Soon after the Mohawks broke the peace with the French and Algonkins in Canada, and in 1647 killed Piskaret the champion, they and the others of the Five Nations drove the Hurons and Algonkins into flight.
The Hurons, styled in English Wyandots, fled clear into Michigan and spread down into northern Ohio.
Of the Algonkins there were three nations who clung together as the Council of the Three Fires. These were the Ottawas, the Ojibwas and the Potawatomis.
The Ottawas were known as the "Trade People" and the "Raised Hairs." They had claimed the River Ottawa, in which was the Allumette Island upon which Piskaret and the Adirondacks had lived.
The Ojibways were known as the "Puckered Moccasin People," from the words meaning "to roast till puckered up." Their tanned moccasins had a heavy puckered seam. The name Ojibwa, rapidly pronounced, became in English "Chippeway." As Chippeways and Chippewas have they remained.
The Potawatomis, whose name is spelled also Pottawattamis, were known as the "Nation of Fire." They had lived the farthest westward of all, until the Sioux met them and forced them back.
The Ottawas were recorded by the early French as rude and barbarous. The Chippewas, or Ojibwas, were recorded as skillful hunters and brave warriors. The Potawatomis were recorded as the most friendly and kind-hearted among the northern Indians.
Of these people many still exist, in Canada and the United States.
When England, aided by her American colonies, began to oppose France in the New World in 1755, the Three Fires helped the French. They were then holding part of present Wisconsin and all of Michigan.
Now in the fall of 1760 France had lost Canada. She was about to surrender to England all her forts and trading posts of the Upper Mississippi basin, from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River.
In November Major Robert Rogers, a noted American Ranger, of New Hampshire birth, with two hundred hardy American woodsmen in twelve whaleboats, and with a herd of fat cattle following the shores, was on his way from Montreal, by water, to carry the English tongue and the British flag to the French posts of the Great Lakes.
He had passed several posts, and was swinging around for Detroit, when a storm of sleet and rain kept him in camp amidst the thick timber where today stands the city of Cleveland, Ohio.
Here he was met by a party of Indians from the west, bearing a message.
PONTIAC, THE RED NAPOLEON. From a paintingPONTIAC, THE RED NAPOLEON.From a painting
PONTIAC, THE RED NAPOLEON. From a paintingPONTIAC, THE RED NAPOLEON.From a painting
"You must go no farther," they said, "Pontiac is coming. He is the king and lord of this country you are in. Wait till he can see you with his own eyes."
That same day in the afternoon Chief Pontiac himself appeared. Major Rogers saw a dark, medium tall but very powerful Indian, aged near fifty years, wearing not only richly embroidered clothes but also "an air of majesty and princely grandeur."
Pontiac spoke like a great chief and ruler.
"I have come to find out what you are doing in this place, and how you dare to pass through my country without my permission."
Major Rogers replied smoothly.
"I have no design against you or your people. I am here by orders from your new English fathers, to remove the French from your country, so that we may trade in peace together."
And he gave the chief a pledge of wampum. Pontiac returned another belt.
"I shall stand in the path you are walking, till morning," was all that he would say; and closed the matter for the night.
During the storm of the next few days he smoked the pipe of peace with the major, and promised safe passage for him, to Detroit.
Thus Major Rogers was the first of the English Americans to be face to face with one of the master minds of the Indian Americans.
This Pontiac was head chief not alone of the Ottawas, but of the Chippewas and Potawatomis. Rumor has declared that he was born a dark Catawba of that fierce fighting nation in South Carolina, who frequently journeyed north to fall upon the northern tribes. But his father probably was an Ottawa, his mother an Ojibwa.
By reason of his strong mind, and his generalship in peace and in war, he was accepted as a leader throughout all the Great Lakes country. The name and fame of Pontiac had extended far into the south and into the east. It is said that he commanded the whole Indian force at the bloody Braddock's Field south of Pittsburg, when on July 9, 1755, the British regulars of General Sir William Braddock, aided by the colonial militia of Major George Washington, were crushed and scattered by the French and Indians.
Before that he had saved the French garrison of Detroit from an attack by hostile Foxes.
Having talked with Major Rogers, Pontiac sent runners to notify the villages that the English had his permission to march through the country. He himself went on with the party. He astonished the major by his shrewd questions—as to how the English waged war, how their clothing was made, how they got iron from the ground, for their weapons.
