In the autumn of 1774, the Indians, getting some very rough usage, and fearing that the powerful army of Lord Dunmore would march upon and exterminate them, sued for peace. Lord Dunmore sent a belt of wampum to all the principal chiefs, and, among the rest, one to Logan, inviting them to a treaty. Logan refused to attend the council, but sent the following speech by an interpreter, in a belt of wampum. The treaty was held under an oak-tree, near Circleville, Ohio, and it was there that the eloquent and purely Indian speech which rendered Logan's name immortal was read, and brought tears to the eyes of many of the sturdy pioneers assembled:—

"I appeal," says Logan, "to any white man to say if he ever entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if he came naked and cold, and I clothed him not. During the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate of peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen, as they passed, said, 'Logan is the friend of the whites.' I had thought of living among you, but for the injuries of one man. Captain Cressap, last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not one drop of my blood in 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 in the beams of peace. But do not harbor the 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!"

The authorship of this speech was attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but he most emphatically denied it, as did others who were present at the treaty.

With respect to Captain Cressap, Logan was doubtless misinformed. It is true Captain Cressap was a daring frontier-man, who considered it an obligation imposed upon him by the Creator to slay Indians, but he was altogether innocent of the charge made against him by Logan. The massacre in question, when the facts were known after Dunmore's treaty, was deeply deplored, and the wanton butchery of Cressap execrated. Cressap's friends, however, would not suffer the stigma of an inhuman act, of which he was not guilty, to be fixed upon him; so they procured all the evidence to be had in the case, and fixed the disreputable deed upon Daniel Greathouse and his followers. A number of affidavits to that effect were made by men who accompanied Greathouse, and published a year or two after the treaty; others in 1799, when the subject was revived and freely discussed.

Seeing the great disadvantages the Indians labored under in trying to cope with well-armed and disciplined troops, and believing that his revenge was far from being satiated, it is quite likely that Logan became partially insane, as Heckwelder avers; but it is quite certain that he became a misanthrope, and for a long time refused to mingle with human beings. At length he plunged into deep excesses, and all he could earn, by the most skilful use of the rifle, went to gratify his inordinate thirst for strong drink. The once proud and noble Mingo chief gradually descended the scale of dignified manhood, outlived his greatness, and was killed in a drunken brawl. Sorry are we to say this, in the face of the romance of history; nevertheless it is true. We had the statement from an old Ohio pioneer, nearly twenty years ago.

CHAPTER X.
COL. JOHN ARMSTRONG'S EXPEDITION AGAINST KITTANING — LIST OF THE KILLED AND WOUNDED — DELAWARE CHIEFS, CAPTAIN JACOBS AND SHINGAS.

The following account of the famous expedition against the Indian town of Kittaning we deem worthy of being recorded, not only because the companies of Captains Potter and Steel belonged to the Juniata Valley, but on account of its being an interesting detail of an important event in the early settlement of the country.

The expedition was planned and carried out with great secresy, for the sole purpose of punishing the Indians engaged in the Juniata Valley massacres, and who it was known had their head-quarters at Kittaning, where the chief instigators of all the mischief, Shingas and Captain Jacobs, lived. The command was intrusted to Colonel John Armstrong, a brave and prudent officer, and the forces consisted of seven companies. He left Fort Shirley (Aughwick, Huntingdon county) on the 30th of August, 1756, and on the 3d of September came up with the advanced party at "Beaver Dams, a few miles from Frankstown, on the north branch of the Juniata." This junction of the forces occurred on the flat where Gaysport now stands, where the little army struck the celebrated trail known as the Kittaning Path. In his official account of the expedition, dated at Fort Littleton, September 14, 1756, Colonel Armstrong says:—

