire killed every person in it. This happened to be the family of Logan.
“It was not long after this, that another massacre took place, under still more aggravated circumstances, not far from the present site of Wheeling, Virginia—a large party of Indians being decoyed by the whites, and all murdered with the exception of a little girl. Among these too were a brother and sister of Logan; and the delicate situation of the latter increased a thousand-fold both the barbarity of the crime and the rage of the survivors of the family.
“The vengeance of the chieftain was indeed provoked beyond endurance; and he accordingly distinguished himself in the daring and bloody war that ensued.”