He even stated that he was willing to form an alliance with the king of England and to call him uncle; but that he must be allowed to reign as he pleased in his own country, or "he would shut up the way and keep the English out."
Puzzled and stung by the news that their fathers, the French, had been beaten in war, a great number of Ottawas, Potawatomis, Chippewas, Sacs and Wyandots gathered at old Detroit, to witness the surrender. They could not understand why the French should march out and lay down their arms to such a small company of English. Evidently these English were gifted with powers that made their enemies weak.
For a brief space all went well, while the Indians of Pontiac's country watched, to see what kind of men these English should prove to be.
But the name of the English already was bad. These Northern tribes well knew what had occurred in Virginia and in New England. The Powatans, the Pokanokets, the Narragansetts and other peoples had been wiped out, their lands seized. The English were bent upon being masters, not allies.
There was found to be a great difference in the methods of the French, and these English.
The French treated chiefs as equals, and tribes as brothers and children; lived in their lodges, ate of their food, created good feeling by distributing presents, interfered little with ancient customs, traded fairly, and forebade whiskey.
The English despised the Indians, lived apart, demanded rather than asked, were stingy in trading, and cheated by means of liquor.
"When the Indians visited the forts, instead of being treated with attention and politeness, they were received gruffly, subjected to indignities, and not infrequently helped out of the fort with the butt of a sentry's musket or a vigorous kick from an officer."
Pontiac and his people soon saw this. The French-Canadian traders still at large took pains to whisper, in cunning fashion, that the great French king was old and had been asleep while the English were arming; but that now he had awakened, and his young men were coming to rescue his red children. A fleet of great canoes was on its way up the St. Lawrence River, to capture the Lakes, and the French and the Indians would again live together!
The Three Fires and their allies the Sacs and the Wyandots longed for the pleasant company of their French brothers. In his village on the Canada border just across the river from Detroit, Pontiac watched these "Red Coats" for two years and found, as he thought, nothing good in them or their cheating traders and he resolved to be rid of them all.
With the eye of a chief and a warrior he had noted, also, that they were a foolish people. As if despising the power of the Indian, they garrisoned their posts with only small forces, although many of these posts were lonely spots, far separated by leagues of water and forest from any outside aid. Messages from one to another could be easily stopped.
The French were being allowed to remain and to move about freely. The peace treaty between the French and the English had not yet been signed. No doubt the French would join the Indians in driving the invaders from this country so rich in corn and fish and game.
Out of his brooding and his hate, Pontiac formed his plan. It was a plan like the plan of Opechancanough and King Philip, but on a larger scale. He worked at it alone, until he was prepared to set it in motion.
Then, late in the year 1762, he sent to the eastward his runners bearing to the Senecas a red-stained tomahawk and a Bloody Belt.
They carried the message:
"The English mean to make slaves of us, by occupying so many posts in our country. Let us try now, to recover our liberty, rather than wait until they are stronger."
From the Senecas the Bloody Belt was passed to the Delawares of western New York and eastern Pennsylvania; from the Delawares to the Shawnees of western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio; from the Shawnees it was passed westward to the Miamis, and the Wyandots of Indiana.
Several thousands of miles had the Bloody Belt traveled, when in March, of 1763, it was caught and stopped by Ensign Holmes, the young commander at old Fort Miami near the present city of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
He sent it back to Detroit, far northward, with a note of warning for Major Gladwyn the commander. He believed that with the stoppage of the belt he had checked the plan. Major Gladwyn, in turn, reported to his superiors that this "was a trifling matter which would blow over."
The belt may have been stopped, but not the word of Pontiac. It traveled on, until from Lake Superior of the Canada border down to Kentucky all the tribes between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi River were only waiting for the Day.
Vague rumors brought in by traders and friendly scouts floated hither-thither—rumors of mysterious remarks, of secret councils, of a collecting of arms and powder, and a sharpening of knives and hatchets, even among tribes remote from the posts.
But the garrisons were not reinforced. The soldiers idled and joked, the Indians came and went as usual, gates were not closed except at night.