We were there [at the Beaver Dams] informed that some of our men, having been out upon a scout, had discovered the tracks of two Indians about three miles this side of the Alleghany Mountain and but a few miles from the camp. From the freshness of the tracks, their killing of a cub bear, and the marks of their fires, it seemed evident they were not twenty-four hours before us, which might be looked upon as a particular providence in our favor that we were not discovered. Next morning we decamped, and in two days came within fifty miles of the Kittaning. It was then adjudged necessary to send some persons to reconnoitre the town, and to get the best intelligence they could concerning the situation and position of the enemy; whereupon an officer, with one of the pilots and two soldiers, were sent off for that purpose. The day following we met them on their return, and they informed us that the roads were entirely clear of the enemy, and that they had the greatest reason to believe they were not discovered; but from the rest of the intelligence they gave it appeared they had not been nigh enough the town, either to perceive the true situation of it, the number of the enemy, or in what way it might most advantageously be attacked. We continued our march, in order to get as near the town as possible that night, so as to be able to attack it next morning about daylight; but, to our great dissatisfaction, about nine or ten o'clock at night one of our guides came and told us that he perceived a fire by the road-side, at which he saw two or three Indians, a few perches distant from our front; whereupon, with all possible silence, I ordered the rear to retreat about one hundred perches, in order to make way for the front, that we might consult how we could best proceed without being discovered by the enemy. Soon after, the pilot returned a second time, and assured us, from the best observations he could make, there were not above three or four Indians at the fire, on which it was proposed that we should immediately surround and cut them off; but this was thought too hazardous, for, if but one of the enemy had escaped, it would have been the means of discovering the whole design; and the light of the moon, on which depended our advantageously posting our men and attacking the town, would not admit of our staying until the Indians fell asleep; on which it was agreed to leave Lieutenant Hogg, with twelve men and the person who first discovered the fire, with orders to watch the enemy, but not to attack them, till break of day, and then, if possible, to cut them off. It was also agreed (we believing ourselves to be but about six miles from the town) to leave the horses, many of them being tired, with what blankets and other baggage we then had, and to take a circuit off the road, which was very rough and incommodious on account of the stones and fallen timber, in order to prevent our being heard by the enemy at the fire place. This interruption much retarded our march, but a still greater loss arose from the ignorance of our pilot, who neither knew the true situation of the town nor the best paths that led thereto; by which means, after crossing a number of hills and valleys, our front reached the river Ohio [Alleghany] about one hundred perches below the main body of the town, a little before the setting of the moon, to which place, rather than by the pilot, we were guided by the beating of the drum and the whooping of the warriors at their dance. It then became us to make the best use of the remaining moonlight; but, ere we were aware, an Indian whistled in a very singular manner, about thirty perches from our front, in the foot of a corn-field; upon which we immediately sat down, and, after passing silence to the rear, I asked one Baker, a soldier, who was our best assistant, whether that was not a signal to the warriors of our approach. He answered "No," and said it was the manner of a young fellow's calling a squaw after he had done his dance, who accordingly kindled afire, cleaned his gun, and shot it off before he went to sleep. All this time we were obliged to lie quiet and lurk, till the moon was fairly set. Immediately after, a number of fires appeared in different places in the corn-field, by which Baker said the Indians lay, the night being warm, and that these fires would immediately be out, as they were only designed to disperse the gnats. By this time it was break of day, and the men, having marched thirty miles, were mostly asleep. The time being long, the three companies of the rear were not yet brought over the last precipice. For these some proper hands were immediately despatched; and the weary soldiers being roused to their feet, a proper number, under sundry officers, were ordered to take the end of the hill at which we then lay, and march along the top of the said hill at least one hundred perches, and so much farther (it then being daylight) as would carry them opposite the upper part, or at least the body, of the town. For the lower part thereof and the corn-field, presuming the warriors were there, I kept rather the larger number of men, promising to postpone the attack in that part for eighteen or twenty minutes, until the detachment along the hill should have time to advance to the place assigned them—in doing of which they were a little unfortunate. The time being elapsed, the attack was begun in the corn-field, and the men, with all expedition possible, despatched through the several parts thereof, a party being also despatched to the houses, which were then discovered by the light of the day. Captain Jacobs immediately then gave the war-whoop, and, with sundry other Indians, as the English prisoners afterward told, cried the white men were at last come, they would then have scalps enough; but, at the same time, ordered their squaws and children to flee to the woods. Our men, with great eagerness, passed through and fired in the corn-field, where they had several returns from the enemy, as they also had from the opposite side of the river. Presently after, a brisk fire began among the houses, which from the house of Captain Jacobs was returned with a great deal of resolution, to which place I immediately repaired, and found that from the advantage of the house and portholes sundry of our people were wounded and some killed; and, finding that returning the fire upon the house was ineffectual, I ordered the contiguous houses to be set on fire, which was performed by sundry of the officers and soldiers with a great deal of activity, the Indians always firing whenever an object presented itself, and seldom missing of wounding or killing some of our people—from which house, in moving about to give the necessary