USA > Ohio > Jefferson County > Steubenville > Century History of Steubenville and Jefferson County, Ohio and Representative Citizens, 20th > Part 10
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The expedition proceeded down to the month of the Kanawha and several miles up that river, Washington making a close inspection of the lands all the way, and holding conferences with the Indians, who one and all professed peace and friendship. They found plenty of deer, buffalo and wild fowl of various kinds; it was a hunter's paradise. The party started on its return journey on November 3d. On their way, they met a canoe going to Illinois with sheep, an indication of the future. They reached Mingo on the afternoon of the 17th, where horses were expected to take them across the country to Fort Pitt, but which were detained by high water in the creeks. While waiting there, Washington thus comments on the commercial possi- bilities of the river :
"When the river is in its natural state large canoes, that will carry 5,000 or 6,000 weight or more, may be worked against the stream by four hands twenty or twenty-five miles a day, and down the stream a good denl more. The Indians, who are very ilexterous, even their women, in the management of cannes, have their hunting camps and cabins all along the river, for the convenience of transporting their skins to market. In the fall as soon, as the hunting season comes ou, they set out with their families for this purpose, and in hunt- ing will move their camps from place to place, till hy spring they get 200 or 300 or more miles from their towns; then catch beaver on their way up, which fre- quently brings them into the month of May, when the women are employed in planting. The men are at mar- ket and in idleness till the autumn again, when they pursue the same courwe. During the summer months they live a poor and perishing life. The Indians who reside upon the Ohio, the upper parts of it at least, are composed of Shawancse, Delnwares and some of the Mingoes, who getting but little part of the considera- tion that was given for the lands eastward of the Ohio, view the settlements of the people upon their river with an uneasy and jealous eye, and do not scruple to say that they must be compensated for their rights if the people settle thereon, notwithstanding the cession of the Six Nations. On the other hand, the people of Virginia
and elsewhere are exploring und marking all the lands that are valuable, not only on the Redstone and other waters on the Monongahela, but along the Ohio as low as the Little Kanawha, and by next summer I suppose they will get to the Great Kanawha at least. How difficult it may be to contend with these people after- wards is easy to be judged from every uny 's experience of lands actually settled, supposing these settlements to be made; than which uothing is more probable, if the Indians permit them, from the disposition of the people at present. A few settlements in the midst of some of the large bottoms would render it impracticable to get any large quantity of land together, as the hills all the way down the river, as low as I went, come pretty close, or ure steep and broken and incapable of settlement, though some of them are rich and only fit to support the bottoms with timber and wood, The land back of the bottom, as far as I have been able to judge, either from my own observations or information, is nearly the same, that is, exceedingly uneven and hilly, and I pre- same there are no bodies of flat, rich land to be found till one gets far enough from the river to hend the little runs and drains that come through the bills, and the sources of the creek and their branches. . Wal-
nut, cherry and some other kinds of wood, neither tall nor large, but covered with grapevines. with the fruit of which this country at this instant abounds, are the growth of the richest bottoms; but on the other hand these bottoms appear to me to be the lowest and most subject to floods. The soil of this is good, but inferior to either of the other kinds and beech bottoms are ohjectionable on account of the difficulty of cleaning them, as their roots spread over a large surface of ground and are hard to kill. "'
On the 20th the horses having arrived and arrangements made to send the canoes up the river the party started overland to Fort Pitt, probably following near the present line of the Wabash Railroad. They arrived there the next afternoon, and Washington left on the 23d for home, where he arrived on December 1st, having been absent nine weeks and one day.