A Delaware prophet was reported to be preaching death to the Red Coats. Unrest seethed, and yet could not be traced to any source. On April 27, unknown to a single one of the English at the Great Lakes, a hundred strange chiefs gathered within a few miles of Detroit itself, to confer with Pontiac.
In the midst of the forest he addressed them. Here, seated in a large circle, were Ottawas, Ojibwas, Sacs, Potawatomis, Wyandots, Senecas, Miamis, Shawnees, Foxes, Delawares, Menominis—all intent for the words of Pontiac.
His speech was full of fire and eloquence. He was an orator. He reminded his brothers of their treatment by the English, and of their better treatment by the French—their friends who had been ousted. He told them that now was the time to rise, when the war canoes of their French father were on the way to re-people the land with happiness.
A prophet had been born among the Delawares, said Pontiac. The Great Spirit had appeared to this prophet in a dream, and had demanded why the Indians suffered the white strangers to live in this land that he had provided with everything for the Indian's use.
Let the Indians return to the customs of their ancestors—fling away the blankets, the coats, the guns, the fire-water, and use again the skins, the bows, and the native foods, and be independent. "As for these English, these dogs dressed in red, drive them from your hunting grounds; drive them! And then when you are in distress, I will help you."
The day was named by Pontiac. It should date from the change of the moon, in the next month (or about May 7). At that time should begin the work, by all the tribes, of seizing every English fort and trading post in the Great Lakes country and west of the Alleghany Mountains. The tribes nearest to each should attend to the matter—strike when they heard that he had struck Detroit.
The date and the plan were approved. The council broke up. As silently as they had come, the chiefs went home; some by water, some afoot, and no white man knew of the meeting!
Detroit was the largest and most important of the English posts. Pontiac himself would seize this by aid of his Ottawas, some Potawatomis and Wyandots. To the Chippewas and the Sacs was given over the next important fur-trade station, that of Mich-il-i-mac-ki-nac, north.
Old Fort Detroit was a stockade twenty feet high, in the form of a square about two-thirds of a mile around. It enclosed a church and eighty or one hundred houses, mainly of French settlers with a sprinkling of English traders.
In the block-houses at the corners and protecting the gates, light cannon were mounted. The garrison consisted of only one hundred and twenty men of the Eightieth Foot. In the village there were perhaps forty other men.
On both sides of the river lay the fertile farms of the French settlers. Back of the farms on the east or Canadian side, and about five miles from Detroit, was the teeming village of Pontiac's Ottawas. Potawatomis and Wyandots also lived near. At Pontiac's call there waited more than a thousand warriors.
The set time approached. On May 1 Pontiac and forty chiefs and warriors entered the fort, and danced the calumet, a peace dance, for the pleasure of their officers. Pontiac said to Major Gladwyn that he would return, at the change of the moon, May 7, or in one week, to hold a council with him, and "brighten the chain of peace with the English."
The major agreed. He was a very foolish man, for a chief. Having returned to his village, Pontiac called a different kind of a council, there—a war council of one hundred chiefs. They were to have their people cut off the ends of muskets that should be carried concealed under the blankets. Sixty chiefs and warriors should go with him into the council chamber at the fort; the others should linger in the streets of the town and at the fort gates.
He would speak to the major with a belt, white on the one side, green on the other. When he turned the belt and presented it wrong end first, let every warrior kill an English soldier, beginning with the officers. At the sound let every warrior outside the council use gun and hatchet.
On May 5 a French settler's wife crossed the river to buy maple-sugar and deer-meat at the Ottawa village. She saw the warriors busy filing at their gun-barrels—shortening the guns to scarce a yard of length. This was a curious thing to do. When she went back to the post she spoke about it.
"That," said the blacksmith, "explains why those fellows have been borrowing all my files and hack-saws. They wouldn't tell me what for. Something's brewing."
When Major Gladwyn was informed, still he would not believe. But the fur-traders at the post insisted that when an Indian shortened his gun, he meant mischief. The opinion of fur-traders carried no weight with Major Gladwyn, the British officer.
The next evening Catharine, a pretty Ojibwa girl who lived with the Potawatomis, came to see him in his quarters. She was his favorite. She had agreed to make him a pair of handsome moccasins, from an elk hide. Now she brought the moccasins, and the rest of the hide.
