Boys' Book of Indian Warriors and Heroic Indian WomenSabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)
History
Boys' Book of Indian Warriors and Heroic Indian Women
Sabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)
Indians of North America -- Biography; Indians of North America -- Wars
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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