I Wish I’d Been There

LOGAN’S LAMENT BY GARY S. WILLIAMS

I wish I’d been there on Oct. 19, 1774, to hear the Mingo warrior Logan make his famous speech declining to participate in peace talks with the whites.

“Logan’s Lament” has been praised as an example of the passionate eloquence of American Indians, and was included in generations of McGuffey Readers for schoolchildren to memorize. I wish I’d been there primarily because no one else was. Logan’s Lament was spoken one time to one person—Logan’s brother-in-law, John Gibson, who memorized and translated it for us.

Logan was the son of a chief from the mighty Iroquois Confederacy. In 1774, he was living along the Ohio River north of Pittsburgh, where he was known to be a friend of the white people. In the spring of that year, the people of his village temporarily relocated for a spring hunting expedition. Logan was absent, but most of his village set up a camp where Yellow Creek meets the Ohio River, at today’s Jefferson/ Columbiana county line.

At this time, settlers were attempting to move downstream to Kentucky, and the Shawnee were resisting this encroachment into their hunting grounds. As rumors of war circulated, a letter from Fort Pitt warned residents that war was all but inevitable, which led some to conclude that it made sense to attack before being attacked.

On April 30, settlers on the opposite side of Yellow Creek lured some Natives across the river with the promise of milk for Logan’s sister Koonay, who was pregnant and also had a young child. But this was all part of a trap, and the result was the murder of all the

American Indians except for Koonay’s daughter. This daughter turned out to be the child of American Indian trader John Gibson, and was returned to him. But this barbarous incident started a border war.

A Series Of Raids

Logan was understandably devastated by the murder of his family. He led a series of raids on individual families until he had personally taken 13 white scalps—one for each of his slain relatives. Afterwards, he relocated to central Ohio and lived among the Shawnee, who were still fighting.

The Shawnee were being threatened from two directions, with one army coming down the Ohio and another heading upstream on the Kanawha River. They had to strike before these two armies could meet, and on Oct. 10 they attacked the Americans at Point Pleasant on the Ohio. After a bloody battle, the Shawnee were forced to retreat and both armies followed them into Ohio.

A column under Virginia’s Royal Governor Lord Dunmore now came up the Hocking River and crossed over to the Scioto watershed, setting up camp not far from the Shawnee villages on the Pickaway Plains. The Shawnee made peace overtures,

Iappeal 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 and I gave him not clothing. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained in his tent, an advocate for peace. Nay, such was my love for the whites, that those of my own country pointed at me as they passed by and said, “Logan is the friend of white men!” I had even thought to live with you but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, last Spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, cut off all the relatives of Logan; not even sparing my woman and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any human. 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. Yet, 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. and Dunmore dispatched Gibson, who spoke several American Indian languages, to make preliminary arrangements and to try to encourage Logan’s participation.

The seriousness of his mission kept Gibson from enjoying the gorgeous October day in the Ohio wilderness. He rode past several villages and also viewed the dreaded Shawnee burning ground—a raised plateau that offered good views of captives being burned at the stake. But Gibson was quite surprised to find Logan standing alongside the trail. He called to him in the Seneca tongue, saying, “My friend Logan, I am glad to see you,” to which Logan sullenly replied, “Yes, I suppose you are,” in English, turning into the impenetrable forest before Gibson could follow.

To Fight No More

Later that day, Gibson was conferring when Logan approached and asked him to follow. They walked to the shade of a large elm tree, where a tearful Logan addressed Gibson. He said he had always been a friend of the whites until they murdered his family, which required him to seek vengeance. But he had taken his revenge and would fight no more, although he specified his peace was not made out of fear. Logan had no fear of dying, because, as he concluded, “Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.”

Some claim it was Simon Girty who translated Logan’s Lament. It’s true that Girty, who also spoke multiple American Indian languages, had accompanied Gibson on an earlier trip to the Shawnee villages, but Gibson later made a sworn statement that he went alone to meet Logan. He sent this statement to Thomas Jefferson, who included it in a book as an example of Native eloquence. The Logan Elm is gone now, but the Ohio History Connection preserves the site of this major event in early Ohio history. I wish I’d been there.

Gary S. Williams is a retired librarian who’s written many articles on Ohio nature and history, as well as four books on Ohio history and a guide to hiking Ohio. He has a bachelor’s degree in history from Marietta College and a master’s degree in library science from Kent State University. His most recent book, published by the Akron University Press, is “No Man Knows This Country Better”: The Frontier Life of John Gibson.

Learn More

In his excellent travel book, Road to Wapatomica: A Modern Search for the Old Northwest, Bob Hunter includes a chapter (pages 40–46) on Logan’s Lament. Describing a monument and park dedicated to Chief Logan at Yellow Creek, Hunter writes, “It’s a lovely spot for a picnic, or, if you were one of Logan’s unfortunate family members, a pretty place to spend your last day on earth.”

Though it’s now rare, it’s still possible to find (to buy or borrow) Grace Stevenson Haber’s With Pipe and Tomahawk: The Story of Logan the Mingo Chief, first published by Pageant Press in 1959.

Dunmore’s War by historian Glenn F. Williams details “the 1774 campaign against a Shawnee-led Indian confederacy in the Ohio Country (that) marked the final time an American colonial militia took to the field in His Majesty’s service and under royal command.” Subtitled The Last Conflict of America’s Colonial Era, the book is supported by the author’s “extensive primary source research,” through which he “corrects much of the folklore concerning the war and frontier fighting in general, demonstrating that the Americans did not adopt Indian tactics for wilderness fighting as is often supposed, but rather used British methods developed for fighting irregulars in the woods of Europe.”