Logan's Lament

DESCRIPTION: The singer describes the happy lives of various creatures, then turns to his own unhappy lot. His wife, children, and people have been destroyed by the white man. He vows to "dig up my hatchet and bend my oak bow...."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1844 (fragment in Sanders' Fourth Reader)
KEYWORDS: animal Indians(Am.) homicide revenge
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Eddy-BalladsAndSongsFromOhio 112, "The Blackbird, or Logan's Lament" (1 text plus an excerpt, 1 tune)
Grimes-StoriesFromTheAnneGrimesCollection, pp. 147-149, "Logan's Lament" (1 text, 1 tune)
Burt-AmericanMurderBallads, pp. 128-129, "Logan's Lament" (1 text, 1 tune)
Salt-BuckeyeHeritage-OhiosHistory, pp. 22-23, "Logan's Lament" (1 text, 1 tune)
ST E112 (Full)
Roud #5340
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Steals of the White Man" (theme)
cf. "Jilson Setters's Indian Song" (theme)
cf. "An Old Indian (The Indian Song)"
NOTES [652 words]: Logan, a chief of the Mingo tribe, was raised a Christian, and the beginning of his oration under the elm is a clear paraphrase of the cited passages from the Bible. A biography of Logan, and the full text of his speech, may be found in Walter G. Shotwell's Driftwood (1927, reprinted 1966 by the Books for Libraries Press, Freeport, NY). - PJS
Eddy-BalladsAndSongsFromOhio reports that this song is based on a speech by Logan, the son of a white man and a Cayuga (Mingo?) woman. His family (father, brother, and sister, according to Mustful, pp. 9-10) was slain by Europeans, and he vowed revenge igniting what is known as Lord Dunmore's War. According to Hoffman, the leader of the massacre was named Daniel Greathouse (Hoffman, pp. 69, 78).
Williams, p. 16, gives this summary of the events that led to Lord Dunmore's War. It began with "the murder on April 30, 1774, at a place near the tip of modern West Virginia's Northern Panhandle, of ten Indians, including two women, all killed and scalped by whites. Several versions of the massacre circulated on the frontier, but they all emphasized the fact that the victims belonged to the household of a Mingo chieftain[,] Tah-gah-jute, a baptized Indian who was known by his English name, Logan. [Thompson, p. 93, gives a slightly different version of Logan's native name, Tahgahute.] Logan had always lived among the white peacefully, supporting his family by killing deer and dressing and selling the skins. Now he took to the warpath, taking many scalps in four widely separated raids on the Virginia and Pennsylvania frontiers. Dunmore blamed a settler named Daniel Greathouse for the outrage. Logan blamed Michael Cresap, a Maryland soldier and land speculator who was in the habit of building cabins along the Ohio as a means of securing land. Cresap was indeed in the vicinity of the massacre as part of a surveying party, but the evidence suggested that he was almost certainly innocent of the charge. Logan's assertion points up the fact that from the Indian's standpoint it hardly mattered who menaced him. Speculator or settler, the result was the same."
When the Shawnee chief Cornstalk made peace with Dunmore (the Royal governor of Virginia) in 1775 after the Battle of Point Pleasant (for which see "The Battle of Point Pleasant"), Logan refused to give up his vengeance, and offered this speech (delivered under the Logan Elm in Pickaway County, Ohio) to back his position. (Though he eventually gave in.)
The original text of Logan's Lament can be found, e.g., on p. 80 of Hoffman or on p. 106 of Thompson. It begins, "I appeal to any white man to say, if ever he entered Logan's cabin, and he gave him not meat; if he ever came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, "Logan is the friend of white men."
The speech ends, "Logan never felt dear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? -- Not one."
Despite its origin, the first few stanzas of this song bear an interesting similarity to Jesus's words in Matt. 8:20, Luke 9:58.
Incidentally, Logan's claim that he was a friend of the white men seems to be true. In 1763, a white man named John Gibson was captured by Indians and condemned to death. A young Mingo woman convinced the Indians to spare him; she later married him. She was Logan's younger sister (Hoffman, p. 58) -- and she was one of his family members who were killed (Hoffman, p. 69). Later, when a group of Indians condemned Simon Kenton to death by burning, Logan helped arrange a few days' delay that eventually allowed the British to save Kenton (Hoffman, pp. 152-153).
Hoffman, pp. 79-80, adds that the much-maligned Simon Girty was one of those who helped arrange the peace with Logan and brought his words back to the white man. Like Logan, Girty was much more sinned against than sinning. - RBW
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File: E112

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