Ohio History Journal

288       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

ferson to the degree that he declared it compared favorably with

any speech of Demosthenes or Cicero. It matters little if this is

not the exact spot where Lord Dunmore received the oration.

It could not have been far from here. But, tradition, coming

down through several reliable families whose representatives still

live near here, says this magnificent old elm, the largest in all the

land, which then and for many years after had a fine spring flow-

ing from its roots, is the very same elm under whose branches,

spreading then as now, the message was delivered. It was then,

is now        and ever will be, a great message. It has been

translated   into many languages, and is known by every

school-boy and school-girl throughout the land. It is a message

filled with fervor, kindness and love, yet, it bristles with right-

eous anger and fearless revenge.  It is filled with pathos and

philosophy, and ends in a sentence which is masterful in depict-

ing the extreme sorrow of a great mind.

It is then fitting that these acres of land and this old elm

which were silent observers of the epoch making event which

brought peace to the Indians and opened this fruitful country to

the new civilization, should be preserved to posterity. Such land-

marks are lost all too soon and are too little treasured.

Mr. Chairman, Pickaway County, Ohio, is proud of being in-

strumental in preserving this historic place, and with confidence

that the State of Ohio, through her Archaeological Society will

preserve it, I hand you the deed on behalf of our County Society.

In another few hundred years this tree may be forever lost, but

the site shall remain, and, let us hope that posterity may suitably

commemorate with a monument of bronze the world famed

speech of the great Mingo Chief, Logan.

Dr. G. Frederick Wright, President of the Ohio Archaeo-

logical and Historical Society, received the deed from the hands

of Mrs. Jones, and made a brief but fitting speech of acceptance.

One of the distinguished Indians present, Mr. Charles E.

Dagenett, of the Peoria tribe, was then introduced and spoke

as follows:

ADDRESS OF CHARLES E. DAGENETT.

In the early days of Pennsylvania, the country around the

falls of the Susquehannah was assigned by the Six Nations as

Dedication of the Logan Elm.           289

a hunting grounds for the Shawnees, Conoys, Nanticokes and

Monseys and Mohicans, and Shikellamy, a Cayuga chief, was

sent by these Six Nations to preside over the tribe that dwelt on

the level banks of the Susquehannah near where Sunbury now

stands.

When in September, 1742, a party of missionaries, accom-

panied by two friendly Indians, after their tedious journey

through the wilderness entered this beautiful valley of the Sham-

okin, Chief Shikellamy was the first to step forth and welcome

them, and after the exchange of presents to promise his aid as

a chief in fostering the white man's religion among the tribe.

This good and friendly Chief Shikellamy performed many em-

bassies between the Governor of Pennsylvania and the Six

Nations and attended many important meetings at Philadelphia.

His was a particularly boisterous and drunken tribe.

To this Good Chief, thus grown up in mingled fear, love

and admiration of the whites and in the midst of bad associates,

was born in 1725, a second son celebrated as the author of the

famous speech that has been repeated by every American School

boy as a specimen of Indian eloquence and Indian wrongs-

Logan.

In his young manhood Logan stood several inches more

than six feet in heighth; was straight as an arrow, lithe, athletic

and symmetrical in figure; firm, resolute and of commanding

presence.

About the time of Braddock's defeat in 1755 Tah-gah-jute,

meaning Short Dress, who was named Logan after William

Penn's secretary, James Logan, whom his father knew and loved,

disappears from the scene and we have few historical or bio-

graphical anecdotes of his early life.

In the spring of 1769, Wm. Brown with other companions

were hunting along the Juniata near where Lewistown now

stands. Following a hard chase after a wounded bear Brown

was quenching his thirst at one of the beautiful springs along

that stream and as he bent over the clear, mirrowing water, he

beheld, on the opposite side, reflected in the pool a tall shadow

of a stately Indian with rifle in hand, and with intensive energy

Vol. XXII- 19.

Dedication of the Logan Elm.           291

Logan lost four or five rounds, and acknowledged himself beaten.

When the white men were leaving, the Indian went to his cabin,

and bringing as many deer-skins as he had lost dollars, handed

them to McClure who refused to take them, alleging that he and

his friends had been Logan's guests, and that the match had

merely been a friendly contest of skill and nerve. But the

courteous waiver would not satisfy the Indian. He drew up

himself with dignity and said in broken English: "Me bet to

make you shoot your best-me gentleman and me take your

dollars if me beat", so McClure was obliged to take the skins

or affront his friend whose sense of honorable dealing would not

allow him to receive even a horn of powder in return.

