 | The Mingo Chief. Wild scenes on the frontiers, or, Heroes of the West |  |
1. The Mingo Chief.
We talk of the ferocity, the vindictiveness, the treachery,
and the cruelty of the native savage; and, painting him
in the darkest colors, tell how, when his hunting grounds
covered the sites of our now proudest cities, he was wont
to steal down upon a few harmless whites, our forefathers,
and butcher them in cold blood, sparing neither sex nor
age, except for a painful captivity, to end perhaps in
the most demoniac tortures; and we dwell upon the
theme, till our little innocent children shudder and creep
close to our sides, and look fearfully around them, and
perhaps wonder how the good God, of whom they have
also heard us speak, could ever have permitted such human
monsters to encumber His fair and beautiful earth. But
do we reverse the medal and show the picture which
impartial Truth has stamped upon the other side—and
which, in a great measure, stands as a cause to the opposite
effect—stands as a cause for savage ferocity, vindictiveness,
treachery and cruelty? Do we tell our young
and eager listeners that the poor Indian, living up to the
better than to turn, like the worm when trampled upon,
and bite the foot that crushed him? That we had taken
the land of his father's graves and driven him from his
birthright hunting grounds? That we had stolen his cattle,
robbed him of his food, destroyed his growing fields,
burned his wigwams, and murdered his brothers, fathers,
wives and little ones, besides instigating tribe to war
against tribe—and that, knowing nothing of the Christian
code, to return good for evil, he fulfilled the law of his
nature and education in taking his “great revenge” upon
any of the pale-faced race he should chance to meet? No!
we seldom show this side of the medal—for the natural
inquiry of the innocent listener might contain an unpleasant
rebuke:
“Father, were we all savages together then?”
But I have a story to tell. Listen!
More than eighty years ago, when the great West was a
howling wilderness, and mighty, unbroken forests stretched
away for hundreds of miles, and covered the broad, fertile
lands of Western Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky,
and so onward to the vast prairies beyond the
Father of Rivers, the unrivalled Mississippi—forests that
threw twilight over the gliding, purling, or rushing
streams, and gave wild freedom to the bear, the buffalo,
the panther, catamount, and deer—more than eighty years
border hunters were encamped upon the left bank of the
Ohio, above the present site of Wheeling, which then
boasted only a single trading fort, and was considered the
extreme frontier.
This party numbered more than a dozen strong, hardy,
bronze-visaged men, dressed in true border fashion, with
green hunting frocks, caps, buckskin trowsers, leggings
and moccasins, and they were armed with rifles, tomahawks,
and knives. They had built themselves a temporary
cabin, and had fished and hunted in the vicinity for
several days; and furs, and game, and articles of traffic were
strewn carelessly about their cabin, which had been erected
rather for the purpose of protecting their goods and
weapons from the weather than for sheltering themselves,
for your true borderer likes to sleep in the open air.
The party was about to break up camp and return to the
eastward; and some were packing their furs and skins, and
some were cleaning their rifles, and some were mending
their torn garments, and some were lounging idly about,
smoking and drinking, and stretching their huge limbs, and
wishing for some keen excitement to rouse their sluggish
natures.
The leader of this party—a man of fair proportions, but
with low brow, bushy hair, a snaky eye, and a red, rough,
ferocious-looking countenance—was standing apart from
and planning wicked deeds. Suddenly he wheeled about,
and drawing near his men, said, in a hard, harsh voice:
“Boy's, this here's a — bad business, going back without
nary scalp. What'll the people think of us? I tell
you, boys, we must raise some red-nigger top-knots, or our
reputation 'll spile, by —!”
“Thar's Injuns 'tother side the river,” replied a big,
double-fisted, coarse-featured fellow, who was smoking his
pipe, with his back braced against a huge sycamore;
“'spose you jest go over, Cap, and take what you want!”
“It moughten't be so easy gitting back,” replied the
first speaker; “and I hain't no incline to take a scalp
at the risk of mine. If we could only get a few of the
— heathen over here!”
“Why, so you can, Cap, if you'll only keep quiet, for
there comes a few now,” answered the other, taking his
corn-cob pipe from his mouth, and pointing with the stem
across the river to a canoe filled with Indians.