Usually she had been much pleased to look upon and talk with the handsome young major in the red clothes. This time her face was clouded, she hung her head, and spoke hardly at all. Her eager girlishness had vanished. The major's delight with the moccasins failed to cheer her up.
Trying to win her smiles, he told her the moccasins were so beautiful that he wished to give them to a friend. Would she take the elk-hide away with her, and make another pair of moccasins for himself!
She finally left, with strangely slow step, and backward glances. At sunset, when the gates of the fort were to be closed, the guard found her still inside. As she would not go, the sergeant took word to the major.
"She won't talk with me, sir," he reported.
"Send her in and I will talk with her," ordered the major.
Catharine came, downcast, silent, and timid.
"Why have you not gone before the gates are shut, Catharine?"
She hesitated.
"I did not wish to take away the skin that is yours."
"But you did take it away, as far as the gate."
She hesitated more.
"Yes, that is so. But if I take it outside I can never return it."
"Why not?"
"I cannot tell. I am afraid."
"You can talk freely. Nothing that you say shall go to other ears. If you bring me news of value you will be well rewarded, and no one shall know."
Catharine loved the major. Presently she told him of the mind of Pontiac, and the deed planned for tomorrow morning.
A cold fear clutched the heart of Major Gladwyn. He recalled the shortened guns, he recalled the Bloody Belt, he recalled the date made with him for a big council on the morrow. At last he rather believed.
So he sent away the trembling Catharine, that she might go to her village. He held a council with his officers.
Here they were, with only one hundred and twenty soldiers, and less than three weeks' provisions, cut off by one thousand, two thousand, three thousand merciless Indian warriors, and by the French settlers and traders who probably would be glad to have the English killed.
"The English are to be struck down, but no Frenchman is to be harmed," had said Catharine.
That looked bad indeed.
This night guards were doubled along the parapets, and in the block-houses. The major himself walked guard most of the night. From the distant villages of the Ottawas, the Wyandots, and the Potawatomis drifted the clamor of dances—an ugly sound, full of meaning, now.
Precisely at ten o'clock in the morning a host of bark canoes from the Ottawa side of the Detroit River slanted across the current, and made landing. Pontiac approached at the head of a long file of thirty chiefs and as many warriors. They walked with measured, stately tread. Every man was closely wrapped in a gay blanket.
They were admitted through the gate of the fort, but it was closed against the mass of warriors, women and children who pressed after.
As Pontiac, with his escort, stalked for the council room, his quick glances saw that the soldiers were formed, under arms, and moving from spot to spot, and that a double rank had been stationed around the headquarters.
In the council chamber he noted, too, that each officer wore his sword, and two pistols!
"Why," asked Pontiac, of Major Gladwyn, "do I see so many of my father's young men standing in the street with their guns?"
"It is best that my young men be exercised as soldiers, or they will grow lazy and forget," answered the major.
Ha! Pontiac knew. Somehow his plans had been betrayed; his game was up, unless he chose an open fight.
His chiefs and warriors sat uneasily. They all feared death. By Indian law they ought to be killed for having intended to shed blood in a calumet council.
Pontiac started his talk. He acted confused, as though he was not certain what course to pursue.
Once he did seem about to offer the belt wrong end first, as the signal—and Major Gladwyn, still sitting, slightly raised his hand. Instantly from outside the door sounded the clash of arms and the quick roll of a drum, to show that the garrison was on the alert. The officers half drew their swords.
Pontiac flushed yet darker. He stammered, and offering the belt right end first, closed his talk, and sat down again.
Major Gladwyn made a short reply. He said that the English were glad to be friends, as long as their red brothers deserved it; but any act of war would be severely punished.
That was all. The major let the Indians file out again. Pontiac knew.
He was too great a leader, in the Indian way, to be balked by one defeat. He actually proposed another council; he actually persuaded the foolish major to send out to him two officers, for a peace talk. One of the officers barely escaped from captivity, the other never came back.
Then Pontiac boldly besieged Detroit, in white race fashion—the closest, longest siege ever laid by Indians against any fort on American soil.
His two thousand Indians swarmed in the forest, held the fences and walls and buildings of the fields, peppered the palisade with bullets and arrows, shot fire into the town; captured a supply fleet in the river, ambushed sallying parties, cut to pieces a column of reinforcements.
