which nominally covered all of Southwestern Pennsylvania, did not actually, at that period, extend much farther west and south than the present limits of the county; although three or four of the Westmoreland justices continued to reside in Pittsburgh.14

Incidental to the boundary troubles was the murder of the Logan family, the great chief and friend of the whites, especially the Pennsylvanians. All historians dilate upon this phase of border history, and Thomas Jefferson, in his "Notes on Virginia," sought to immortalize it, and succeeded. Subsequently a controversy arose over its genuineness. In 1797 one Luther Martin, an able lawyer and son-in-law of Captain Michael Cresap, alleged to have murdered Logan's family on the Ohio river, near Yellow creek, in the spring of 1774, wrote to one James Fennell, a public declaimer in Philadelphia, protesting against the use of this speech as a calumny upon the Cresap family and attacking Jefferson for his part in incorporating the speech in literature. Cresap was said not to have murdered the family of Logan, and not to have been near the locality where it occurred. Martin's letter is very long. It is reproduced by Craig in the second volume of "The Olden Time," also the voluminous correspondence that ensued-long letters from Jefferson to General John Gibson, to whom Logan entrusted the "alleged speech" to be given Dunmore.15 Jefferson demanded of Gibson all the particulars of the affair and Gibson replied with a long affidavit:

Allegheny County, State of Pennsylvania, ss:

Before me, a justice of the peace, in and for the said county appeared John Gibson, Esq., an Associate Judge of same county, who being duly sworn deposeth and saith that in the year 1774, he accompanied Lord Dunmore on the expedition against the Shawanese and other Indians on the Sciota; that on their arrival within fifteen miles of the towns they were met by a flag and a white man by the name of Elliott, who informed Lord Dunmore that the chiefs of the Shawanese had sent to request his lordship to halt his army and send in some person who understood their language; that this deponent, at the request of Lord Dunmore, and the whole of the officers with him, went in; that on his arrival at the town Logan the Indian came to where this deponent was sitting with Cornstalk, and the other chiefs of the Shawanese and asked him to walk out with him; that they went into a copse of wood where they sat down when Logan, after shedding abundance of tears delivered him the speech nearly as related by Mr. Jefferson in his Notes on the State of Virginia, that he, the deponent told him it was not Colonel Cresap who had murdered his relatives and although his son, Capt. Michael was with the party who killed a Shawanese chief and other Indians, yet he was not present when his relatives were killed at Baker's near the mouth of Yellow Creek, on the Ohio; that this deponent had on his return to camp, delivered, the speech to Lord Dunmore, and that the murders perpetrated as above were considered ultimately the cause of the war of 1774, commonly called Cresap's war,

Sworn and subscribed April, 1800, at Pittsburgh before me,

JOHN GIBSON.

JER BARKER, 16

The assertions as to the delivery of Gibson's reproduction are italicized nevertheless Craig thinks the language vague. There is no language that

14"The Wilderness Trail;" Vol. II, p. 77.

15 See "Olden Time;" Vol. II, pp. 49, et seq.

(Memorial Edition, 1903), pp. 304-339.

"Notes on Virginia;" Jefferson

16 This name is "Baker" in Craig's "Olden Time;" Vol. II, p. 58. Jefferson has it rightly "Barker," for Jeremiah Barker was prominent in the town of Pittsburgh in those years.

can be construed to state the real case whether the speech was written or spoken, he argued.

No reply to Logan is indicated when Gibson sought to vindicate Cresap; the charges against Colonel Cresap stood and yet stand in the speech. Theodore Roosevelt, always pronounced in opinion, reviews the whole ground in his "Winning of the West," Vol. I (see Appendix F, page 347). He says that Logan's speech can be unhesitatingly pronounced authentic. That is enough. Craig came to the same conclusion. He is vindicated; likewise Jefferson, et al. Jefferson's version of the speech is the commonly accepted one, though Craig gives the first form published, stating that he finds two copies in the first volume, fourth series of the "American Archives," and that the first copy appeared at Williamsburg, Virginia, in February, 1775. Jefferson has it:

I appeal to any white man to say, if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat, if he ever came cold and naked 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 man," I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. Col. Cresap the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked murdered all the relatives of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This calling 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. But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.