Deer hunting and the dressing of skins and selling them was

the chief occupation of Logan and on one occasion he sold some

skins to a tailor, receiving in pay some wheat which, when taken

to the mill, was found to be so worthless that the miller refused

to grind it. By this time the law and ministers of justice had

made their way to this secluded country and Logan's friend

Brown had been honored with the commission of a magistrate.

When the judge questioned Logan as to the character of the

grain, Logan sought in vain to find words to express the precise

character of the material with which it was adulterated and said it

resembled the wheat itself. "It must have been cheat," said the

judge, "Oh !" exclaimed the Indian, "It is a very good name for

him," and the decision was forthwith given in Logan's favor.

When one of Judge Brown's daughters was just beginning

to walk, her mother expressed sorrow that she could not obtain

a pair of shoes to give more firmness to her infant steps. Logan

stood by but said nothing. Soon after, he asked Mrs. Brown to

allow the little girl to spend the day at his cabin near the spring.

The cautious and yearning heart of the mother was somewhat

alarmed by the proposal, yet she had learned to repose confidence

in the Indian, and trusting in the delicacy of his feelings, con-

sented to the proposal with cheerfulness. The day wore slowly

away and it was near night and her little one had not returned,

but just as the sun was setting the trusty Indian was seen

ascending the path with this charge, and in a moment more the

292      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

little one was in its mother's arms proudly exhibiting on her

tiny feet a pair of beautiful moccasins,-the product of Logan's

skill.

His kindly old pioneer friend, Judge Brown, summed up his

acquaintance with Logan in the following words: "He was the

best specimen of humanity, white or red, I have ever en-

countered."

For awhile we again lose sight of Logan whose life was

soon to be changed and who was doomed to become envolved in

inevitable conflict with the whites who were as they termed it

"Extending the area of Freedom" and the rest of his life was

chequered with horrible crimes and maudlin regrets, but never

were fully effaced the kindly deeds and nature of his earlier

years.

In 1772 when the missionary, Heckewelder, met Logan on

the Beaver River, Logan told him that it was his intentions to

settle on the Ohio below the Big Beaver where he might live in

peace with the white man. Logan at this time confessed to the

missionary his unfortunate fondness for the white man's "fire

water". In 1775 the missionary McClure met Logan, but the

brave, open and manly countenance he possessed in his earlier

years was now changed for one of martial ferocity. The fire

water of the white man had began to do its deadly work upon all

the elements of a noble character in the heart and mind of an

untutored savage.

Let us pass over the intervening time so throughly filled

with slaughter on both sides, darkened by deeds both of treachery

and bloodshed, to the concluding scene of this bloody drama.

The Americans and Indian chiefs were assembled at the council

fire to conclude peace but one of the daring and relentless actors

in this same bloody drama was absent. Logan was not there.

He was not satisfied, though he had taken perhaps some thirty

scalps. The cause of his murdered relatives was scarcely ap-

peased in the spirit land. Logan's answer to the repeated sum-

mons from the council fire was that he was a warrior and not a

councillor, and would not come. Accordingly John Gibson was

sent as a messenger and met Logan in his camp. It was at this

meeting that Logan delivered himself of that piece of impas-

Dedication of the Logan Elm.           293

sioned eloquence known as the speech of Logan, which was told

to Lord Dunmore at the council fire.

It matters but little now who murdered or instigated the

murder of Logan's family, the fact remains that they were killed

and the resultant bitterness implanted in the breast of Logan

thereby was simply human and not because he was an Indian.

We find Logan from time to time in a friendly attitude to-

ward the whites and again all the ferocity of his nature bursting

forth in an effort to avenge as he believed, a wanton slaughter

of his relatives. We find Logan at times a shadow of his former

and noble self, and again the victim of the white man's accursed

fire water with the resultant ignoble deeds, at times resorting to

his old occupation of scalping or at least taking prisoners and

again using his powerful influence in protecting and befriending

the whites.

Logan was now well past fifty. Following the council at

Detroit in 1780 Logan was killed by his nephew or cousin, Tod-

kah-dohs, through a misunderstanding-Logan supposing that

his nephew sought to avenge cruelty shown Logan's wife who

was a relative of Tod-kah-dohs. Thus passes to the happy hunt-

ing ground our Indian hero Logan of whom the poet Campbell

wrote:

'Gainst Brant himself I went to battle forth:-

"Accursed Brant! he left of all my tribe

"Nor man, nor child, nor thing of living birth!

