The Winning of the American West. Theodore Roosevelt
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of the whites, they do not relieve the red men from the charge of having committed earlier, more cruel, and quite as wanton outrages.
Conolly, an irritable but irresolute man, was appalled by the storm he had helped raise. He meanly disclaimed all responsibility for Cresap's action,273 and deposed him from his command of rangers; to which, however, he was soon restored by Lord Dunmore. Both the earl and his lieutenant, however, united in censuring severely Greathouse's deed.274 Conolly, throughout May, held a series of councils with the Delawares and Iroquois, in which he disclaimed and regretted the outrages, and sought for peace.275 To one of these councils the Delaware chief, Killbuck, with other warriors, sent a "talk" or "speech in writing"276 disavowing the deeds of one of their own parties of young braves, who had gone on the warpath; and another Delaware chief made a very sensible speech, saying that it was unfortunately inevitable that bad men on both sides should commit wrongs, and that the cooler heads should not be led away by acts due to the rashness and folly of a few. But the Shawnees showed no such spirit. On the contrary they declared for war outright, and sent a bold defiance to the Virginians, at the same time telling Conolly plainly that he lied. Their message is noteworthy, because, after expressing a firm belief that the Virginian leader could control his warriors, and stop the outrages if he wished, it added that the Shawnee head men were able to do the like with their own men when they required it. This last allegation took away all shadow of excuse from the Shawnees for not having stopped the excesses of which their young braves had been guilty during the past few years.
Though Conolly showed signs of flinching, his master the earl had evidently no thought of shrinking from the contest. He at once began actively to prepare to attack his foes, and the Virginians backed him up heartily, though the Royal Government, instead of supporting him, censured him in strong terms, and accused the whites of being the real aggressors and the authors of the war.277
In any event, it would have been out of the question to avoid a contest at so late a date. Immediately after the murders in the end of April, the savages crossed the frontier in small bands. Soon all the back country was involved in the unspeakable horrors of a bloody Indian war, with its usual accompaniments of burning houses, tortured prisoners, and ruined families, the men being killed and the women and children driven off to a horrible captivity.278 The Indians declared that they were not at war with Pennsylvania,279 and the latter in return adopted an attitude of neutrality, openly disclaiming any share in the wrong that had been done, and assuring the Indians that it rested solely on the shoulders of the Virginians.280 Indeed the Shawnees protected the Pennsylvania traders from some hostile Mingos, while the Pennsylvania militia shielded a party of Shawnees from some of Conolly's men;281 and the Virginians, irritated by what they considered an abandonment of the white cause, were bent on destroying the Pennsylvania fur trade with the Indians.282 Nevertheless, some of the bands of young braves who were out on the war-path failed to discriminate between white friends and foes, and a number of Pennsylvanians fell victims to their desire for scalps and their ignorance or indifference as to whom they were at war with.283
The panic along the Pennsylvania frontier was terrible; the out settlers fled back to the interior across the mountains, or gathered in numbers to defend themselves.284 On the Virginian frontier, where the real attack was delivered, the panic was more justifiable; for terrible ravages were committed, and the inhabitants were forced to gather together in their forted villages, and could no longer cultivate their farms, except by stealth.285 Instead of being cowed, however, the backwoodsmen clamored to be led against their foes, and made most urgent appeals for powder and lead, of which there was a great scarcity.286
The confusion was heightened by the anarchy in which the government of the northwestern district had been thrown in consequence of the quarrel concerning the jurisdiction. The inhabitants were doubtful as to which colony really had a right to their allegiance, and many of the frontier officials were known to be double-faced, professing allegiance to both governments.287 When the Pennsylvanians raised a corps of a hundred rangers there almost ensued a civil war among the whites, for the Virginians were fearful that the movement was really aimed against them.288 Of course the march of events gradually forced most, even of the neutral Indians, to join their brethren who had gone on the war-path, and as an example of the utter confusion that reigned, the very Indians that were at war with one British colony, Virginia, were still drawing supplies from the British post of Detroit.289
Logan's rage had been terrible. He had changed and not for the better, as he grew older, becoming a sombre, moody man; worse than all, he had succumbed to the fire-water, the curse of his race. The horrible treachery and brutality of the assault wherein his kinsfolk were slain made him mad for revenge; every wolfish instinct in him came to the surface. He wreaked a terrible vengeance for his wrongs; but in true Indian fashion it fell, not on those who had caused them, but on others who were entirely innocent. Indeed he did not know who had caused them. The massacres at Captina and Yellow Creek occurred so near together that they were confounded with each other; and not only the Indians but many whites as well290 credited Cresap and Greathouse with being jointly responsible for both, and as Cresap was the most prominent, he was the one especially singled out for hatred.
Logan instantly fell on the settlement with a small band of Mingo warriors. On his first foray he took thirteen scalps, among them those of six children.291 A party of Virginians, under a man named McClure, followed him: but he ambushed and defeated them, slaying their leader.292 He repeated these forays at least three times. Yet, in spite of his fierce craving for revenge, he still showed many of the traits that had made him beloved of his white friends. Having taken a prisoner, he refused to allow him to be tortured, and saved his life at the risk of his own. A few days afterwards he suddenly appeared to this prisoner with some gunpowder ink, and dictated to him a note. On his next expedition this note, tied to a war-club, was left in the house of a settler, whose entire family was murdered. It was a short document, written with ferocious directness, as a kind of public challenge or taunt to the man whom he wrongly deemed to be the author of his misfortunes. It ran as follows:
"CAPTAIN CRESAP:
"What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for? The white people killed my kin at Conestoga, a 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.
CAPTAIN JOHN LOGAN."293
"July 21, 1774.
There is a certain deliberate and blood-thirsty earnestness about this letter which must have shown the whites clearly, if they still needed to be shown, what bitter cause they had to rue the wrongs that had been done to Logan.
The Shawnees and Mingos were soon joined by many of the Delawares and outlying Iroquois, especially Senecas; as well as by the Wyandots and by large bands of ardent young warriors from among the Algonquin tribes along the Miami, the Wabash, and the Lakes. Their inroads on the settlements were characterized, as usual, by extreme stealth and merciless ferocity. They stole out of the woods with the silent cunning of wild beasts, and ravaged with a cruelty ten times greater. They burned down the lonely log-huts, ambushed travellers, shot the men as they hunted or tilled the soil, ripped open the women with child, and burned many of their captives at the stake. Their noiseless approach enabled them to fall on the settlers before their presence was suspected; and they disappeared as suddenly as they had come, leaving no trail that could be followed. The charred huts and scalped and mangled bodies of their victims were left as ghastly reminders of their visit, the sight stirring the backwoodsmen to a frenzy of rage all the more terrible in the end, because it was impotent for the time being. Generally they made their escape successfully; occasionally they were beaten off or overtaken and killed or scattered.
When they met armed woodsmen the fight was always desperate. In May, a party of hunters and surveyors, being suddenly attacked in the forest, beat off their assailants and took eight scalps, though with a loss of nine of their own number.294 Moreover, the settlers began to band together to make retaliatory inroads; and while Lord Dunmore was busily preparing to strike a really effective blow, he directed the frontiersmen of the northwest to undertake a foray, so as to keep the Indians employed. Accordingly, they gathered together, four hundred strong,295 crossed the Ohio, in the end of July, and marched against a Shawnee town on the