John Gibson. Logan's Speech. His Death. Sketch of Colonel Cresap. who was then at Old Chillicothe, disdained to meet the white men in council, and sat sullenly in his cabin while the treaty was in progress, Dunmore sent a messenger (John Gibson1) to Logan, to invite him to attend the council. The chief took Gibson into the woods, and sitting down upon a mossy root, he told him the story of his wrongs, and, as that officer 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, in the mouth of Gibson, to Governor Dunmore. That speech, as preserved in print, has been greatly admired for its pathetic eloquence.' with his young family in Maryland, and had nothing to do with the matter.* It is also demonstrated that at about the hour when the massacre took place, two canoes, with Indians painted and prepared for war, approached. The appearance fully corroborated the disclosures of the squaw, and justified the vigilance (but not the murder of women and unarmed men) by the neighbors of Baker. 1 John Gibson, who afterward became a major general, was an Indian trader, and an active man among the settlers on the Ohio. Washington esteemed him as a brave and honest man, and in 1781 intrusted him with the command of the western military department. He was succeeded by General Irvine in 1782. He was a member of the Pennsylvania convention in 1788; was major general of militia, and was secretary of Indian territory during the administrations of Jefferson and Madison. He was at one time associate judge of the Common Pleas of Alleghany county, in Pennsylvania. Colonel George Gibson, who was mortally wounded at St. Clair's defeat in Ohio, was his nephew. 2 Gibson repeated the substance to Dunmore and other officers. They wrote it down, and, on returning to Williamsburg, caused it to be published in the Virginia Gazette, February 4, 1775. This was the name of the first newspaper published in Virginia. It was first issued at Williamsburg in 1736, a sheet about twelve inches by six in size. It was printed weekly by William Parks, at fifteen shillings per annum. No other paper was published in Virginia until the Stamp Act excitement in 1765-6. The Gazette was so much under government control, that Jefferson and others got Mr. Rind to come from Maryland and publish a paper, which was also called "The Virginia Gazette." It was professedly open to all parties, but influenced by none. This was the paper in which Logan's speech was published. Another “Virginia Gazette" was printed at Williamsburg in 1775, and published weekly for several years.-See Thomas's History of Printing. 3 Logan, whose majestic person and mental accomplishments were the theme of favorable remark, became a victim to the vice of intemperance. Earlier than the time when Dunmore called him to council, he was addicted to the habit. The last years of his life were very melancholy. Notwithstanding the miseries he had suffered at the hands of the white man, his benevolence made him the prisoner's friend, until intemperance blunted his sensibilities, and in 1780 we find him among the marauders at Ruddell's Station (see page 500). The manner of his death is differently related. The patient researches of Mr. Mayer lead me to adopt his as the correct one, as it was from the lips of an aged man who knew Logan well, and corresponds in all essential particulars with an account I received from an aged Mohawk whom I 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. In a drunken phrensy near Detroit, in 1780, Logan struck his wife to the ground. Believing her dead, he fled to the wilderness. Between Detroit and Sandusky, he was overtaken by a troop of Indian men, women, and children. Not yet sober, he imagined that the penalty of his crime was about to be inflicted by a relative. Being well armed, he declared that the whole party should be destroyed. In defense, his nephew, Tod-kah-dohs, killed him on the spot, by a shot from his gun. His wife recovered from his blow. great while ago, and I thought nothing of that. But you killed my kin again on Yellow Creek, and took my cousin prisoner. Then I thought I must kill too; and I have been three times to war since. But the Indians are not angry-only myself. "July 21st, 1774. CAPTAIN JOHN LOGAN." This note was attached to a war club, and left in the house of a man whose whole family had been murdered by the savages, * Michael Cresap was the son of a hardy pioneer, who was one of the Ohio Company in 1752. He was born in Maryland (AIleghany county), on the 29th of June, 1742. While yet a minor, he married a Miss Whitehead. of Philadelphia. He became a merchant and trader, and at length a bold pioneer upon the Ohio. He raised a company of volunteers in the summer of 1774, and proceeded to aid his countrymen on the Ohio, when he was stopped by Connolly. Dunmore, however, valuing his services, sent him a commission of captain in the militia of Hampshire county, in Virginia. He then proceeded to the Ohio, and was engaged in Dunmore's expedition of that year. When Gibson reported Logan's speech, the charge against Cresap was laughed at as ridiculous; and George Rogers Clarke, who was standing by, said, "He must be a very great man, as the Indians palmed every thing that happened upon his shoulders." Cresap returned to Maryland after the conclusion of Dunmore's expedition, and early in the spring he again went to the Ohio, and penetrated the wilderness of Kentucky. On his return, he was informed that he had been appointed to the command of a company of Maryland riflemen, raised by a resolution of Congress. Although suffering from ill health, he immediately went to Boston with his company, and joined the continental army under Washington. His sickness continuing, he left the army for his home among the mountains. At New York he sunk, exhausted, where he died on the 18th of October, 1775, at the age of thirty-three years. His remains were buried in Trinity church-yard with military honors, in the presence of a vast concourse of people, where they yet rest.