“By —! Sam!” cried the first speaker, using an oath
that we will not repeat, “I hope they'll come across. If
they do, we'll have fun. I'll go down and beckon 'em
over.”
And hastening down to the water's edge, the leader of
the whites made friendly signs to the Indians in the canoe,
inviting them to cross the river to his camp.
And the Indians came across, without apparent fear or
hesitation—five men, and one woman with an infant in her
arms. Two of the men, one quite advanced in years, were
fine, athletic, noble looking specimens of humanity; and
the woman, the daughter of one and the sister of the
other, was more than usually comely, and had a soft, dark
eye, a mild, pleasant-looking countenance, and a sweet,
musical voice. All landed and shook hands with the
leader of the whites, who seemed greatly pleased to meet
with them, and invited them up to his cabin to take a
drink. Three of the Indians readily accepted the invitation;
but the three we have mentioned declined—
the venerable head of the party observing, with a smile:
“Rum no good for Injun—make drunk come. Me buy
tobac—tobac good for smoke.”
And while three of the party entered the cabin and
drank the liquor proffered them, the other three, including
the woman with the infant, remained outside, and opened
a trade-with the leader of the whites, for tobacco and
powder, paying for the same in the current coin of the
frontier, pelts and furs, of which they had on hand a
goodly stock.
An hour passed away in friendly barter, and then the
old man signified his intention of recrossing the river.
He stepped into the cabin, and found three of his party
conscious of any thing going on around them.
“Ah! me said rum bad for poor Injun!” observed the
old warrior; “him take Injun sense, and make him worse
as beast.”
He called his son to him, said something in his native
tongue, and the two were about to begin to remove their
helpless comrades, when the leader of the whites, who had
been holding a short consultation with his men, came in
and said:
“Afore you go, my boys, I want to see you shoot at a
mark. I hear you're some at a shot.”
“Me hit dollar,” returned the old man, with gratified
vanity.
“Come on—we've put up the mark—and if you hit it,
I'll give you a pound of tobacco; and if you don't, you're
to give me a deer skin.”
The old warrior and his son went out and looked at the
mark, and the former said:
“Me bet.”
“And will you try, too?” said the leader of the whites
to the son of the Indian sage.
“Me bet,” was the quiet answer.
“Fire away, then—you shoot first.”
The son said something to his father, the old warrior
taking deliberate aim, fired.
“Hit, by —!” said the white leader, as the white
mark, the size of a dollar, showed a hole near its centre.
“A — good shot! Come, old man, let's see what you
can do!”
“Me beat him,” said the father, with a smile.
He raised his rifle slowly, brought it to a level, fired, and
drove the pin through the centre.
“Now, boys,” said the white ruffian, “all right, give 'em
h—ll!”
And at the word he raised his own rifle and shot the
old man through the brain, who fell back dead; and the
next instant his son fell upon him, a ghastly corpse,
pierced by four bullets from as many rifles in the hands
of the whites. The poor woman with the infant in her
arms, who was standing apart from the crowd, looking
quietly on, uttered a shriek of horror on seeing her father
and brother thus inhumanly butchered, and, clasping her
offspring to her bosom, ran swiftly toward the river. But
crack went some half a dozen rifles, and she fell to the
earth, mortally wounded, but not dead. The first who
reached her was the leader of the whites, who, grasping
her infant roughly, raised his tomahawk to give the poor
innocent mother the finishing blow.
“Spare child!” shrieked the dying mother, with a look
of affectionate, pleading anguish, that would have melted
the heart of a stone. “Child got white fader—child one
of you—spare poor child!”
She said no more, for the hatchet of the white fiend at
that instant crashed through her brain and set her spirit
free, to roam the hunting-grounds of her faith with the
spirits of her father and brother.
“Give me the child, Dan,” said the brother of the white
leader, who reached his side just as he was about to dash
out its brains. “I reckon I know its father, and we'll
make it pay.”
The bloody ruffian gave him the infant, accompanied
with a savage oath; and whipping out his knife, he bent
over the dead mother and tore off her scalp. The whole
work of butchery was now complete; for while these
events were taking place outside the cabin, another fiend
within had chopped to pieces the drunken Indians, and
now came swaggering forth, shaking three gory scalps in
triumph.
“Now, boys,” said the white leader, “we've got a good
show, and let's make clean tracks afore some other —
red-niggers get arter our hair.”
