Daily stories of Pennsylvania

by Frederic Antes Godcharles

Cresap was on the Ohio, below Wheeling, engaged in making a settlement. Some pioneers resolved to attack an Indian town near the mouth of the Sciota, and solicited Cresap to command the expedition. They attacked two canoes filled with Indians, chased them fifteen miles down the river, where a skirmish ensued, and the Indians who were not killed were taken. On the return of this party they planned an expedition against the settlement of Logan.

Cresap and his party proceeded to a point near the settlement and encamped on the bank, when some Indians passed them peaceably and encamped at the mouth of Grave Creek, a little below. Cresap attacked and killed the party. One of Cresap’s men fell in this action. Among the slain of the Indians were some of Logan’s family. Smith, one of the murderers, boasted of this fact in the presence of Logan’s friends.

This party then proceeded to Baker’s Bottom, opposite the mouth of Yellow Creek, when Greathouse, a spy, crossed over and approached the Indian camp as a friend and counted them. He reported their number too large to attack and was then warned by an Indian woman to leave, as the Indians had learned of Cresap’s murder of their relatives at Grave Creek and were angry and that they were drinking.

He returned to Baker’s, collected a large enough force, all got drunk, and then in that condition they fell upon and massacred the whole Indian camp except a girl, whom they kept as a prisoner. Among the slain was the woman who had warned him of his danger. A sister of Logan was inhumanly and indecently butchered in this attack.

This commenced the war, of which Logan’s war club was the chief factor. The first family murdered by him was the warning of what might be expected. Logan left a note in the house of the murdered family, and, true to his threat, great numbers of innocent men, women and children fell victims to the tomahawk and scalping knife until the decisive battle at Point Pleasant October 10, 1774.

When Lord Dunmore finally conquered the Indians and the treaty was held, Cornstalk was the principal speaker. He laid much stress for the cause of the war on the murder of Logan’s family. Logan disdained to meet with the white men in council and sat sullenly in his cabin while the treaty was in progress. Dunmore sent Captain (afterward Major General) John Gibson to invite him to the council. General Gibson later became one of the Associate Judges of Allegheny County.

The old Mingo chief took Gibson into the woods and, sitting down upon a mossy root, told him the story of the wrongs done to him and, as Gibson related, shedding many bitter tears. He refused to go to the council, but, unwilling to disturb the deliberations by seeming opposition, he sent a speech by the hand of Gibson to Governor Dunmore, which has been preserved and greatly admired for its pathetic eloquence. The speech was as follows:

“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 white, that my countrymen pointed as they passed and said, ‘Logan is the friend of the white man.’ I had ever 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 even sparing 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.”

Lossing, in his “Field-Book of the Revolution,” says: “Logan, whose majestic person and mental accomplishments were the theme of favorable remark, became a victim of intemperance. Earlier than the time when Dunmore called him to council, he was addicted to the habit. The last three years of his life were very melancholy. Notwithstanding the miseries he had suffered at the hands of the white men, his benevolences made him the prisoner’s friend, until intemperance blunted his sensibilities, and in 1780 we find him among the marauders at Ruddell’s Station.”

The manner of his death is differently related. The patient researches of Mr. Mayer lead the writer to adopt his as the correct one, as it was from the lips of an aged Mohawk whom he saw at Caghnawaga, twelve miles from Montreal, in the summer of 1848. His mother was a Shawnee woman, and when he was a boy he often saw Logan. Mayer says: