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LOGAN.
Note.—Every one, doubtless, has heard of Logan, the celebrated Mingo chief. His eloquence awed his red brethren when he spoke at the council-fire, and occasional fragments thereof are preserved to us which will never fail of eliciting admiration. His defence before Lord Dunmore, of Virginia, is fraught with native talent which cannot enough be appreciated. Mr. Jefferson was happily sensible of the fact, and “challenged the admirers of Cicero or Demosthenes to produce a finer specimen.” Logan was notedly the friend of the whiteman; and the sad story of his wrongs, particularly the barbarous murder of his whole family on the Kanawha river, by Col. Cresap, was the principal theme of discourse in his letter to Gov. Dunmore, of which the following is an imperfect versification.
The ghosts of the dead rose before me in awe!
They passed me unnoticed till Logan arose,
The friend of the whiteman, the fear of his foes.
As stands the lone oak when the whirlwind is still;
While eve's mingled colors of sable and grey
Were slowly suppressing the blush of the day.
Tho' sad was his heart in his eye were no tears;
The first distant star of the evening that shone
Incited to speak as in years that are flown:
His hearth is deserted, his wigwam is lone;
The joy of his bosom is earth's hallowed trust,
His children have gone to their sleep in the dust.
If he e'er from my cabin went hungry away;
If I lent to his wo an unpitying ear,
Or wiped not his eye from the grief-bidden tear.
Not Logan was seen at the head of his band,
And anxiously waited of peace the glad smile.
Unlike the deep hatred my red brothers knew;
With him I had thought to have cherish'd my home,
No more o'er the forest or prairie roam.
Was fresh from its budding and green on the bough,
My heart was turned back into winter again—
No warm summer sun can dissolve its cold chain.
There yet is a witness that noteth my tale;
The forms of my kindred surround me no more—
Their bones are unknown in the sands of its shore!
So darkly in ambush the white traitor lay;
No soul of my ill-fated kindred remains—
There runs not a drop of my blood in their veins!
'Mongst whitemen I sought for my bitterest foes.
The ghosts of the dead are appeased by their sire,
I have glutted my vengeance, but scorn to retire.
But harbor no thought like the gladness of fear;
Logan's heart is a stranger to cowardly strife—
He turns not his heel for the saving of life.
His spirit is broken, he fain would be gone;
The ghosts of his fathers are beckoning him home,
Great Spirit, receive me—Oriska, I come!”
And the phantom was blent with the shadows of night.
Soon morning awoke with the beams of the day;
But chief and his nation have hasted away.
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