The siege lasted six months. The orders to attack went out. On May 16 Fort Sandusky, at Lake Erie in northern Ohio, was seized by the Wyandots and Ottawas, during a council.
On May 25, Fort St. Joseph of St. Joseph, Michigan, on Lake Michigan across the state from Detroit, was seized in like manner by the Potawatomis. On May 27, Fort Miami, near present Fort Wayne of Indiana, commanded by Ensign Holmes who had discovered the Bloody Belt, was forced to surrender to the Wyandots. Ensign Holmes himself was decoyed into the open, and killed.
On June 4, populous Michilimackinac of northern Michigan was pillaged. The Chippewas and Sacs celebrated the King's Birthday, in honor of the English, with a great game of lacrosse in front of the post. Michilimackinacdid not know that Detroit was being besieged! The gates were left open, the officers gathered to witness the game. The ball was knocked inside the palisades, the players rushed after—and that was the end of Michilimackinac.
On June 15 the little fort of Presq' Isle, near the modern city of Erie on the Lake Erie shore of northern Pennsylvania, was attacked. It was captured in two days, by the Ottawas and Potawatomis from Detroit.
On June 18, Fort Le Boeuf, twelve miles south of it, was burned. Just when Fort Venango, farther south, fell to the Senecas, no word says, for not a man of it remained alive. June 1, Fort Ouatanon, below Lafayette on the Wabash River in west central Indiana, had surrendered.
Niagara in the east was threatened; Fort Legonier, forty miles southeast of Pittsburg in Pennsylvania, was attacked by the Delawares and Shawnees, but held out; the strong Fort Pitt (now Pittsburg), with garrison of over three hundred soldiers and woodsmen, was besieged by the united Delawares, Shawnees, Wyandots and Mingo Iroquois.
A second Bloody Belt had been dispatched by Pontiac from Detroit; as fast as it arrived, the allies struck hard. Of twelve fortified English posts, eight fell. Not only that, but the fiery spirit of Pontiac had aroused twenty-two tribes extending from Canada to Virginia, and from New York to the Illinois. A hundred English traders were murdered in camp, and on the trail. A thousand English are supposed to have been killed. Five hundred families of northern Virginia and of western Maryland fled for their lives.
While this work was going on, and the frontier settlements shuddered, and feared the morrow, Pontiac was sternly sticking to his siege of Fort Detroit.
The French around there complained to him that his men were robbing them of provisions, and injuring the corn-fields.
"You must stand that," rebuked Pontiac. "I am fighting your battles against the English."
He gave out receipts, for the supplies as taken. These receipts were pieces of bark, pictured with the kind of supplies taken, and signed with the figure of an otter—the totem of the Ottawas. After the war every receipt was honored, by payment.
Only his Ottawas were still fighting Detroit, when on October 30, this 1763, there arrived, from the French commander on the lower Mississippi, a peace belt and a messenger for Pontiac.
He had been told that peace had been declared between the French and the English, but he had not believed. Now he was told again, by word direct, that the king of France and the king of England had signed peace papers; the country was English, his father the king of France could not help him. He must stop his war, and "take the English by the hand."
Weeks before this, the Indians to the south had withdrawn; his other allies were fading into the forest. So, sullen and disappointed, he, too, withdrew. His sun had set, but he tried to follow it southwestward.
Before he gave his hand to the English he did attempt another war. The tribes of the Illinois hesitated, in council.
"If you do not join my people," thundered Pontiac, "I will consume you as the fire eats the dry grass of the prairies!"
The plot failed, but the Illinois did not forget his insulting words. In April, 1769, while leaving a council with the Illinois beside the Mississippi River, and wearing a blue-and-silver uniform coat given to him years before by the brave General Montcalm of the French, he was murdered by a Kaskaskia of the Illinois nation, in the forest which became East St. Louis.
The Kaskaskia had been bribed by an English trader, with a barrel of whiskey, to do the deed. There died Pontiac. He was buried, it is said, on the site of the present Southern Hotel in St. Louis City.
The Illinois suffered from this foul crime. All of Pontiac's loyal people—the Ottawas, the Potawatomis, the Sacs, the Foxes, the Chippewas—rose against them and swept them from the face of the earth.
