Peaceful Family of Chief Logan Slain by
Whites, May 24, 1774
In the spring of the year 1774, at a time when the Indians seemed to be quiet and tranquil, a party of Virginians attacked the Mingo settlement, on the Ohio River, and slaughtered the entire population, even the women with their children in their arms, and members of the great Chief Logan’s family were among the slain.
This tragic event occurred on May 24, 1774, and according to the common belief at the time was perpetrated by Captain Michael Cresap, and a party who deliberately set out to kill every Indian they met, without regard to age or sex.
The first person to state that Logan’s family was murdered by Cresap was no other than Thomas Jefferson, in his “Notes in Virginia.”
The main authority for the vindication of Michael Cresap’s memory, is the extremely rare little volume, Jacob’s “Life of Cresap,” published in 1826. Jacob sets up an alibi for Cresap, but the present writer accepts the popular story that the wanton murder was perpetrated under the direction of Cresap.
Tahgahjute was the second son of Shikellamy, the great vicegerent of the Six Nations. He was born at Shamokin, about 1725, and was given his Christian name Logan in honor of James Logan, Secretary of the Province, who was a devoted friend of the great Shikellamy.
But little is known of the early life of Logan, but he worked his way West by degrees. He was for a time on the Juniata, where several places still bear his name, but his final home was near the mouth of the Yellow Creek, thirty miles above Wheeling.
Reverend John Heckewelder, the noted Moravian missionary among the Indians, while passing down the Ohio, in April, 1773, stopped at Logan’s settlement and in his interesting journal notes that “I received every civility I could expect from such of the family as were at home.”