-See Mayer's Discourse; also Jacob's Life of Cresap. In the appendix to his Discourse, Mr. Mayer presents the results of patient investigation, concerning the authenticity of Logan's speech. It appears probable that the senti ment was Logan's, delivered, not as a speech or message, but as the natural expressions of the feelings of a man who felt that he had been greatly injured; the composition was evidently the work of some hand in Dunmore's camp. 64 a 1774. At the conclusion of the treaty, Dunmore and his troops returned to Virginia, by the way of Fort Gower. At that place, the officers held a meeting on the fifth of Novembera for the purpose of considering the grievances of British America." The proceedings were not at all palatable to Lord Dunmore, notwithstanding one of the resolutions highly complimented him personally. The speech of one of the officers, and the resolution which followed, notwithstanding the attestations of loyalty freely expressed, evidently im plied a determination no longer to submit to royal rule. Dunmore was offended, and both parties returned home dissatisfied. Before resuming our record of events in the progress of the Virginia colony toward independence, let us take a brief survey of succeeding Indian hostilities on the Virginia frontier, until the close of the war. It is a wide and romantic field, but we must not be tempted into minute details. We will note the most prominent features of those events, and refer the reader to fuller details drawn by other pens. I briefly referred to the Indian war in this region on page 264, volume i., and promised a more extended notice. fulfill that promise. Here I will For a while after the treaty on the Sciota, the western Indians made no concerted attacks upon the white settlements on the frontiers; but small parties continually harassed those civil heroes who went over the Alleghany ranges and explored the broad forests which stretched between the Cherokees, Creeks, and Catawbas of the south, and the Shawnees, Delawares, and Wyandots, of the north, now the state of Kentucky. The first of these Daniel Boone bold pioneers was Daniel Boone,' a hero in the a 1775. 1 Daniel Boone was born about the year 1730. His parents, who came from Bridgenorth, in England, went from Pennsylvania to the banks of the Yadkin River, in North Carolina, and his childhood was spent in the forest. In 1769, he was induced to accompany John Finley in the wilds west of the mountains, within the limits of the present state of Kentucky. From that period his own history is identified with that of the state. During his first visit there, he was captured by the Indians, but escaped within a week or ten days afterward. He took his family to Kentucky in 1775, and settled on the Clericle River. In 1774, at the request of Lord Dunmore, he accompanied a party of surveyors to the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville), and was active in expeditions against the Indians during that year. He removed to the locality of the present Boonsborough, and built a fort there in 1775. In the course of three or four years, many other settlers came to his vicinity. While at the Blue Lick, on the Licking River, making salt for his garrison, in February, 1778, he and his companions were captured by a party of Indians, and taken to Chillicothe. The Indians became much attached to him. A family adopted him as a son, according to the Indian custom, and an offer of $500 for his ransom, made by Governor Hamilton of Canada, was refused. Four months after his capture, he learned that five hundred warriors were preparing to march against Boons Boone's Family on the Kain-tuck-ee. Boone's Fort assailed by Indians. Capture of Boone's Daughter and Companions. and daughters, the first white women who ever stood upon the banks of the Kain-tuck-ee, were with him and engaged his solicitude. Kenton, Henderson, Logan, the M'Afees, Hardin, Harrod, Hart, Ray, the Irvines, Bryants, Rogers, and others, soon followed; and in the course of seven or eight years the "western precincts of Finley county," as Kentucky was called, contained scores of adventurers planting small settlements along the water-courses. A record of the adventures of the settlers with the Indians would fill volumes. I have space to notice only a few of the prominent events of that period which have a direct relation with the history of our war for Independence.' In the spring of 1775, Daniel Boone erected a fort on the western bank of the Kentucky River, the site of the present village of Boonsborough. It was the first fortification built in that region; and the British, who had forts north of the Ohio, at once excited the jealous fears of the Indians respecting it. In December of that year, a a party of Indians assailed it, but a Dec. 24, were repulsed; the little garrison lost 1775. but one man. On the seventh of July following, one of Boone's daughters, and two other girls who were amusing themselves near the fort, were caught and carried away by the Indians, but were speedily rescued." BOONE'S FORT.2 In 1774, Harrodsburg, in Mercer county, Kentucky, was founded, and several log-cabins were borough. He effected his escape on the 16th of June, and arrived home on the 20th, having traveled one hundred and sixty miles, and eaten only one meal, during four days. He arrived in time to assist in preparing the fort for the expected