Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/281

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APPENDIX.
265

by a well directed fire from Greathouse's party, which killed some, wounded others, and obliged the rest to put back. Baker tells us there were twelve killed, and six or eight wounded.

This commenced the war, of which Logan's war club and note left in the house of a murdered family was the notification. In the course of it, during the ensuing Summer, great numbers of innocent men, women and children, fell victims to the tomahawk and scalping knife of the Indians, till it was arrested in the Autumn following by the battle at Point Pleasant, and the pacification with Lord Dunmore, at which the speech of Logan was delivered.

Of the genuineness of that speech nothing need be said. It was known to the camp where it was delivered; it was given out by Lord Dunmore and his officers; it ran through the public papers of these States; was rehearsed as an exercise at schools; published in the papers and periodical works of Europe; and all this a dozen years before it was copied into the Notes on Virginia. In fine, General Gibson concludes the question forever, by declaring that he received it from Logan's hand, delivered it to Lord Dunmore, translated it for him, and that the copy in the Notes on Virginia is a faithful copy.

The popular account of these transactions, as stated in the Notes on Virginia, appears, on collecting exact information, imperfect and erroneous in its details. It was the belief of the day; but how far its errors were to the prejudice of Cresap, the reader will now judge. That he, and those under him, murdered two Indians above Wheeling; that they murdered a larger number at Grave Creek, among whom were a part of the family and relations of Logan, cannot be questioned; and as little that this led to the massacre of the rest of the family at Yellow Creek. Logan imputed the whole to Cresap in his war note and peace speech; the Indians generally imputed it to Cresap; Lord Dunmore and his officers imputed it to Cresap; the country with one accord imputed it to him; and whether he were innocent, let the universal verdict now declare.