Now what of Catharine, who saved Detroit from Pontiac? She saved Detroit, but Fort Detroit did not saveher. Pontiac was no fool; he very quickly had suspected her. He well knew that Major Gladwyn was her friend, and that she had taken the moccasins in to him.
She was seized by the chief, beaten almost lifeless with a lacrosse racquet, and condemned to the meanest of labor. After the siege, Major Gladwyn made no effort to rescue her or reward her. At last, when an old and miserable woman, she fell into a kettle of boiling maple sap, and died.
During the French-and-Indian war with England, and during the war waged by Pontiac, there was one prominent chief who did not take up the hatchet. His name was the English one of John Logan. He was a Mingo, or Iroquois, of a Cayuga band that had drifted south into east central Pennsylvania.
There Chief Shikellemus, his father, had settled and had proved himself a firm friend of the whites. Old Shikellemus invited the Moravian missionaries to take refuge on his lands. He spoke good English. He acted as agent between his people and the Province of Pennsylvania. He was hospitable and shrewd, and ever refused to touch liquor because, as he said, he "did not wish to become a fool."
His house was elevated on stilts, as protection against the "big drunks."
About 1725, a second son was born to him and his wife, and named Tah-gah-jute, meaning "His-eye-lashes-stick-out," or, "Open-eyes." In admiration of his good friend James Logan, of Philadelphia, secretary of Pennsylvania, and sometimes acting governor, Chief Shikellemus gave little Tah-gah-jute the English name of Logan.
As "John Logan" he was known to the settlers.
The wise and upright Shikellemus died—"in the fear of the Lord." His people scattered wider. Logan his son moved westward, to the Shawnee and Delaware country of Pennsylvania.
Here he married a Shawnee girl. He set up housekeeping and traded venison and skins with the white settlers, for powder, ball, and sugar and flour.
The tide of white blood was surging ever farther into the west, and the Indians' hunting grounds. Many of the Indians grew uneasy. Pontiac's Bloody Belt passed from village to village, but the weary and nervous traveler was always welcome at the cabin of Logan, "friend of the white man."
A white hunter, Brown, trailing bear in the Pennsylvania timber, laid aside his rifle and stooped to drink at a spring. Suddenly he saw mirrored in the clear water the tall figure of an armed Indian, watching him. Up he sprang, leaped for his gun, leveled it—but the Indian smiled, knocked the priming from his own gun, and extended his hand.
This was Logan—"the best specimen of humanity I ever met with, red or white," wrote Brown. "He could speak a little English, and told me there was another white hunter a little way down the stream, and guided me to his camp."
Other stories of Logan's kindnesses to the whites in his country are told. In the latter part of 1763, a party of white settlers had broken in upon the refuge of twenty Conestoga Iroquois, in southern Pennsylvania, and killed every one. The Conestogas were kin to the other Mingos; but Logan made no war talk about it.
Simon Kenton, one of the most famous scouts of Daniel Boone's time in Kentucky and Ohio, says that his form was "striking and manly," his countenance "calm and noble."
Although Logan started out to walk the straight path of peace, sore days were ahead of him. He moved westward again in 1770, erected a cabin at the mouth of Beaver Creek, on the Ohio side of the Ohio River about half way between Pittsburg of Pennsylvania and Wheeling of West Virginia.
His cabin was kept wide open. Everybody spoke well of Logan. He removed once more. The new cabin, "home of the white man," was built on the Sciota River of central Ohio, among the Shawnees of Chief Cornstalk's tribe. He and Chief Cornstalk were close friends. They both stood out for peace. But Cornstalk had been a war chief also, during the Pontiac up-rising. He and his warriors had obeyed the Bloody Belt. His name, Cornstalk, meant that he was the support of the Shawnee nation.
Now the evil days of Logan were close at hand.
Since the treaty signed with the twenty-two tribes of Pontiac, in 1765, there had been general peace between the red men and the white men in America. This peace was not to continue.
For instance, Bald Eagle, a friendly old Delaware chief, who frequently came in, by canoe, to trade for tobacco and sugar, was killed, without cause, by three white men, in southern Pennsylvania. They propped him, sitting, in the stern of his canoe, thrust a piece of journey-cake, or corn-bread, into his mouth, and set him afloat down the stream. Many settlers who knew him well saw him pass and wondered why he did not stop for a visit. Finally he was found to be dead, and was brought ashore for burial.