orders and directions, I received a wound with a large musket-ball in the shoulders. Sundry persons, during the action, were ordered to tell the Indians to surrender themselves prisoners, but one of the Indians in particular answered and said he was a man, and would not be a prisoner; upon which he was told, in Indian, he would be burnt. To this he answered he did not care, for he would kill four or five before he died; and, had we not desisted from exposing ourselves, they would have killed a great many more, they having a number of loaded guns by them. As the fire began to approach and the smoke grew thick, one of the Indian fellows, to show his manhood, began to sing. A squaw in the same house, and at the same time, was heard to cry and make a noise, but for so doing was severely rebuked by the man; but by-and-by, the fire being too hot for them, two Indian fellows and a squaw sprang out and made for the corn-field, who were immediately shot down by our people then surrounding the houses. It was thought Captain Jacobs tumbled himself out at a garret or cockloft window at which he was shot—our prisoners offering to be qualified to the powder-horn and pouch there taken off him, which they say he had lately got from a French officer in exchange for Lieutenant Armstrong's boots, which he carried from Fort Granville, where the lieutenant was killed. The same prisoners say they are perfectly assured of his scalp, as no other Indians there wore their hair in the same manner. They also say they know his squaw's scalp by a particular bob, and also know the scalp of a young Indian called the King's Son. Before this time, Captain Hugh Mercer, who, early in the action, was wounded in the arm, had been taken to the top of a hill above the town,—to whom a number of the men and some of the officers were gathered, from whence they had discovered some Indians pass the river and take the hill, with an intention, as they thought, to surround us and cut off our retreat, from whom I had sundry pressing messages to leave the houses and retreat to the hills, or we should all be cut off. But to this I would by no means consent until all the houses were set on fire. Though our spreading upon the hills appeared very necessary, yet did it prevent our researches of the corn-field and river-side, by which means sundry scalps were left behind, and doubtless some squaws, children, and English prisoners, that otherwise might have been got. During the burning of the houses, which were near thirty in number, we were agreeably entertained with a quick succession of charged guns gradually firing off as reached by the fire, but much more so with the vast explosion of sundry bags and large kegs of gunpowder, wherewith almost every house abounded; the prisoners afterward informing us that the Indians had frequently said they had a sufficient stock of ammunition for ten years' war with the English. With the roof of Captain Jacobs's house, when the powder blew up, was thrown the leg and thigh of an Indian, with a child of three or four years old, to such a height that they appeared as nothing, and fell in an adjoining corn-field. There was also a great quantity of goods burnt, which the Indians had received in a present but ten days before from the French. By this time I had proceeded to the hill, to have my wound tied up and the blood stopped, where the prisoners which in the morning had come to our people informed me that that very day two bateaux of Frenchmen, with a large party of Delaware and French Indians, were to join Captain Jacobs at the Kittaning, and to set out early the next morning to take Fort Shirley, or, as they called it, George Crogan's Fort; and that twenty-four warriors, who had lately come to the town, were set out the evening before, for what purpose they did not know,—whether to prepare meat, to spy the fort, or to make an attack on some of our back inhabitants. Soon after, upon a little reflection, we were convinced these warriors were all at the fire we had discovered but the night before, and began to doubt the fate of Lieutenant Hogg and his party. From this intelligence of the prisoners,—our provisions being scaffolded some thirty miles back, except what were in the men's haversacks, which were left, with the horses and blankets, with Lieutenant Hogg and his party,—and having a number of wounded people then on hand, by the advice of the officers it was thought imprudent then to wait for the cutting down the corn-field, (which was before designed,) but immediately to collect our wounded and force our march back in the best manner we could; which we did, by collecting a few Indian horses to carry off our wounded. From the apprehension of being waylaid and surrounded, (especially by some of the woodsmen,) it was difficult to keep the men together, our march, for sundry miles, not exceeding two miles an hour; which apprehensions were heightened by the attempt of a few Indians, who, for some time after the march, fired upon each wing and immediately ran off; from whom we received no other damage but one of our men being wounded through both legs. Captain Mercer—being wounded, was induced, as we have every reason to believe, by some of his men, to leave the main body, with his ensign, John Scott, and ten or twelve men, they being heard to tell him that we were in great danger, and that they could take him into the road a nigh way—is probably lost, there being yet no account of him, and the most of the men come in. A detachment was sent back to bring him, but could not find him; and upon the return of the detachment it was generally reported he was seen, with the above number of men, to take a different road. Upon our return to the place where the Indian fire had been discovered the night before, we met with a sergeant of Captain Mercer's company, and two or three other of his men, who had deserted us that morning, immediately after the action at the Kittaning. These men, on running away, had met with Lieutenant Hogg, who lay wounded in two different parts of his body by the road-side. He there told them of the fatal mistake of the pilot, who had assured us there were but three Indians, at the most, at the fire place; but when he came to attack them that morning, according to orders, he found a number considerably superior to his, and believes they killed or mortally wounded three of them the first fire, after which a warm engagement began, and continued for above an hour, when three of his best men were killed and himself twice wounded. The residue fleeing off, he was obliged to squat in a thicket, where he might have lain securely until the main body had come up, if this cowardly sergeant and others that fled with him had not taken him away.