The truce established by Colonel Bou- quet in 1764 lasted practically for ten years. During this time, there was a marked increase in the settlements between the Allegheny Mountains and the Ohio River, so that the frontier was practically moved forward to this stream. Wheeling was settled in 1769, and soon a chain of forts and blockhouses extended along the water-front, opposite Jefferson County, throughout its entire length. The original Mason & Dixon's line establishing the boundary between Maryland and Pennsyl- vania was completed in 1767. Its location was 39 degrees 43 minutes 26.3 seconds north latitude. Western Pennsylvania was
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still a subject of dispute between that state and Virginia, a matter which was not finally settled until 1785, when, by agree- ment, the line was extended five degrees westward and then north as the southern and western boundary of Pennsylvania, leaving between that state and the Ohio River a narrow strip known as the Vir- ginia Pan Handle. Beyond the Ohio was still the "Indian country," both from force of circumstances and the avowed object of the British anthorites to prohibit settlers in that region. One pioneer, however, James Maxwell, came to Jefferson County in 1772 and built a cabin near the mouth of Rush Run, where he lived two years, and then, through fear of Indians, he returned to his Virginia home, where he was able to prove his innocence. His subsequent history, which was a very tragic one, will be given later. But there was trouble in the air. There were mutterings of revolu- tion in the east, and isolated cases of In- dian outrages along the borders. Lord Dunmore, the Governor of Virginia, ap- pointed Dr. John Connelly commander at Fort Pitt, who arrested the Penn- sylvanians and renamed the place Fort Dunmore. Either through misinforma- tion or design he issued messages greatly exaggerating, and in some cases wholly creating, stories of Indian out- rages, calenlated to alarm the peace- ful settlers, and to excite the more belligerent spirits. Unfortunately there was just enough basis of truth to give a foundation for the reports. Small bands of Indians had penetrated up the Kanawha and committed murders there and else- where, naturally provoking reprisals. The situation called for a firm yet conservative policy, but unfortunately the man naturally supposed to be at the head of affairs was capable of neither. Consequently arose a tension which could only be productive of an outbreak of some kind, and this occurred in the spring of 1774, occasioning what is known as the massacre of Logan's relatives near the mouth of Yellow Creek, seventeen miles north of Steubenville, followed by
that chieftain's terrible vengeance, and what is known as.Dunmore's war, the con- clusion of which gave rise to Logan's cele- brated speech, whose authorship has been the subject of controversy almost rivaling the Bacon-Shakespeare discussion. J. A. Caldwell in his history has presented a mass of testimony on this whole affair which conclusively establishes all the lead- ing facts, of which we have only space for an abstract.
Col. George Rogers Clark and Capt. Michael Cresap were located at the mouth of the Kanawha in the spring of 1774, preparing to start with a colony to Ken- tueky, when the reports of Indian outrages caused them to abandon the expedition, and come up the river to Wheeling. While Con- nelly was entertaining some chiefs at Pitts- burgh he sent a letter to Capt. Cresap at Wheeling, telling him to beware of the In- dians, as they meant war. Connelly plied the chiefs with presents, and they departed down the Ohio to their homes. "Abont this time," says Doddridge, "it being reported that a canoe containing two Indians and some traders was coming down the river, and then not far from the place, Captain Cresap proposed to take a party up the river and kill the Indians. The proposition was opposed by Col. Zane, the proprietor of Wheeling. He stated that the killing of those Indians would inevitably bring on a war in which much innocent blood would be shed, and that the act itself would be an atrocions murder and a disgrace to his name for ever. His good counsel was lost. The party went up the river. On being asked on their return what had become of the Indians, they coolly answered, 'they had fallen into the river.' Their canoe, on being examined, was found bloody and pierced with bullets."
In the meantime the Indians from Pitts- burgh were seen approaching Wheeling Island. They took the channel on the west or Ohio side of the island, and were discov- ered on the river by Capt. Cresap and his men, who drove them down the river to Pipe Creek, where the Indians landed and
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a battle ensued, in which three of the sav- ered a party of about twenty men to attack the Indian encampment and capture the ages were killed and scalped and their stores taken. The same night, according to plunder. Unwilling to take the risk of an the account of Col. Clarke, who was with the party, a resolution was formed by Cresap's men to attack Logan's camp at the mouth of Yellow Creek. "We actually marched five miles and halted to take some refreshments. Here the impropriety of the proposed enterprise was argued; the con- versation was brought forward by Cresap himself. It was generally agreed that those Indians had no hostile intentions, as it was a hunting camp, composed of men, women and children, with all their stuff with them. This we knew, as I, myself, and others then present, had been in their camp about four weeks before that time, on our way down from Pittsburgh. In short, every person present, particularly Cresap (upon reflec- tion) was opposed to the projected meas- ure. We turned, and on the same evening decamped and took the road for Redstone. It was two days after this that Logan's family was killed, and from the manner in which it was done it was viewed as a hor- rible murder by the whole country."