There were bad Indians, too, who murdered and stole. For this, the good Indians suffered. Western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio were a wild and lawless country.
Up to 1774 these tit-for-tats had not brought on war. But the French of Canada and the Great Lakes country still secretly urged the Indians to drive out the settlers. The Americans were becoming annoyed by the harsh laws of the English king. There were English officials who desired an Indian war. That would give the Colonists something else to think about.
Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia, was one of these officials. He had claim to land extending into Pennsylvania; Fort Pitt, at present Pittsburg, was garrisoned by Virginia troops, and he wanted to keep them there, to help his land schemes.
April 25, 1774, he issued a proclamation calling upon the commander at Fort Pitt to be ready to repel the Indians. The commander called on the border settlers.
There was great excitement. Almost at once the peace chain that Logan had received from his father Shikellemus was broken. He and his wife and relatives, and a number of Shawnees and Delawares, were encamped along Yellow Creek. This emptied into the Ohio River a few miles below Beaver Creek, his former home.
On the very day after the commander at Fort Pitt had issued his notice to the border people to arm, from Wheeling, on the Ohio in West Virginia, Captain Michael Cresap led a party of militia and frontiersmen to hunt Indians.
They promptly killed two friendly Shawnees at Pipe Creek, fourteen miles below Wheeling. The Shawnees had no time in which to make resistance. The next Indians who were attacked, fired back; one white man was wounded. Among the Indians killed in these two meetings was a relative of Logan.
Captain Cresap started north to wipe out Chief Logan's camp. He well knew that as soon as the word of the killings reached the camp, trouble might break. On the way his heart failed him. He was a hot-headed man, he hated Indians—but he balked at shooting women and children. So he turned aside, with his party.
There were white men not so particular as he. On Baker's Bottom, opposite the mouth of Yellow Creek, lived Joshua Baker, whose principal business was that of selling rum to the Indians. In the same settlement lived Daniel Greathouse—"a ruffian in human shape," and an enemy to all Indians.
Greathouse, too, was inspired to "strike the post," in the worst Indian fashion. He gathered thirty-two whites, and hid them in Baker's house. He feared that the Logan camp had heard of the Cresap killings, so he crossed over the river, to investigate.
A friendly squaw warned him to go back, or he might be harmed, for the camp was very angry. Back he went. Because he was afraid to attack the camp with his thirty-two men, he invited the Indians over, to drink "peace" with him. He was a rum seller, himself.
On April 30, they came. First a canoe containing six warriors, Logan's sister, another woman, and a little girl. The warriors were made drunk, and all but the little girl were butchered.
Across the river Logan heard the shooting. He sent two men in a canoe to find out what was the matter. They were killed. A larger canoe was sent. It was ambushed and the survivors fled back to the camp.
Now Logan learned that his sister and brother had been murdered. They were the last of his blood relatives. That was his reward for having remained the friend of the white man. That was his reward for having opened his cabin to the white wayfarer. He went bad, himself. He saw only red, and he vowed vengeance. A bitter wrath turned his heart sour. He felt that he must grasp the hatchet, buried so long ago by his father Shikellemus.
The war spirit blazed high among whites and reds on the frontier. The whites accused the Indians of many thoughts and deeds—some false, some true. The Indians accused the whites of many deeds—mainly true. Block-houses were hastily erected, for the protection of settlers. Governor Dunmore of Virginia called out troops in earnest. "Dunmore's War" as well as "Cresap's War" was this named.
The Shawnees, the Delawares, the Mingo Cayugas, the Wyandot Hurons, held councils in their Scioto River country of central Ohio. Belts were sent to the Miamis on the west and the Senecas on the east. There were debates upon striking the Long Knives, as the Virginians were called.
These Long Knife Americans had crossed the rivers and the mountains, were possessing themselves of Ohio, and even of Kentucky; much blood had been shed, and the wiser heads among the tribes did not know exactly what to do about it.
The great Cornstalk, loved chief of the Shawnees, and now fifty years in age, lifted his voice for peace. He could see no good in a war against the Americans. Logan, gnawed by his own wrongs, remained apart and said little. But the Americans struck first.
Hoping to keep the Indians at home, in June four hundred border men were ordered by Governor Dunmore of Virginia to attack the villages in Ohio. They marched west across country until in southern Ohio they destroyed two Shawnee towns.
