Years later in 1781, Logan sat in a Detroit bar drinking
his life away. When the bartender refused to serve him
any more whiskey, Logan made a sarcastic comment about
going to the Americans to get more whiskey. A few minutes
later when he left the bar, an unknown perpetrator put
a tomahawk in the back of his head.
***********************************************************************
The following is from The Frontiersman by Allan W.
Eckert ((c) 1967), an
authentic scholarly non-fiction novel on how the whites
took Kentucky and the
Ohio Valley from native American tribes at the close
of the 1700s. In his
Author's Note, Eckert wrote: "This book is fact,
not fiction. Certain
techniques normally associated with the novel were used,
but in no case was
this at the expense of historical accuracy. In no case
was there any 'whole
cloth' fabrication or fanciful fictionalization. Every
incident described
actually occurred; every date is historically accurate;
and every character,
regardless how major or minor, actually lived the role
portrayed."
Wednesday, March 16, 1774
Blue Jacket was deeply impressed by Tal-ga-yee-ta, the
tall angular Mingo
chief of the Cayugas-better known to both Indians and
whites as Logan-not
only because he had heard so much about this highly
revered man, but because
he was the first Cayuga the youth had ever seen. It
seemed incredible that
Logan's influence could be so great that with his encouragement
alone the
unaligned tribes might side with the Shawnees to repay
the whites in kind for
the harassment to Blue Jacket's adopted tribe.
In his three years with the Kispokothas, Blue Jacket
had entered into their
work, games, hunting, politics and religion with such
fervor and sincerity
that already he had become a leader among those of his
own age and was looked
upon with high favor by the older members of the sept.
This was why he had
been permitted to accompany Pucksinwah and his party
in their important
journey to visit Logan at his little village on Yellow
Creek on the Ohio side
of the big river.
No other Indian on the frontier was as widely respected
by both whites and
Indians as this Mingo. Time and again his wisdom and
persuasiveness had
prevailed to smooth strained relationships between the
two races and his word
carried great weight, not only among the Cayugas and
Seneca, but among the
Delawares, Shawnees, Miamis and Wyandots as well. But
it was not for this
reason along that before him now sat the stern- faced
delegation from the
Shawnee tribe, come to task him to raise both voice
and hand against the
whites. There was a more personal reason involved: Logan
was especially
sympathetic to Shawnee problems because many years before
he had married a
Shawnee maiden.
That Tal-ga-yee-ta should be known by the English name
of Logan was not
surprising. His father, Shikellimus, had many years
ago formed a close
personal friendship with James Logan, intimate of William
Penn and founder of
the Loganian Library at Philadelphia. So firm was this
friendship that
Shikellimus had named his second son after him. And
now, just as Shikellimus
had been a good provider and friend of the whites on
the shores of Cayuga
Lake in New York, so his son Logan's wegiwa was famed
as an abode of warm
hospitality, friendship and kindness to all, without
distinction, along the
shores of the Ohio River.
From Cayuga Lake, Logan had moved as a youth to the
banks of the Juniata-a
lovely, rambling river in central Pennsylvania which
empties into the great
Susquehanna. Here he built a cabin and later met and
married the beautiful
Shawnee girl. In spite of the many outrages committed
upon the Indians by
white men, Logan continued to remain a friend to all
and not only refused to
take part in the French and Indian war of nineteen years
ago and that of
Chief Pontiac which followed, but became a notable peacemaker
during both. He
was welcomed equally in the councils of various tribes
and in the homes of
white settlers; all of them knew they could trust him
completely. He was a
highly skilled marksman and brilliant hunter with either
bow or gun, and he
had a certain aura about him that commanded unblemished
respect. As one
crusty old white trader put it: "Logan is the best
specimen of humanity I
ever met with, either white or red."
But now the visage of the chief was troubled as he
listened carefully to
Pucksinwah's plea: the whites were not only increasing
their harassment of
the Shawnees, but were spreading into the Can-tuc-kee
[Kentucky] hunting
lands and must soon cross the Ohio to drive them away
from their villages.