And hastily they stripped the dead of every thing of
value, broke up their camp, and departed for the interior
settlements, taking the poor motherless infant with them.
Meantime, the Indians on the other side of the river,
being witnesses of the horrible massacre, hurried into their
only remaining canoe, and rowed swiftly down the Ohio.
On passing the fort at Wheeling they were espied, and
chase was given by a party of whites. Far below they
were overtaken, a short fight ensued, and another of their
party was killed—the others making their escape through
the deep dark forests.
While the bloody events we have recorded were taking
place on the Ohio, a Grand Council of chiefs and warriors
was convened at the Indian town in the interior of what is
now the State of Ohio. They were deliberating upon the
propriety of digging up the hatchet and going to war
against the whites, who were fast encroaching upon their
homes and hunting-grounds, and, judging from precedents,
would soon require them to leave again for the still Far
West. Most of the chiefs were for war; but there was
one brave and eloquent man among them, who spoke for
peace, and spoke with such reason, power and pathos, that
he carried his point over strong opposition, and the pipe
of peace was smoked in the Council House of the assembled
nations.
This brave and eloquent chief had ever raised his voice
for peace between the white man and the red, because, as
designed them to be brothers; and the earth was large
enough, and rich enough, in forest, streams, and game, to
give them all shelter, food, and happy homes.
His earnest eloquence conquered the fiery war spirit of
his fierce comrades, and he was rejoicing in his peaceful
triumph, when lo! a poor Indian, half dead with hunger
and fatigue, appeared before him, and told him how his
father, brother and sister had been brutally butchered by
his pale-faced friends. Instantly the dark eye of this
Chief of Peace gathered a storm of fire and shot forth
lightning glances of anger, and his mighty voice, before
the reassembled chiefs and warriors of many nations, was
soon heard thundering:
“War! war! war!—war upon the pale-faces!—war
upon the Long Knives—death to all of either sex and
every age!”
And the cry of “War! war! war!—death to the pale-faces!—death
to the Long Knives!” was echoed and reechoed,
with wild, savage shouts, by many hundreds of
fiercely painted, half-naked, savage men.
And down upon the unprotected frontiers poured a
fierce, dusky horde of human beings, whose rallying warcry
was,
“Revenge! Revenge!”
And old men and infants, and young men and maidens,
roused at the midnight hour by those yells of vengeance,
and were butchered in their cabins, scalped on their
hearthstones, and burned with their burning homes.
“I will have ten scalps for every kin of mine slain!” said
that Chief of Blood, so lately a Chief of Peace.
And ere the war, so terribly and suddenly begun, was
closed by a treaty of peace, thirty human scalps, thirty
pale-fale scalps, hung dangling at his gory belt.
This war is known in history as Lord Dunmore's War.
That man of peace, roused to such bloody deeds by the
aggressions of his white brothers, was the world-renowned
Logan, the Mingo Chief!
The leader of the party who butchered his relatives,
was Daniel Greathouse.
The leader of the party who sallied from the fort at
Wheeling, and followed and slew one of the flying fugitives,
was Captain Cresap.
Logan always supposed it was Cresap who murdered
his relatives; and in his celebrated speech, sent to Lord
Dunmore at the treaty of peace—for he proudly refused to
appear in person—he mentions him as the cause of the
war. We quote this speech, delivered at old Chillicothe
town, and sent to Governor Dunmore at Camp Charlotte,
as one of the finest specimens of eloquence extant.
“I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered
he came cold or naked and I gave him not clothing!
“During the course of the last long and bloody war,
Logan remained in his tent, an advocate for peace. Nay,
such was my love for the whites, that those of my own
country pointed at me as they passed, and said, `Logan is
the friend of white men.' I had even thought to live with
you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the
last spring, in cool blood, and unprovoked, cut off all the
relatives of Logan, not sparing even my women and
children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins
of any human creature. This called on me for revenge.
I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully
glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice at the
beams of peace. Yet do not harbor the 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.”
Reader, you who are now sitting in judgment upon the
deeds of the past, I challenge you to say that the white
man was always the Christian and the red man always the
fiend!
| The Mingo Chief. Wild scenes on the frontiers, or, Heroes of the West | |