The light-skinned Shawnees were known as the fiercest, most stubborn fighters among all the Algonquins between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi River. Now their hot natures burst. Chief Cornstalk yielded.
"It is well," he said. "If you go to war, then I will lead you. If we fight at all, we must fight together."
But of the Indians it was Logan who first struck the Long Knives. With only seven warriors he suddenly appeared in Virginia itself. This was Long Knife country. Here, July 12, he fell upon William Robinson, Thomas Hellen and Coleman Brown, three settlers who were gathering flax in their field.
Brown died under the first volley; Hellen and Robinson ran hard. Hellen was an old man, and easily caught, but William Robinson was young and strong. Dodging and legging, he had almost reached the timber. Hearing loud shouting, with English words, behind him, and fearing a rifle bullet, he turned his head and lunged full tilt into a tree. Down he dropped, stunned.
After a bit he came to. He was lying, securely tied, hands and feet. Logan was sitting quietly beside him, waiting for him to waken. The old man Hellen had not been harmed, either. Logan's party took their two captives to Logan's town in Ohio—treated them kindly on the way.
"What will be done to us at your town?" asked Robinson.
"You will be made to run the gauntlet," answered Logan. "But if you listen to my words, you will not be hurt. You must break through the lines and run to the council house. When you are in the council house, you will be safe. That will end the gauntlet."
Approaching the Mingo and Shawnee towns, Logan uttered a terrific scalp-halloo, as signal of success. Warriors hastened out. The gauntlet was formed. This was two lines of warriors, squaws and children, armed with sticks, clubs and switches. Through the long, narrow, living aisle the two prisoners had to make their way.
Remembering Logan's advice, Robinson charged aside, broke through, and raced for the council house. All out of breath, he reached it ahead of his howling pursuers. No Indian dared to attack him there. It was sanctuary.
Poor old Mr. Hellen failed. The lines were stout, the clubs and switches blinded him; before he had reached the council house a war-club struck him helpless. He might have been beaten to death had not Robinson bravely grabbed him and dragged him in.
He had won his life, and was adopted into an Indian family. Now the Indians were angry with Robinson. They decided to burn him at the stake.
"Have no fear. You shall not die," asserted Logan.
But matters looked bad. He was tied to the stake. While he stood there, with the squaws howling around him, he heard Logan speak, appealing for his life.
"The most powerful orator I've ever listened to," afterward said Robinson. "His gestures and face were wonderful!"
The warriors still called for fire. The torch was ready, when Logan sprang angrily forward. With his own hatchet he cut the ropes, and marching the white captive through the mob landed him in the lodge of an old squaw. Few chiefs would have dared an act like this, to save merely a white man, and an enemy.
However, Logan was not yet done. Thirteen of his people, he claimed, had been killed by the whites; and thirteen white scalps should pay. Just before he set out on the war-path again, he brought to William Robinson a goose-quill and some gun-powder.
He bade Robinson sharpen the quill, and with gunpowder-and-water for ink write a letter.
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 all the Indians are not angry, only myself.
July 21, 1774. CAPTAIN JOHN LOGAN.
This note was carried clear down into western Virginia, as if to show how far Logan could reach. It was found tied to a war-club and left at a plundered settler's cabin.
Logan never would believe but that Michael Cresap had killed the warriors and women at Yellow Creek. When Captain Cresap heard of this note, and that he was blamed, he said that he would like to sink his tomahawk in Daniel Greathouse's head!
Chief Logan was not long in getting his thirteen scalps.
"Now," he announced, "I am satisfied. My relations have been paid for. I will sit still."
He was not to sit still yet. The hands of the Shawnees grasped the hatchet very firmly. Forty scalps at a time had been hung in the Shawnee lodges, but the spirits of their fathers and the ashes of their towns called for more. The Delawares had not taken payment enough for the scalp of old Bald Eagle. The Senecas remembered that many years ago eight of their warriors were attacked by one hundred and fifty Long Knife soldiers. The Mingos had not forgotten the massacre of the Conestogas. The Wyandots were red, and hated the white face in the east.
These nations formed the league of the Northern Confederacy, to defend themselves. Cornstalk the Shawnee was chosen head chief.