The Poetical Works of Thomas CampbellCampbell, Thomas
General
The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell
Campbell, Thomas
English poetry -- Scottish authors
In the spring of 1774, a robbery and murder were committed on an
inhabitant of the frontiers of Virginia, by two Indians of the Shawanee
tribe. The neighbouring whites, according to their custom, undertook to
punish this outrage in a summary manner. Colonel Cresap, a man infamous
for the many murders he had committed on those much injured people,
collected a party and proceeded down the Kanaway in quest of vengeance;
unfortunately a canoe with women and children, with one man only, was
seen coming from the opposite shore unarmed, and unsuspecting an attack
from the whites. Cresap and his party concealed themselves on the bank
of the river, and the moment the canoe reached the shore, singled out
their objects, and at one fire killed every person in it. This happened
to be the family of Logan, who had long been distinguished as a friend to
the whites. This unworthy return provoked his vengeance; he accordingly
signalised himself in the war which ensued. In the autumn of the same
year a decisive battle was fought at the mouth of the great Kanaway, in
which the collected forces of the Shawanees, Mingoes, and Delawares,
were defeated by a detachment of the Virginian militia. The Indians sued
for peace. Logan, however, disdained to be seen among the suppliants;
but lest the sincerity of a treaty should be disturbed, from which so
distinguished a chief abstracted himself, he sent, by a messenger, the
following speech to be delivered to Lord Dunmore:—
“I appeal to any white man if ever he entered Logan’s cabin hungry, and
he gave him not to eat; if ever he came cold and hungry, and he clothed
him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war Logan
remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for
the whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, ‘Logan
is the friend of white men.’ I have even thought to have lived with you
but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold
blood, murdered all the relations of Logan, even my women and children.
“There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living
creature:—this called on me for revenge. I have fought for it. I have
killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance.—For my country I rejoice
at the beams of peace;—but do not harbour a thought that mine is the joy
of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his
life.—Who is there to mourn for Logan? not one!”—Jefferson’s _Notes on
Virginia_.
NOTES TO O’CONNOR’S CHILD.
NOTE TO PAGE 77.
_Their tribe, they said, their high degree,_
_Was sung in Tara’s psaltery._
The pride of the Irish in ancestry was so great, that one of the O’Neals
being told that Barrett of Castlemone had been there only 400 years, he
replied,—that he hated the clown as if he had come there but yesterday.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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