In February, 1847, in the number of the "Olden Time" for that month (Vol. II, p. 49), Craig says in the opening of his long article on Logan: "The speech no matter by whom produced has been quoted and admired wherever the English Language was understood." This opinion was sixty-eight years ago and the time from delivery was seventy-three years, the words those which a heart-broken man would naturally say. Now who was Logan? A chief, one easily answers. Yes, a chief but with an English name. Logan is usually referred to as a Mingo. He was a Cayuga; the son of the great Shikelimus, or Skikelamy, who resided at what is now Sunbury on the Susquehanna, then called Shamokin, and to be distinguished from the present town of that name. Logan was called after James Logan, long prominent in the affairs of Pennsylvania under the Penns. Logan, the Indian, became a sot. After Dunmore's war he became more gloomy and melancholy, drank more and more, and exhibited symptoms of mental derangement. He went to Detroit, where he remained some time and evinced by his conduct that he was weary of life. He openly proclaimed life had become a burden. He said he knew not what pleasure was and thought it had been better had he never existed. In a state of despondency, he left Detroit, after a brutal assault on his new wife, while drunk, and on his way to the Miami was murdered.17 All the greatness of character of the man was wiped away in rum, which to be candid, is no respecter of races. Logan lives in the

17"Historical Collections of Ohio;" Henry Howe (1848), p. 409. See also Ibid., pp. 406-407, for two versions of the speech in parallel columns.

geography of the United States as well as in history and literature. Thanks are surely due to Jefferson, who preserved Logan's pathetic effusion.

"For many years," says Caleb Atwater, historian of Ohio, "on the farm of one Wolfe, near Circleville, the oak stood under which the splendid effort of heart-stirring eloquence was faithfully delivered by the person who carried wampum."

This is a new version. Where does Gibson come in? John Gibson was reputed to have married, in the Indian way, a sister of Logan. Whether she was slain with the others of Logan's kin or had died previously, historians do not say. Gibson and his brother George were natives of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. John Gibson was with Forbes at the taking of Fort Duquesne. Both brothers were in active service in the Virginia Line during the Revolution. George Gibson was the father of Pennsylvania's great jurist, John Bannister Gibson. In 1801, John Gibson was appointed by President Jefferson, Secretary of Indiana Territory, in which office he served until Indiana became a State in 1816, when he returned to Pittsburgh. He died at the residence of his son-inlaw, George Wallace, in Braddock, April 10, 1822. This dwelling is still standing. In it LaFayette was entertained in 1825. It is the large house adjoining the station of the Pennsylvania railroad to the east of that structure.

CHAPTER XXVII.

George Croghan, King of the Traders.

Of the pioneers in the region about Pittsburgh previous to the building of Fort Duquesne, none has received less local mention and none is less known historically here than Colonel George Croghan, trader, Indian agent of the crown at Fort Pitt. Croghan deserved his title, for he was of all the English traders the most energetic and influential in public affairs affecting the Indians. To understand properly his exact status, it is necessary to go back and look into the history of the Indian trade as the English traders developed it. The Five Nations, or Iroquois Confederacy, had been friendly to the Dutch from their first coming in 1614. and had begun trading with them that year at the first trading post established by the Dutch near the site of Albany. These Indians favored the Dutch in the commercial rivalry that ensued between Holland and France, and by the first treaty ever made with Indians in America, the Dutch by their politic treatment of the Indians and keeping all the covenants of this treaty, retained the friendship of the great Confederacy. The Dutch were naturally traders; business people of keen acumen. They not only gained the confidence of the confederated nations, but retained it, and they could depend upon their alliance with the "Magua" as they called these tribes. Had they not been thus favored and the Iroquois not stood between them and the more numerous and better armed French, the French would have pushed the Dutch to their fort, and to Manhattan Island. This would have raised and settled the issue of the French and Indian war years earlier, perhaps a century, and given to France the vast region west of the Alleghenies won by Great Britain in the peace of 1763. It is not remote to our history, this kind and sensible treatment of the Indians by the Dutch. Had it not been thus the whole history of the region of Western Pennsylvania would have been changed. What it might have been, in conjecture opens wide fields. As far off Onondaga and its Long House ruled the destinies of our region, so also the Dutch-Iroquois alliance must be treated as a factor. The French could not break through the Iroquoian wall; the English drove out the Dutch; the Iroquois transferred their friendship to the new proprietors; the French pushed onward to the West and Southwest; the English came over the Alleghenies; the clash came hereabouts; hence Fort Duquesne, Fort Pitt and Pittsburgh.