attack mentioned in the text. Boone's wife, with his children, in the mean while, had returned to the house of her father, on the Yadkin, where Boone visited them in 1779. He remained there until the next year, when he returned to Kentucky. He subsequently accompanied George Rogers Clarke in his expeditions against the Indians on the Ohio, and was an active partisan until the close of the war. From that time, until 1798, he resided alternately in Kentucky and Virginia. In consequence of a defect in his title to lands in Kentucky, he was dispossessed of what was an ample estate, and made The region he had explored, and helped to defend, now contained a population of half a million. Indignant because of being dispossessed, he shouldered his rifle, left Kentucky forever, and, with some followers, plunged into the interminable forests of Missouri, west of the Mississippi. poor. "Of all men, saving Sylla, the man-slayer, Who passes for in life and death most lucky, Was happiest among mortals any where; BYRON'S DON JUAN, VIII., lxi. At They settled upon the Little Osage in 1799, and the following year explored the head waters of the Arkansas. At the age of eighty years, accompanied by only two men (one white and the other black), he made a hunting excursion to the great Osage, where they trapped many beavers and other game. about that time (1812), Boone addressed a memorial to the Legislature of Kentucky, setting forth that he owned not an acre of ground on the face of the earth, and, at the age of fourscore, had nowhere to lay his bones. He asked for a confirmation of his title to lands in Louisiana, given him by the Spanish government in 1794, before that territory was ceded to the United States. The Legislature instructed their delegates in Congress to solicit a confirmation of this grant, and two thousand acres were secured to him. He died on the twenty-sixth of September, 1820, at the age of almost ninety years. On that occasion, the Legislature of Missouri, then in session, agreed to wear the usual badge of mourning for thirty days, as a token of respect. The grave of Boone is by the side of that of his wife, in the Cemetery at Frankfort, Kentucky, but no stone identifies it to the eye of a stranger. The reader, desirous of possessing minute information respecting this exciting portion of our early history, will be amply rewarded by a perusal of " Kentucky, its History, Antiquities, and Biography," an excellent work of nearly six hundred large octavo pages, with forty engravings, by Lewis Collins of Louis. ville, Kentucky. 2 This sketch is from a drawing by Colonel Henderson, and published in Collin's Historical Collections of Kentucky, page 417. It was composed of a number of log-houses disposed in the form of an oblong square. Those at each corner, intended particularly for block-houses, were larger and stronger than the others. The length of the fort was about two hundred and fifty feet, and the width about one hundred and fifty feet. Betsey and Frances Calloway, the youngest about thirteen years of age, were the companions of Miss 3 Construction of other Forts. Indian Assaults. Expedition against the Kentucky Settlements. George Rogers Clarke. built. Early in 1776, Colonel Benjamin Logan, and a small party of settlers, encamped about a mile west of the present town of Stanford, in Lincoln county, and erected a log fortification, which they called Logan's Fort. These two settlements and Boone's Fort were simultaneously attacked by a large party of Indians on the fifteenth of April, 1777. assailants, having neither artillery nor scaling-ladders, made but little impression upon Boonsborough. A few men of the garrison were killed, and a quantity of corn and cattle belonging to the settlers was destroyed. Many of the assailants were killed. On the fourth of July following, about two hundred warriors attacked Boonsborough with great vigor. The assailants were repulsed with the loss of seven of their number, while the garrison had but one man killed, and two wounded. The siege lasted two days and nights. On the ninth of September, 1778, a third attack was made upon Boonsborough. The Indians, five hundred in number, were led by Captain Duquesne, and other skillful Canadian officers. When the enemy appeared in front of the fort, the British flag was displayed, and a formal demand for the surrender of the fortress was made. Boone requested an allowance of two days for consideration. It was granted, and in the mean while the garrison, consisting of only fifty men, prepared for a vigorous defense. Boone assembled the defenders, and set before them the actual state of things. To surrender might insure them their lives, but they would lose all their property; to resist and be overcome, would result in the death of every man, woman, and child. Every one resolutely determined to defend the fort to the last, and this decision Boone communicated to Captain Duquesne. The Canadian was chagrined, and sought to obtain by stratagem what he feared he might not accomplish by force.' The siege was commenced, and lasted nine days, when the assailants, having lost many of their number, and unable to make any impression on the fort, retreated suddenly and in great confusion. This was the last time that Boonsborough was assailed, for the garrisons of other forts between it and the Ohio were rapidly augmenting in numbers and strength, and made it dangerous for the enemy to penetrate far into Kentucky. With the single exception of Dunmore's expedition in 1774, hostilities west of the Alleghanies were nothing but a series of border conflicts, each little party acting upon its own responsibility, until 1778, when Major George Rogers Clarke led a regular expedition against the frontier posts of the enemy in the wilderness. Clarke first went to Kentucky in 1775, when he paddled down the Ohio with the Reverend David Jones, Boone on that occasion. Their screams alarmed the people in the fort. It was just at sunset when the Indians carried off their victims. Boone and seven others started in pursuit. The next day they came up with the savages, forty-five miles distant from Boonsborough, furiously attacked them, and rescued the girls, who had received no farther injury than that produced by the effect of excessive fright. 