Logan—Kenton—Girty—Dunmore's ambiguous Conduct—His grandson, Murray.

Logan, the Cayuga chief, assented to the treaty, but, still indignant at the murder of his family, refused to attend with the other chiefs at the camp, and sent his speech in a wampum-belt by an interpreter: "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 whites that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, 'Logan is the friend of white men.' I have even 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 sparing even 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." Tah-gah-jute, or Logan, so named after James Logan, the secretary of Pennsylvania, was the son of Shikellamy, a celebrated Cayuga chief, who dwelt at Shamokin, on the picturesque banks of the Susquehanna. When Logan grew to man's estate, living in the vicinity of the white settlers, he appears, about the year 1767, to have found the means of his livelihood in hunting deer, dressing their skins, and selling them. When the daughter of a neighboring gentleman was just beginning to walk, her mother one day happening to say that she was sorry that she could not get a pair of shoes for her, Logan, who stood by, said nothing then, but soon after requested that the little girl might be allowed to go and spend the day at his cabin, which stood on a sequestered spot near a beautiful spring (yet known as "Logan's Spring.") The mother's heart was at the first a little disconcerted at the singular proposal; but such was her confidence in the Indian that she consented. The day wore away; the sun had gone down behind the mountains in parting splendor, and evening was folding her thoughtful wing,—and the little one had not yet returned. Just at this moment the Indian was seen descending the path with his charge, and quickly she was in her mother's arms, and pointing proudly to a beautiful pair of moccasins on her tiny feet, the product of Logan's skilful manufacture.

Not long afterwards he removed to the far West, and he was remembered by an old pioneer as "the best specimen of humanity, white or red, that he had ever seen."[591:A] In 1772 the Rev. Mr. Heckwelder, Moravian missionary, met with Logan on the Beaver River, and took him to be an Indian of extraordinary capacity. He exclaimed against the whites for the introduction of ardent spirits among his people, and regretted that they had so few gentlemen among their neighbors; and declared his intention to settle on the Ohio, where he might live forever in peace with the whites; but confessed that he himself was too fond of the firewater. In the following year Heckwelder visited Logan's settlement, below the Big Beaver, and was kindly entertained by such members of his family as were at home. About the same time another missionary, the Rev. Dr. David McClure, met with Logan at Fort Pitt. "Tah-gah-jute, or 'Short-dress,' for such was his Indian name, stood several inches more than six feet in height; he was straight as an arrow; lithe, athletic, and symmetrical in figure; firm, resolute, and commanding in feature; but the brave, open, manly countenance he possessed in his earlier years was now changed for one of martial ferocity." He spoke the English language with fluency and correctness. The victim of intemperance, pointing to his breast, he exclaimed to the missionary, "I feel bad here. Wherever I go the evil Manethoes pursue me;" and he earnestly enquired, "What shall I do?" Logan's family were massacred by a party of whites in the spring of 1774, perhaps under the pretext of retaliation for some Indian murders. But the charge against Cresap appears to have been unfounded. Logan's family being on a visit to a family of the name of Great-house, were murdered by them and their associates, under circumstances of extraordinary cowardice and brutality. The mistake is one into which Logan might, in view of some recent transactions that had happened under the command of Captain Cresap, naturally fall, and which does not at all impair the force of his speech. Mr. Jefferson meeting with a copy of it at Governor Dunmore's, in Williamsburg, transcribed it in his pocket-book, and afterwards immortalized it in his "Notes on Virginia." He gave implicit confidence to its authenticity. Doddridge is of the same opinion. Jacob, in his Life of Cresap,[592:A] insinuates that the speech was a counterfeit, and declares that Cresap was as humane as brave, and had no participation in the massacre. General George Rogers Clarke, who was well acquainted with Logan and Cresap both, vouches for the substantial truth of Mr. Jefferson's story of Logan. Devoting himself to the work of revenge, he, with others, butchered men, women, and children; knives, tomahawks, and axes were left in the breasts which had been cleft asunder; females were stripped, and outraged, too horrible to mention; brains of infants beaten out and the dead bodies left a prey to the beasts of the forest. The family of a settler on the north fork of the Holston was massacred, and a war-club was left in the house, and attached to it the following note, which had been previously, at Logan's dictation, written for him by one Robinson, a prisoner:—

Thirty scalps it was known that he took in these murderous raids, but he joined not in open battle.

Simon Kenton, a native of Fauquier County, a voyager of the woods, was employed by Dunmore as a spy (together with Simon Girty) during this campaign, in the course of which he traversed the country around Fort Pitt, and a large part of the present State of Ohio. His history is full of daring adventure, cruel sufferings, and extraordinary turns of fortune. He was eight times made to run the Indian gauntlet; three times bound to the stake. He was with Clarke in his expedition against Vincennes and Kaskaskia; and with Wayne in the campaign of 1794. He died in Ohio, in poverty and neglect, his once giant frame bowed down with age.[593:A] Girty, after playing for a time the spy on both sides in the revolutionary contest, became at length an adherent of the enemy, and proved, toward his countrymen, a cruel and barbarous miscreant, in whom every sentiment of humanity appears to have been extinct. Kenton and Girty are both good subjects for a novelist.

Suspicions were not wanting in the minds of many Virginians, especially the inhabitants of the west, that the frontier had been embroiled in the Indian war by Dunmore's machinations; and that his ultimate object was to secure an alliance with the savages to aid England in the expected contest with the colonies; and these suspicions were strengthened by his equivocal conduct during the campaign. He was also accused of fomenting, with the same sinister views, the boundary altercations between Pennsylvania and Virginia on the northwestern frontier. These charges and suspicions do not appear to be sustained by sufficient proof. It is probable that in these proceedings his lordship was prompted rather by motives of personal interest than of political manoeuvre. His agent, Dr. Conolly, was locating large tracts of land on the borders of the Ohio.

By the Quebec Act of 1774 Great Britain, with a view of holding the colonies in check, established the Roman Catholic religion in Canada, and enlarged its bounds so as to comprise all the territory northwest of the Ohio to the head of Lake Superior and the Mississippi. This attempt to extend the jurisdiction of Canada to the Ohio was especially offensive to Virginia. Richard Henry Lee, in congress, denounced it as the worst of all the acts complained of. In Virginia, Dunmore's avarice getting the better of his loyalty, he espoused her claims to western lands, and became a partner in enormous purchases in Southern Illinois. In 1773 Thomas and Cuthbert Bullet, his agents, made surveys of lands at the falls of the Ohio; and a part of Louisville and of towns opposite to Cincinnati are yet held under his warrant.

Murray, a grandson of the Earl of Dunmore, and page to Queen Victoria, visited the United States partly, it was said, for the purpose of making enquiry relative to western lands, the title of which was derived from his grandfather. Young Murray visited some of the old seats on the James, and makes mention of them in his entertaining "Travels in the United States."

The assembly, upon the return of Dunmore to Williamsburg, gave him a vote of thanks for his good conduct of the war—a compliment which it was afterwards doubted whether he had merited. His motives in that campaign were, to say the least, somewhat mysterious. There is a curious coincidence in several points between the administration of Dunmore and that of Berkley, one hundred years before.

FOOTNOTES:

[592:A] Kercheval's Hist. of Valley of Va.