Thursday, September 15, 2011

Logan's Lament

     John Logan, or Soyechtowa, was a member of the Cayuga Nation. He was the son of Shikellamy, who guarded the southern gate of the Iroquois Confederacy before the American Revolution.
     After Logan moved to the Ohio Territory, before the American Revolution began, he was told that his family and relatives had been massacred at Yellow Creek by a Virginia surveyor Michael Cresap. He was misinformed about the true perpetrator of the murders of his relatives. The real perpetrator was Virginia frontiersman Daniel Greathouse.
     Dunmore's war followed. It was a conflict of reprisals by Virginia militia and the Indians in Ohio Territory, called Mingos by the whites. Greathouse was captured by Shawnee warriors and slowly tortured to death.
     In 1774, at Point Pleasant, Ohio, John Logan delivered a speech, which Thomas Jefferson included in Notes on Virginia:
     "I appeal to any white man to say if he ever entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if he ever came cold and naked and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war (French and Indian), Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace.
     "Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as I passed, and said, 'Logan is a friend of the white man.' I have even thought to live with you but for the injuries of one man, Colonel Cresap, who last spring and in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered the relatives of Logan, not even sparing his wife and children.
     "There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This has called on me for revenge. I have sought it; I have killed many; I have fully glutted by vengeance. For my country, I rejoice in the light 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 heal to save his life.
     "Who is there to mourn for Logan?"

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