Some whites in the border areas were masquerading as
Indians in order to
steal horses or other possessions of their fellow men,
were even murdering
and scalping them so the blame would be placed upon
the Shawnees or other
Indians. The Shawnees could fight their own battles
with the whites, but the
word of Logan was needed to encourage the other tribes
to stand fast and
stop, by battle if necessary, any whites crossing into
the Ohio country; the
Shawnees alone could not and should not be expected
to guard the entire
frontier against encroachment for the benefit of all
the tribes; there was
word that the white fathers in the east were massing
armies to come against
the Shawnees and all tribes must do their part to stem
this flood.
Blue Jacket was moved by the impassioned plea of his
chief, but the reply of
Logan, no less moving, was a deep disappointment. Never
had Logan raised his
hand against the whites, even when some members of this
own family had been
slain in battles with them, for there was no future
in warring with a nation
having unlimited resources and more men than all the
tribes together. Were
not the Shawnees themselves guilty of stealing horses
and equipment from the
border whites? Had they not, when occasion prompted
it, slain whites? Would
defiance of the armies make the war wither and die or
would it, instead,
cause violent and immediate retribution against which
there could be no
standing? The Shawnees were brave and their complaints
to some degree
justified, but how much better to attempt to reach an
understanding, how much
better to be guided by clear thought than blind emotion?
There must be a way
in which whites and the red men could live in harmony
and peace, but this
could not be consummated without restraint on both sides.
Logan would not
raise either his hand or voice against the whites, but
he would send
emissaries to them to ask of them the same restraint
that he was asking of
the Indians.
Pucksinwah argued no further. The meeting adjourned,
and as the small party
of Kispokothas mounted their horses for the ride back
to their village on the
Scioto, the Shawnee chief addressed the Mingo one final
time: Logan was a
wise man but he must beware lest Matchemenetoo, the
Bad Spirit, blind him to
the inevitable and he one day find himself in grave
peril from the white man.
There was not now, nor could there ever be, a true and
equitable peace
between Indian and white.
Saturday, April 30, 1774
It was customary, when canoes bearing whites met on
the Ohio, to put ashore
and pass along whatever news each might have about the
direction from which
they had come. Rarely, however, did both parties have
news as momentous as
when the single large canoe bearing Jacob Greathouse,
Bill Grills and John
and Rafe Mahon encountered the six canoes of the Michael
Cresap party near
the mouth of Little Beaver Creek.
The news from Cresap, who was coming upstream, was
the killing two days
before of a pair of Shawnee warriors at their Pipe Creek
camp. Except for
Cresap himself and his husky companion, the party of
24 men was jubilant
about it. Their only regret seemed to be that one of
the trio of Shawnees had
escaped and that Cresap, as leader of their surveying
party, had sternly
forbidden them to carry out their half-formulated plan
of completing the job
by wiping out the Yellow Creek village of Chief Logan.
Cresap's companion was a strikingly handsome individual
of 21. He was from
Albemarle County, Virginia, and his name was George
Rogers Clark. At this
moment he was still almost beside himself with rage
at what he termed "the
brutal, savage, senseless killings."
Roaring with bullish laughter, Greathouse slapped him
on the back and told
him not to worry about it, that the men were justified
in the deed. At
Pittsburgh, he explained, they had learned that Lord
Dunmore was gathering an
army with the intent of striking the Shawnees on the
Scioto River. "So, just
as well those two are killed now as later, eh?"
After some discussion, and in a rather casual way,
Greathouse asked where
Chief Logan's village was located and learned that it
was some miles up
Yellow Creek from its mouth, but that there was a contingent
of about twenty
Mingoes from Logan's village camped right at this moment
along the Ohio River
shore quite close to the mouth of that creek, directly
across the river from
Baker's Bottom.
At this news, Greathouse shook his head and remarked
that he hoped they could
pass them by unseen at night so as to avoid possible
trouble, but he winked
at the Mahon brothers and Bill Grills. A wicked fire
sprang to life in the
eyes of John and Rafe.
The two parties camped together that night and parted
in the morning's early
light; Cresap and his men continued their paddling toward
Fort Pitt and the
large Greathouse canoe drifted downstream. By late afternoon
the four men had
reached Baker's Bottom and put ashore, there to be met
by a scraggly-bearded
individual with rotted teeth and evasive eyes whom Grills
recognized as a
rather disreputable character named Tomlinson. With
him were 27 men and they
made up a motley group-loud, mostly drunken and filthy.
They shouted familiar
greetings and jovial obscenities at Greathouse and the
Mahon brothers.
