Logan’s “Lament”

<p>In an idyllic wilderness scene, with inaccurate tipis near the Ohio River in the background, Tah-Gah-Jute (or “Logan”) delivers his “lament” in this engraving encircling the title page of <em>The American Pioneer</em> (1842), a monthly periodical published by the Logan Historical Society. The son of an Oneida chief named Shikellamy, Tah-Gah-Jute led several deadly raids on white settlements in the summer of 1774, during Dunmore’s War, in retaliation for the unprovoked murder of thirteen of his friends and relatives that spring. After the battle of Point Pleasant Logan sent a message to the governor which editors Dixon and Hunter published in the February 4, 1775 edition of the <em>Virginia Gazette</em>. Explaining the murders of his family, Logan said that “there runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any human creature. This called upon me for revenge.” Thomas Jefferson later published Logan’s letter in his <em>Notes on the State of Virginia</em> (1784).</p>
<p>By the mid nineteenth-century, many writers and historians came to view Logan as a romantic figure, symbolizing the “noble savage” and the mistreatment of Indigenous groups by white American colonists.</p>