"No !-not the dog that watched my household hearth

"Escaped that night of death upon our plains!

"All perished-I, alone, am left on earth

"To whom nor relative, nor blood remains,--

"No! not a kindred drop that runs in human veins!"

Today the spirit of Logan looks across the intervening

unknown from the Indian's happy hunting grounds which lie in

the pleasant prairies of the spirit land, and knows that there are

those of his friend and enemy, the white man, who wishes to

atone for the wrong done this child of nature-he knows now,

that there are those who do mourn for Logan.

To those friends who have made possible this tribute to

Logan-to the Indian race--the very presence of these repre-

294      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

sentatives of that race, from such widely scattered sections of

this great country-the ancestral home of that race you honor

today-give you thanks more appropriate and fully than any

words I might utter. The Indian thanks his friends with his

heart and his heart has no tongue.

Another Indian, Mr. Fred E. Parker, of New York, was

then introduced and responded with an eloquent address. As

it was not committed to writing, but was entirely extempo-

raneous, it is regretted that what Mr. Parker said can be re-

corded only briefly. The appended thoughts from his speech

formed a part of the report of the proceedings as taken down

by Harry E. Weill, local editor of the Circleville Union-Herald:

"The Indian was the original Roosevelt man. He was the

first and original trouble maker. The story of the Indian should

stir the heart blood of every American citizen. If a foreign foe

should invade this land you would fight just like the Indian for

your scalps. You look at our countenance; it is a sad and stern

one I'll admit, it has been transmitted down to us thru the ages.

Chased from pillar to post, driven from our homes and hounded

to death, we inherited the vengeance of our ancestry and it is

depicted in our faces.

"It is the Iroquois, a tribe of the famous six nations from

whom I am descended, that saved this country to English-speak-

ing people. General W. T. Sherman said, 'The only good Indian

is a dead Indian.' I am glad to say it was a relative of mine,

General Eli Parker, who inaugurated the policy that forced Gen-

eral Grant to treat the Indian and place him on the same foot-

ing as any other American citizen enjoys. But it is time for us

to bury the past. We must forget and forgive.

"The hope of the Indian tribes is in that great factor the

public schools; the greatest institutions in the United States will

take the Indian and make him a good American citizen."

After the applause that followed Mr. Parker's speech had

subsided, Mr. Randall came forward, and addressing Mr.

Dagenett, a representative of the same tribe to which Logan be-

longed, presented to him a mallet made by Mr. T. B. Bowers,

from the wood of the Logan Elm, the handle being made from

a branch of a tree which grew on the grave of the Wyandotte

Dedication of the Logan Elm.            295

chief, Leatherlips, who lies buried on the spot where he was

killed, about fifteen miles northwest of Columbus.

A significant feature of the program was an address by Mr.

Frank Tallmadge, of Columbus, a lineal descendant of Colonel

Cresap, the man that Logan believed to be responsible for the

massacre of his family. Mr. Tallmadge sought to show that the

Red Man was mistaken, and spoke as follows:

ADDRESS OF MR. FRANK TALLMADGE.

"Roll back-my soul-to the times of my Fathers. *  *  *

There comes a voice that awakes my soul-It is the voice of days

that are gone-They roll before me with all their deeds."-

Ossian.

Colonel Thomas Cresap was born in Yorkshire, England, in

1702. He emigrated to this country at the age of fifteen, and

first settled on the Susquehanna near what is now Havre de

Grace. He became a surveyor, espoused the cause of Lord Balti-

more, and is said to have surveyed the line between Maryland

and Pennsylvania. He moved shortly afterwards to what was

then the frontier, to a place in western Maryland that he called

Skipton, after the town of his nativity, but now called Old Town,

situate a few miles above the junction of the north and south

branches of the Potomac on the north fork. He acquired four-

teen hundred acres of land, and became an Indian trader. He

was one of the members of the first Ohio company together with

Colonel George Mason and General Washington, which company

made the first English settlement at Pittsburg before Braddock's

defeat, and it was through his means and efforts that the first

path was traced through that vast chain of mountains called the

Alleghenies. Colonel Cresap, with the assistance of a friendly

Indian named Nemacolin, surveyed a road from Cumberland to

Pittsburg. It was this road that General Braddock used with

his army, and it was afterwards known as Braddock's road which

does not materially differ from the present National Road.

It was this first Ohio company that had the promise from

the king of Great Britain, of a grant of five hundred thousand

acres of land on the Ohio, and this land was actually surveyed