Logan's camp, at the mouth of Yellow Creek, was about seventeen miles above the site of Steubenville. The account of the atrocious massacre of Logan's people, as given in Caldwell's History, is as follows: "Directly opposite Logan's camp was the cabin of Joshua Baker, who sold rum to the Indians, and who consequently had frequent visits from them. Although this encampment had existed here for a con- siderable time, the neighboring whites did not seem to apprehend any danger from their close proximity. On the contrary, they were known to have their squaws and families with them, and to be simply a hunting camp. The report of Cresap's at- tack on the two parties of Indians in the neighborhood of Wheeling, having reached Baker's, may have induced the belief, as was subsequently claimed, that the Indians at Yellow Creek would immediately begin hostilities in reprisal. Under this pretext, Daniel Greathouse and his brothers gath-
open attack upon them, he determined to accomplish by stratagem what might other- wise prove a disastrous enterprise. Ac- cordingly, the evening before the meditated attack, he visited their camp in the guise of friendship, and while ascertaining their numbers and defenses, invited them with apparent hospitality to visit him at Bak- er's, across the river. On his return he re- ported the camp as too strong for an open attack, and directed Baker, when the In- dians whom he had decoyed should come over, to supply them with all the rum they wanted, and get as many of them drunk as he could. Early in the morning of April 30, a canoe loaded with Indians, consisting of eight persons, emne over-three squaws, a child, and four unarmed men, one of whom was a brother of Logan, the Mingo chief. Going into Baker's cabin he offered them rum, which they drank, and became excessively drunk-except two men, one of whom was Logan's brother, and one woman, his sister. These refused taking liquor. No whites, except Baker and two companions, remained in the cabin. Dur- ing the visit, it is said by John Sappington, Logan's brother took down a hat and coat belonging to Baker's brother-in-law, put them on, and strutted about, using offensive language to the white man-Sappington. Whereupon, becoming irritated, he seized his gun and shot the Indian as he went out the door. The balance of the men, who up to this time remained hidden, now sallied forth, and poured in a destructive fire, slaughtering most of the party of drunken and unresisting savages. According to the statement of Judge Jolly, the woman at- tempted to escape by flight, but was also shot down ; she lived long enough, however, to beg mercy for her babe, telling them it was akin to themselves. Immediately on the firing, two canoes of Indians hurried across the river. They were received by the infuriated whites, who were arranged along the river bank, and concealed by the
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undergrowth, with a deadly fire, which killed two Indians in the first canoe. The other canoe turned and fled. After this two other canoes, containing eighteen war- riors, armed for the conflict, came over to avenge their fellows. Cautiously approach- ing the shore they attempted to land below Baker's cabin. The movements of the rang- ers, however, were too quick for them and they were driven off with the loss of one man. They returned the fire of the whites but without effect. The Indian loss was ten killed and scalped, including the mother, sister and brother of Logan."
One little baby was spared and they left for Catfish Camp, now Washington, Pa., taking the child with them. It was after- wards given to its supposed father, Col. George Gibson, an Indian trader living at Carlisle, Pa., by whom it was reared and educated.
John Sappington declared in an affidavit that he did not believe any of Logan's fam- ily were killed aside from his brother. Neither of the squaws was his wife; two of them were old women and the other the mother of the child. It has been related that Sappington admitted that he shot Logan's brother, and his statement may be received with some allowance.
After writing an account of the massacre of Logan's family, Col. William Crawford, to whom Washington had entrusted the sale of his western lands, and who subse- quently met with horrible death by burn- ing by the Indians near Sandusky, says, "Our inhabitants are much alarmed, many hundreds have gone over the mountains, and the whole country evacuated as far as the Monongahela. In short, a war is every moment expected. We have a council now with the Indians. What will be the event I do not know. I am now setting ont for Fort Pitt at the head of one hundred men. Many others are to meet me there and at Wheeling, where we shall wait the motions of the Indians and shall act accordingly."
