{FN} Minnie Myrtle.
Roosevelt says, of the close of his career, "Proud, gloomy Logan never recovered from the blow that had been dealt him; he drank deeper and deeper, and became more and more an implacable, moody and blood-thirsty savage, yet with noble qualities that came to the surface now and then. Again and again he wrought havoc among the frontier settlers; yet we several times hear of his saving the lives of prisoners. Once he saved Simon Kenton from torture and death, when Girty, moved by a rare spark of compassion for his former comrade, had already tried to do so and failed. At last he perished in a drunken brawl by the hand of another Indian."
We notice the authorities differ in their account of Logan's death. Drake says of him: "The melancholy history of Logan must be dismissed with no relief to its gloomy colors. He was himself a victim to the same ferocious cruelty which had already rendered him a desolate man. Not long after the treaty (of Wayne at Greenville) a party of whites murdered him as he was returning from Detroit to his own country."
There were none to mourn for Logan; but as Jefferson well says, "his talents and misfortunes have attached to him the respect and commiseration of a world."
Cornstalk died a noble death, but by an act of cowardly treachery, which is one of the darkest stains on the pages of our frontier history. In the early part of the year 1777 he came into the garrison at Point Pleasant to explain that, while he was anxious to keep the terms of the treaty his warriors were determined to go to war; and frankly added, that if they did he would be compelled to join them. He and three others, including his son, Ellinipsieo, and the chief Red Hawk, were retained as hostages and confined in the fort. About this time a member of a company of rangers was killed by the Indians near the fort; whereupon his comrades, headed by their captain, one John Hall, rushed furiously into the fort to murder the Indian prisoners. Cornstalk heard them rushing in and knew what to expect. Never for an instant did his courage fail him. Turning to Ellinipsieo, the youngest of the group, he thus exhorted him: "My son, the Great Spirit has seen fit that we should die together, and has sent you to that end. It is his will, and let us submit." Then, drawing his blanket around him, with the grace and dignity of a Roman Senator, he faced his assassins, and fell dead, pierced by seven or eight bullets. The other helpless and unarmed Indians were butchered at the same time.
Mr. Withers, in his "Chronicles," writes thus of Cornstalk and this indefensible murder: "Thus perished the mighty Cornstalk, a sachem of the Shawnees, and King of the Northern Confederacy, in 1774, a chief remarkable for many great and good qualities. He was disposed to be at all times the friend of the white men, as he ever was the advocate of honorable peace. But when his country's wrongs 'called aloud for battle,' he became the thunderbolt of war, and made her oppressors feel the weight of his uplifted arm. His noble bearing, his generous and disinterested attachment to the colonies when the thunder of British cannon was reverberating through the land, his anxiety to preserve the frontier of Virginia from desolation and death, the object of his visit to Point Pleasant—all conspired to win for him the esteem and respect of others; while the untimely and perfidious manner of his death caused a deep and lasting regret to pervade the bosoms even of those who were enemies to his nation, and excited the just indignation of all toward his inhuman and barbarous murderers."
[CHAPTER VII.]
CAPTAIN JOSEPH BRANT, OR THAYENDANEGEA,
PRINCIPAL SACHEM OF THE MOHAWKS, AND HEAD CHIEF OF THE IROQUOIS CONFEDERATION.
This remarkable man was born on the banks of the Ohio in 1742. His father, who bore the unpronounceable and unspellable name of Tehowaghwengaraghkwin, was a subordinate chief of the Wolf totem or clan of the Mohawk tribe.