The Indians of the border needed no stronger
provocation for rushing to arms. Within a few days Logan's men had taken
a dozen scalps, half of them from young children. Mingos and Shawnees
were joined by Wyandots, Delawares, and Senecas, and the dismal tale of
blazing cabins and murdered women was renewed all along the frontier.
It was in vain that Lord Dunmore and his lieutenant disclaimed
responsibility for the massacre at Yellow Creek. The blame was by all
the Indians and many of the whites laid upon Cresap, whose name has been
handed down to posterity as that of the arch-villain in this rough
border romance. The pathetic speech of the bereaved Logan to Dunmore's
envoy, John Gibson, was preserved and immortalized by Jefferson in his
"Notes on Virginia," and has been declaimed by thousands of American
schoolboys. In his comments Jefferson spoke of Cresap as "a man infamous
for the many murders he had committed upon these injured people."
Jefferson here simply gave voice to the tradition which had started into
full life as early as June, 1774, when Sir William Johnson wrote that "a
certain Mr. Cressop had trepanned and murdered forty Indians on the
Ohio, ... and that the unworthy author of this wanton act is fled." The
charge made by Jefferson was answered at the time, but continued to live
on in tradition, until finally disposed of in 1851 by Brantz Mayer.[24]
The origin of the misconception is doubtless to be traced to the
insignificance of Greathouse. In trying to shield himself, Connolly
deposed Cresap from command, but he was presently reinstated by Lord
Dunmore.
In June of the next year, Captain Cresap marched to Cambridge at the
head of 130 Maryland riflemen; but during the early autumn he was seized
with illness, and while making his way homeward died at New York, at the
age of thirty-three. His grave is still to be seen in Trinity
churchyard, near the door of the north transept. The Indian chief with
whose name his has so long been associated was some time afterwards
tomahawked by a brother Indian, in the course of a drunken affray.
[Sidenote: Battle of Point Pleasant and its consequences]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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