1 Duquesne, professing great humanity, proposed to Boone to send out nine of the principal men of his garrison to treat for an accommodation, the entire safety of the people within the fort being the basis. Unsuspicious of treachery, Boone and eight others went out to the camp of the enemy. While engaged in council, at a concerted signal, two strong warriors for each man attempted to sieze and carry off the delegation. The whole nine succeeded in releasing themselves, and escaping to the fort amid a shower of bullets from the enemy. Only one man was wounded. The siege immediately commenced. 2 George Rogers Clarke was born in Albermarle county, Virginia, on the nineteenth of November, 1752 Expeditions against British Forts. Clarke's Explorations in the Wilderness. ments. Simon Kenton. then on his way to preach the Gospel to the Western Indians. He was at once impressed with the importance of that fertile region, and the necessity of making it a secure place for settleHis mind was clear and comprehensive; his personal courage of the truest stamp; his energies, physical and mental, always vigorous, and he soon became an oracle among the backwoodsmen. During the years 1775 and 1776, he traversed vast regions of the wilderness south of the Ohio, studied the character of the Indians chiefly from the observations of others, and sought to discover a plan by which a tide of emigration might flow unchecked and secure into that paradise of the continent. He soon became convinced that the British garrisons at Detroit, Kaskaskia, and Vincennes, were the nests of those vultures who preyed upon the feeble settlements of the west, and deluged the virgin soil with the blood of the pioneers. Virginia, to which province this rich wilderness belonged, was at that time bending all her energies in advancing the cause of independence within her borders east of the Alleghanies, and the settlers west of the mountains were left to their own defense. Major Clarke, convinced of the necessity of reducing the hostile forts in the Ohio country, submitted a plan for the purpose to the Virginia Legislature, in December, 1777. His scheme was highly approved, and Governor Henry and his council were so warmly interested, that all the preliminary arrangements were soon made. Major Clarke received two sets of instructions, one public, ordering him to "proceed to the defense of Kentucky," the other private, directing an attack upon the British fort at Kaskaskia. Twelve hundred pounds were appropriated to defray the expenses of the expedition; and the commandant of Fort Pitt was ordered to furnish Clarke with ammunition, boats, and other necessary equipments. His force consisted of only four companies, but they were all prime men. Early in the springa they ren- a 1778. dezvoused upon Corn Island, at the Falls of the Ohio, six hundred and seven miles by water, below Fort Pitt. Here Clarke was joined by Simon Simon Sparton Kenton, one of the boldest pioneers of the west, then a young man of twenty-two years. He had been acting as a spy for two years previously; henceforth he was engaged in a more honorable, but not more useful service. little is known of his early youth. He was engaged in land surveying, and this led him to love a forest life. He commanded a company in Dunmore's army in 1774, and then first became acquainted with the country west of the Alleghanies. In 1775 he first went to Kentucky, and, while there, he was placed in temporary command of armed settlers. His subsequent military career, until the close of the Revolution, is given in the text. Three years after the conclusion of the war (1786), Clarke commanded an expedition of one thousand men against the Indians on the Wabash. It was disastrous. Several years afterward, Genet, the French minister, undertook to raise and organize a force in Kentucky, for a secret expedition against the Spaniards on the Mississippi, and General Clarke accepted a commission as major general in the armies of France, to conduct the enterprise. Before it could be matured, Genet was recalled, and Clarke's commission annulled. General Clarke never appeared in publie life afterward. After suffering for many years from a rheumatic affection, he was prostrated by paralysis, and died near Louisville, in February, 1818, at the age of sixty-six. Simon Kenton was born in Fauquier county, Virginia, May 15th, 1755. His father was a native of Ireland; his mother came from Scotland. He fled to the wilderness at the age of sixteen, on account of an affray with a young man who had married his affianced. Believing he had killed his rival in a fist fight, he went over the Alleghanies, and became a noble pioneer in the march of western civilization. At Fort Pitt he formed an intimacy with Simon Girty, the desperate renegade in after years, and his daily companions were trappers and hunters. He was an active spy for Governor Dunmore in 1774, and after that he had many encounters with the sons of the forest in their native wilds. He became a companion of Boone, and with him and his co-laborers arrested Kain-tuck-ee from the red men. He joined Major Clarke at the |