A brief sketch of Logan, who was one of the leading characters in Indian history will not be out of place here. As has been
stated, he was the second son of Shikelle- inns, a Cayuga chief, and was born at Shamokin, on the Susquehanna about 1730. He was named after James Logan, a Christian missonary to whom his father was much attached. He built a cabin on one of the branches of the Juniata River in what is now Mifflin County, Pennsyl- vania., where he remained an advocate for peace during the French and Indian and Pontiac wars. A friend of the whites as well as of his own race he was regarded as honorable, brave and tender. Judge Will- iam Brown, one of the early settlers of that valley pronounced him "the best speci- men of humanity I ever met with, either white or red." An incident in Logan's life finely illustrates his character at that time. One day while Judge Brown was away from home, Logan happened to go to his cabin. Mrs. Brown had a little daughter just be- ginning to walk, and she remarked that she wished she had a pair of shoes for her. When he was about to leave he asked Mrs. Brown to let the little girl go and spend the day with him. Although greatly alarmed at the request the mother feared to refuse. Slowly the hours of the anxious day crept along, and there was many a look to see if the little girl was returning. At sunset Logan was seen approaching with the lit- tle girl on his shoulder, who soon hopped across the floor to her mother's arms, hav- ing on her feet a pair of neat fitting mocas- sins. In 1769 Logan came to the Allegheny, and, according to one account moved to Mingo Bottom, having several hunting camps on the Ohio and tributary streams. It is said that while he lived at Mingo an Indian council determined on war. Logan hearing of it, by a speech of great elo- quence and wisdom induced them to bury the hatchet. The chief points in his speech were that the war would be wrong and that they now had the best hunting grounds in the world, and if they went to war they would lose them. This report is probably apocryphal, and if Logan ever lived at Mingo it was but for a short time as we find him in 1772 on the banks of the Scioto,
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which was his home until his death, al- the Monongahela where nobody expected though be continued his hunting camps at Beaver, Yellow creek and doubtless else- where. In conversation with Heckwelder in 1772 he said he intended to fix his per- manent home on the Ohio and live among white people, that whiskey was his curse and that of his people, and faulted the whites for bringing it among them. He expressed great admiration for the better class of white men, but said: "Unfortu- nately we have only a few of them for neighbors."
Logan was out with a hunting party when the massacre occurred at Yellow ereck, and when he returned it was only to find his home broken up and his relatives slain. As far as possible he buried the bodies of the slain, cared for the wounded, and gathering around him his braves he joined the Shawanese in the war they were inaugurating. His whole nature was changed. No longer Logan "the friend of the White Man," or "the advocate of Peace," he was now Logan the avenger, bent on bloody war. And a bloody one it was. He declared that he would take ten scalps for every one of his relatives slain, and there is no doubt that he accomplished his purpose.
The storin broke, not directly on the bor- der but a considerable distance inside the range of settlements where it was least ex- pected. Small parties under Logan pene- trated up the Kanawha and Western tribu- taries of the Monongahela into what is now Pennsylvania, but was considered by them as Virginia territory. Up to the last of June, 1774, they had taken sixteen scalps, which seems temporarily to have appeased Logan's wrath, but not for long. Dr. Con- nelly by orders of Lord Dunmore sent word to the Shawanese demanding the delivery of Logan and his party with three prisoners . they had taken, but nothing came of it.