Within minutes of the landing, Tomlinson and Greathouse
had their heads
together discussing something in undertones. Once they
sauntered to the
river's edge where, by looking diagonally downstream,
they could just make
out the Mingo camp on the Ohio shore. Greathouse grinned
and nodded and
thumped Tomlinson on the back.
After dinner the two leaders discussed a plan with
the rest of the men. Of
them all, only one objected-Bill Grills-and he was quickly
sneered down. Less
than an hour later, shortly after full darkness had
come upon them,
Greathouse and Tomlinson crossed the river to the Mingo
camp where they were
greeted in a friendly manner by Shikellimus, father
of Chief Logan. Old and
wrinkled and mostly toothless, he was pleased to be
honored by a visit from
the whites. Greathouse, reasonably fluent in the Iroquois
tongue, smiled
pleasantly and wished him peace, happiness and a full
belly. His party of six
men were camped just across the river, he said, and
they would be pleased to
have the Mingoes join them for some fine rum spirits
and perhaps to engage
with them in a marksmanship competition.
Shikellimus shook his head regretfully. It was a disappointment,
he said,
that most of them had work to do, since they were breaking
camp in the
morning. However, he did not wish to offend these kind
white men and so he
would send five good marksmen to represent him and his
party. They shook
hands again and the two white men paddled back to their
camp.
Ten minutes after their return, a light canoe scraped
ashore and from it
stepped five Mingo braves and a decidedly pregnant squaw.
She was sister of
Logan and daughter of Shikellimus, and she declined
to drink any rum, as did
her brother, Tay-la- nee, and her husband. The other
three men, however,
tilted the jug frequently, not noting that the six white
men took only small
sips when they drank. There was laughter and some small
talk between
Greathouse and Logan's brother, and before long the
three drinking Mingoes
had become very unsteady.
Greathouse cut four sharp little pegs from a twig and
tacked his handkerchief
to the trunk of a tree within the light of the fire.
With a piece of charcoal
he made a small circle in the center, marked off thirty
paces and invited the
braves to show their skill. In succession the three
tipsy Indians fired, two
missing the handkerchief entirely and the third hitting
just the edge of it.
Logan's brother, however, sent a shot into the exact
center of the little
circle, and his sister's husband cut the charcoal with
his ball.
Engrossed and laughing with their own fumbling efforts
to reload, the Indians
did not realize anything was amiss until Logan's sister
suddenly ran toward
the river, screaming an alarm in the still night air.
The Mingoes looked up
in surprise to find themselves quite alone in the center
of an arc of men who
had leaped from hiding, their rifles at ready. Rafe
snapped off a quick shot
at the squaw and her screaming was cut short as she
flopped disjointedly to
the ground. The Mingoes dropped their useless guns and
clawed for knives and
tomahawks, but a volley of shots rang out and all five
fell, dead or dying.
A barely audible shout came from across the river and
within half a minutes a
lookout from Tomlinson's group warned that the remaining
Mingoes were on
their way over to investigate. Those who had fired reloaded
swiftly and the
entire party of whites crouched in the darkness along
the shore until the
boats came within range. At a shout from Tomlinson,
31 rifles roared-all
except Grill's-and most of the occupants of the boats
were killed instantly.
Those few who were not dove into the water and struck
out for the Ohio shore,
but only three made it. Shikellimus was not among them.
Now the whites returned to the camp and methodically
scalped the five dead
men lying there. Logan's sister, they found, was still
alive. The rifle ball
had entered her back and lodged in her right lung and
she was only
semiconscious. Under orders from Greathouse she was
lashed by her wrists to a
pole which was then raised and angled into the fork
of a tree so that her
feet hung a foot or two off the ground. The frontiersman
cut away her garb
and tossed it aside; then he jerked the tomahawk from
his underarm sheath and
with one vicious swipe, laid open her belly, spilling
its pitiful contents in
an obscene hanging mass.
No one had even noted that Bill Grills was longer with
them. >From fifty
yards away in the heavy darkness of the woods he had
been watching, but now
he turned and slipped silently away. His association
with both Jacob
Greathouse and the frontier had just ended permanently.
Sunday, May 1, 1774
With a gentleness belying the great anger that raged
in him, Chief Logan cut
loose the body of his sister and laid her on the ground
between the bodies of
her husband and brother. Wordlessly he touched her lips
and then did the same
with his brother and his sister's husband.
