University of Virginia Library

An attempt was made as early as 1754, to settle this section of country, by David
Tygart and a Mr. Files. About this time, "these two men, with their families, arrived
on the east fork of the Monongahela, and, after examining the country, selected positions
for their future residence. Files chose a spot on the river, at the mouth of a creek
which still bears his name, where Beverly has since been established. Tygart settled a
few miles further up, and also on the river. The valley in which they had thus taken

up their abode, has since been called Tygart's Valley, and the east fork of the Monongahela,
Tygart's Valley River.

"The difficulty of procuring bread-stuffs for their families, their contiguity to an
Indian village, and the fact that an Indian war-path passed near their dwellings, soon
determined them to retrace their steps. Before they carried this determination into
effect, the family of Files became the victims of savage cruelty. At a time when all
the family were at their cabin, except an elder son, they were discovered by a party of
Indians, supposed to be returning from the South Branch, who inhumanly butchered
them all. Young Files being not far from the house, and hearing the uproar, approached
until he saw too distinctly the deeds of death which were doing; and feeling the utter
impossibility of affording relief to his own, resolved, if he could, to effect the safety of
Tygart's family. This was done, and the country abandoned by them."[1]

Riding along a path which led into a fort, he came to a fine vine of grapes. He laid
his gun across the pommel of his saddle, set his hat on it, and filled it with grapes. He
turned into the path, and rode carelessly along, eating his grapes; and the first intimation
he had of danger, was the crack of two rifles, one from each side of the road. One
of the balls passed through the paps of his breast, which, for a male, were remarkably
prominent, almost as much so as those of many nurses. The ball just grazed the skin
between the paps, but did not injure the breast-bone. The other ball struck his horse
behind the saddle, and he sunk in his tracks. Thus was Joe eased off his horse in a
manner more rare than welcome. Still he was on his feet in an instant, with his rifle
in his hands, and might have taken to his heels; and I will venture the opinion that
no Indian could have caught him. That, he said, was not his sort. He had never left
a battle-ground without leaving his mark, and he was resolved that that should not be
the first. The moment the guns fired, one very athletic Indian sprang towards him
with tomahawk in hand. His eye was on him, and his gun to his eye, ready, as soon
as he approached near enough to make a sure shot, to let him have it. As soon as the
Indian discovered this, he jumped behind two pretty large saplings, some small distance
apart, neither of which was large enough to cover his body, and, to save himself as
well as he could, he kept springing from one to the other.

Joe, knowing he had two enemies on the ground, kept a look-out for the other by a
quick glance of the eye. He presently discovered him behind a tree loading his gun.
The tree was not quite large enough to hide him. When in the act of pushing down
his bullet, he exposed pretty fairly his hips. Joe, in the twinkling of an eye, wheeled,
and let him have his load in the part exposed. The big Indian then, with a mighty
"Ugh!" rushed towards him with his raised tomahawk. Here were two warriors met,
each determined to conquer or die—each the Goliath of his nation. The Indian had
rather the advantage in size of frame, but Joe in weight and muscular strength. The
Indian made a halt at the distance of fifteen or twenty feet, and threw his tomahawk
with all his force, but Joe had his eye on him and dodged it. It flew quite out of the
reach of either of them. Joe then clubbed his gun and made at the Indian, thinking to
knock him down. The Indian sprang into some brush or saplings, to avoid his blows.
The Indian depended entirely on dodging, with the help of the saplings. At length
Joe, thinking he had a pretty fair chance, made a side blow with such force, that, missing
the dodging Indian, the gun, now reduced to the naked barrel, was drawn quite
out of his hands, and flew entirely out of reach. The Indian now gave another exulting

"Ugh!" and sprang at him with all the savage fury he was master of. Neither of them
had a weapon in his hands, and the Indian, seeing Logston bleeding freely, thought he
could throw him down and dispatch him. In this he was mistaken. They seized each
other, and a desperate scuffle ensued. Joe could throw him down, but could not hold him
there. The Indian being naked, with his hide oiled, had greatly the advantage in a
ground scuffle, and would still slip out of Joe's grasp and rise. After throwing him
five or six times, Joe found, that between loss of blood and violent exertions, his wind
was leaving him, and that he must change the mode of warfare or lose his scalp,
which he was not yet willing to spare. He threw the Indian again, and without attempting
to hold him, jumped from him, and as he rose, aimed a fist blow at his head,
which caused him to fall back, and as he would rise, Joe gave him several blows in
succession, the Indian rising slower each time. He at last succeeded in giving him a
pretty fair blow in the burr of the ear, with all his force, and he fell, as Joe thought,
pretty near dead. Joe jumped on him, and thinking he could dispatch him by choking,
grasped his neck with his left hand, keeping his right one free for contingencies. Joe
soon found the Indian was not so dead as he thought, and that he was making some
use of his right arm, which lay across his body, and, on casting his eye down, discovered
the Indian was making an effort to unsheath a knife that was hanging at
his belt. The knife was short, and so sunk in the sheath that it was necessary to
force it up by pressing against the point. This the Indian was trying to effect, and
with good success. Joe kept his eye on it, and let the Indian work the handle out,
when he suddenly grabbed it, jerked it out of the sheath, and sunk it up to the handle
into the Indian's breast, who gave a death groan and expired.

Joe now thought of the other Indian, and not knowing how far he had succeeded in
killing or crippling him, sprang to his feet. He found the crippled Indian had crawled
some distance towards them, and had propped his broken back against a log, and was
trying to raise his gun to shoot him, but in attempting to do which he would fall forward,
and had to push against his gun to raise himself again. Joe, seeing that he
was safe, concluded he had fought long enough for healthy exercise that day, and not
liking to be killed by a crippled Indian, he made for the fort. He got in about nightfall,
and a hard-looking case he was—blood and dirt from the crown of his head to the
sole of his foot, no horse, no hat, no gun—with an account of the battle that some of
his comrades could scarce believe to be much else than one of his big stories in which he
would sometimes indulge. He told them they must go and judge for themselves. Next
morning a company was made up to go to Joe's battle-ground. When they approached
it, Joe's accusers became more confirmed, as there was no appearance of dead Indians,
and nothing Joe had talked of but the dead horse. They, however, found a trail, as if
something had been dragged away. On pursuing it they found the big Indian, at a
little distance, beside a log, covered up with leaves. Still pursuing the trail, though not
so plain, some hundred yards further, they found the broken-backed Indian, lying on
his back, with his own knife sticking up to the hilt in his body, just below the breastbone,
evidently to show that he had killed himself, and that he had not come to his
end by the hand of an enemy. They had a long search before they found the knife
with which Joe killed the big Indian. They at last found it forced down into the
ground below the surface, apparently by the weight of a person's heel. This had been
done by the crippled Indian. The great efforts he must have made, alone, in that
condition, show, among thousands of other instances, what Indians are capable of
under the greatest extremities.

Some years after the above took place, peace with the Indians was restored. That
frontier, like many others, became infested with a gang of outlaws, who commenced
stealing horses and committing various depredations; to counteract which a company
of regulators, as they were called, was raised. In a contest between these and the depredators,
Big Joe Logston lost his life, which would not be highly esteemed in civil
society. But in frontier settlements, which he always occupied, where savages and
beasts were to be contested with for the right of the soil, the use of such a man is
very conspicuous. Without such, the country could never have been cleared of its
natural rudeness, so as to admit of the more brilliant and ornamental exercises of arts,
sciences, and civilization.