It was in 1664 that the Dutch surrendered their rights in New York to the English. The thrifty Hollanders then had almost the entire trade with the Iroquois. Then the Dutch trader proved an opportune interpreter for the English. The English divined the intent and purposes of the French first manifested in the attempt of the French to acquire the beautiful valley of the Mohawk. The Dutch, when the Mohawk braves had so badly needed firearms to cope with Champlain and the tribes he had armed, readily supplied the coveted weapons; then changed entirely

Pitts-36

the ages-long Indian method of fighting. The successful repulse of several French invasions of the Iroquois country followed. The Iroquois became more and more beligerent. They took longer and more frequent excursions; the council fires at Onondaga blazed as never before. Then when the English came they saw the advantage of a strong alliance. An agency was established among the Mohawks in time to fully protect the English interests. The English knew they must retain the confidence and friendship of the Iroquois. Nothing else could counteract French influence, for the French were incessant in their methods. They had continued for years to send out their missionaries, to build their forts and to establish their trading posts. They had penetrated the heart of the Mohawk country several times between 1665-1672, but they could not subdue that nation. Finally came Sir William Johnson as superintendent of Indian affairs for his Britannic Majesty; taking up his residence among the Mohawks, he became a power and soon was virtually a Mohawk. Thenceforth aggressive measures. Thence enters the superintendent's deputy at Fort Pitt, Colonel George Croghan, trader, interpreter, diplomat, loyalist, land-grabber; the most unique character in the history of the western country-living near Fort Pitt, a pioneer, fearless and tireless, concerning whom many pages of history have been written, should be written in any history of Pittsburgh; Croghan, the daring; Croghan triumphant; Croghan stripped of power and wealth, dying in obscurity.

Darlington, in his book known as "Gist's Journals," devotes many pages to Croghan's activities and tells all that he was able to learn of his life, but was not able to learn much of his early life. Darlington found that Croghan was a native of Ireland and received an ordinary education in Dublin and came to America in 1743 or 1744. He first resided five miles west of Harris' Ferry, later Harrisburg. Croghan's location was in what was subsequently East Pennsboro township, Cumberland county.

Charles A. Hanna says Croghan came to America in 1741 and was licensed a trader in Pennsylvania in 1744. Governor Morris, in 1755, wrote that he did not know what Croghan's education was, "which was in Dublin, nor his religious professions." Croghan's name first appears in the official correspondence of Pennsylvania in a letter to Secretary Peters, May 26, 1747. Croghan had his own method of spelling, especially Indian words. His letters are most curious and most interesting, for he was keen-sighted and prompt to act.

Croghan, who early earned the title "King of the Traders," was licensed, according to Darlington, an Indian trader in 1746. He had then maintained a home on the Susquehanna for three years. Conrad Weiser, on his mission from the provincial governor of Pennsylvania to the Indians along the upper Ohio, stopped at Croghan's place the second night out from Weiser's home in Berks county, distant therefrom fortyfive miles. The story of Weiser, rightfully told, is a volume in itself;

1"Christopher Gist's Journals, with Historical, Geographical, and Ethnological Notes and Biographies of His Contemporaries;" by William M. Darlington, Pittsburgh, J. R. Weldin Co., 1893.