On July 12, while William Robinson, Thomas Hellen and Coleman Brown were pulling flax in a field opposite the mouth of Simpson's creek, in what was then called West Augusta county on the west Fork of
to see an enemy. They were suddenly at- taeked by Logan and his party. Brown fell instantly, being perforated by several balls, and the others fled. Both were soon captured and taken to the Indian towns on the Scioto. Hellen was at first cruelly treated but afterward adopted into an In- dian family, but Robinson received more consideration. Logan told him he would not be killed, but must go with him to his town where he would probably be adopted. When they arrived there he was condemned and tied to a stake to be burned, but Logan tied a belt of wampum around him as a sign of adoption, loosed him from the post, and carried him to the cabin of an old squaw, where Logan pointed out a person who, he said, was Robinson's cousin, and he after- wards understood that the old woman was his aunt, and the two others his brothers, and he now stood in the place of a warrior of the family who had been slain at Yel- low creek. While there, Logan, who could neither read nor write himself, although he understood and spoke English procured Robinson to write a letter from ink made of gunpowder, which the chief stated he meant to carry and leave in some house where he should kill somebody. Robinson says he signed the letter with Logan's name and that the latter took it "and set out again for the war." What became of that letter is disclosed by a communication dated March 2, 1799 from Judge Harry Innes, of Frankfort, Ky., to Thomas Jeff- erson as follows:
"In 1774 I lived in Fincastle County, Pennsylvania, now divided into Washington, Montgomery and part of Wythe. Being intimate in Colonel Prescott's family, I happened, in July, to be at his house when an express was sent to him as the county lieutenant requesting a guard of the militia to be ordered out for the protee- tion of the inhabitants residing low down on the forks of the Holston River. The express brought with him a war elub and a note which was left tied to it at the house of one Robertson ( Roberts), whose family was cut off by the Indians, and gave rise to the application to Colonel Prescott, of which the following is a copy, then taken by me in my memorandum book :
" 'Captain Cresap: What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for! The white people killed my kin at C'onestoga great while ago, and I thought nothing of that. But you killed my kin on Yellow Creek, and took
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my cousin prisoner. Then I thought that I must kill, too; I have been three times to war since; but the Indians are not angry- only myself. CAPT. JOHN LOGAN.' " ** 'July 21, 1774.
While Logan here and in his subsequent "speech" charges Cresap with the Yellow Creek massacre, yet we have seen that he had nothing to do with it, und had left with Colonel Clark for Redstone, now Brownsville, Pa. before it occurred.
Although Logan declared that he was only carrying on a personal war, yet he was naturally protected by his people, and other hands of suvages were not slow in finding any excuse to ravage the settlements. The situation had now become so serions that messages were sent to the Virginia As- sembly then sitting at Williamsburg asking for help. It was charged then and has been since that Dumnore, the governor, through the medium of his subordinate Connelly, at Fort Pitt, instigated many of these Indian troubles in order to intimidate the pro- vincials from entering upon the struggle with the mother country, and the circum- stances then and after were such as to war- rant that belief. However, the government was prompt in furnishing men and money. and two expeditions were planned. One under the command of Gen. Andrew Lewis was to rendezvous in Greenbriar County, while Lord Dunmore was to assemble an- other at Fort Pitt, and descend the river to Point Pleasant nt the mouth of the Kan- awha. Crawford was first sent ont with a party of one hundred men to "watch the Indians," but as might have been expected with so small a force he returned without accomplishing anything. On June 13 he set ont with a second company for the pur- pose of erecting a stockade fort at Wheel- ing which he called Fort Fincastle, On the 26th he left Wheeling with a force of four hundred men, and marched to the Indian town of Wakatomica, near the present site of Dresden, Ohio, where he dispersed a force of fifty Indians, burned the town, de- troyed their crops and returned to Wheel- ing, taking with him three hostages who were sent to Williamsburg. With the with-
drawal of this little army the border was again exposed, and as there was now open war the Indians ravaged the frontier with- ont mercy.
On September 11th General Lewis at the head of 1,100 men left Greenbriar for Point Pleasant, distant one hundred and sixty miles, which was reached after a laborious march of nineteen days through the moun- tain wilderness. Here Lord Dumore was to meet him, but no Dunmore was there, and after a delay of nine days he learned that the governor had come down the river to Wheeling which he reached on the 30th, and had marched across the country to Chillicothe, where he instructed Lewis to follow him. This was impossible as Lewis was already surrounded by a body of Dela- wares, Shawanese, Mingoes and others. If Dunmore had concluded to leave the Vir- ginians to the fate, as was freely charged, he could not have planned better for their destruction as well as that of his own little army, for had the savages been victorious at Point Pleasant his forces would have been attacked at once, and we know pretty well what would have been the result to them, even though the governor might have been permitted through his understanding with the Indians to reach home in safety. Hence this battle has been considered to have been the opening gun of the revolu- tion. As Mr. Hunter says in his "Path- finders, " "Had the battle of Point Pleasant heen fought on New England soil, the pages of history would have been filled with the name of Andrew Lewis, " but while the peo- ple in this part of the world were making history it was left to others to do most of the writing and at this distance from Boston events appeared in the same pro- portionate light as when the eye is upplied to the large end of a field glass.
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