He recalled now the warning given him six weeks ago
by the Kispokotha chief,
Pucksinwah, that he should beware lest Matchemene too
blind him to the
inevitable. He had been blinded then; just as he had
been blinded several
nights ago when the young Shawnee, Blue Jacket, had
come with an account of
the death of his two companions by Michael Cresap's
party and his warning
that he had overheard the men planning to destroy Logan's
own Yellow Creek
village.
And now, because of that blindness, his family was
dead, viciously murdered
without cause. A cold, frightening fire burned in his
eyes as he raised his
tomahawk high and told the Mingoes with him that peace
had ended, that they
would not return to the Yellow Creek camp but to Kispoko
Town on the Scioto
River and that his tomahawk would not again be grounded
until he had taken
ten lives for every one that was slain here last night.
Wednesday, October 26, 1774
Simon Girty, Simon Kenton and John Gibson found Chief
Logan where they had
been told his little camp was located: beneath the branches
of a great
spreading elm along the south bank of Congo Creek. They
had come when it was
learned that Logan had refused to attend the peace conference
but would
dictate a message to be read there. Girty would translate
and Gibson would
take it down on paper.
Logan stood before them silently, a figure commanding
the respect of any who
might look upon him. He was clad only in fresh doeskin
leggins and high
moccasins laced to mid-calf. At the back of his head
he wore four
white-tipped brown eagle feathers and on each wrist
and his left upper arm
were wide bands of beaten silver. Around his neck was
an intricately
fashioned necklace of colorful beads and silver and
down his well-muscled
bare chest hung two queues of straight black hair held
near their ends by
smaller circlets of silver. He wore no weapon of any
kind. Despite the
primitive costume, his bearing was as regal as any king
in royal garb.
Most striking, however, was his strong face, etched
by sadness, his deep dark
eyes reflecting an inner pain beyond description. The
expression did not
change as he shook hands briefly with the three white
men, nor did it alter
to any appreciable degree as he began to dictate in
a soft voice:
"I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered
Logan's cabin hungry and
I gave him not meat; if ever he came cold or naked and
I gave him not meat;
if ever he came cold or naked and I gave him not clothing.
"During the course of the last long and bloody
war, Logan remained idle in
his tent, an advocate for peace. Nay, such was my love
for the whites that
those of my own country pointed at me and said, 'Logan
is the friend of the
white man.' I had 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 relatives 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 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."
Monday, November 28, 1774
The treaty had been swiftly concluded after the reading
of Chief Logan's
speech-a speech that had moved the whites as much as
the Indians. Many of the
soldiers had committed it to memory and it was the subject
of much
conversation around the campfires; especially the last
lines. One militiaman
would ask the question aloud, "Who is there to
mourn for Logan?" and another
would reply with great feeling, "Not one."
At the first public reading of it, George Rogers Clark
had turned to Michael
Cresap who stood beside him and muttered, "You
must be a very great man that
the Indians shoulder you with every mean thing that
ever happened."
Cresap scowled. "If I ever encounter Greathouse
again, I swear I'll tomahawk
him."
Saturday, September 1, 1781
Simon Kenton was well aware that the worst of the Indian
atrocities were
committed after the attacking savages had discovered
and consumed stores of
whiskey. He could also name off more than a score or
more white men who had
been slain because they were too befuddled by drink
to protect themselves. If
more basis was needed, it had come with a shock this
summer when Simon
learned from a Detroit escapee that liquor had, indirectly,
caused the death
of his Mingo friend and benefactor, Chief Logan.
Logan, he was told, had also become addicted to whiskey,
and when it was
refused him at Detroit one night he had mumbled an angry
retort to the effect
that if the British wouldn't give it to him, perhaps
the Americans would and
that he would go to Clark in Kentucky. The fear that
he would influence his
Mingo friends equally in this matter was enough to seal
his fate. He had been
followed and, while on the path to the very cabin Kenton
and Girty had helped
him build, was murdered by a tomahawk blow from behind.
***If you would like more resources on Chief Logan,
check out these books and authors:
The Frontiersmen by Allan W. Eckert
Logan the Last of the Race of Shikellemus,
Chief Cayuga Nation by Joseph Doddridge
Words That Rang Around the World by George
Thomas Swain
Strait Up to See the Sky by Timothy Truman
Logan the Mingo by Franklin B. Sawvel
