Chief Logan's Gospel Encounter

     As a student of history, I have to admit that what is normally recorded for posterity’s sake are the “important things.”  It is seldom that we are given a glimpse into the minutiae of what it was like to live in days gone by, to get a “day-in-the-life” view revealed to us from primary source documentation .  It is even rarer to get a detailed report of a gospel encounter on the colonial frontier in the pre-Revolutionary days, but I found just such a one here from the diary of New England Congregationalist preacher David McClure.

     16th. [Sept. 1772] —Came to the Mingo village on Bever [sic] Creek. On the green lay an old Indian, who, they said, had been a hard drinker; his limbs were contracted by fits. He told me his disorder was brought on him by witchcraft, that he employed several conjurors to cure him, but in vain. I called his attention to his dependence on God, on death & Judgment. He however gave little heed; but in answer told my Interpreter, if he would bring a pint of rum every time he came, he should be glad to see him every day. Awful stupidity! This village is commonly called Logan's town. About half an hour before our arrival, we saw Capt. Logan in the woods, & I was not a little surprised at his appearance [sic]. As we were obliged to ride, as it is commonly called in Indian file, the path not admitting two to ride a breast, I had passed beyond Logan without seeing him. He spoke to my interpreter, who was a little distance behind, to desire me to stop. I looked back & saw him a few rods from the path, stand, under a tree, leaning on the muzzle of his gun. A young Indian, with his gun, stood by him.

       I turned back & riding up to Logan, asked him how he did, & whether he wished to speak with me? (I had seen him at Pittsburgh). Pointing to his breast, he said, "I feel very bad here.  Wherever I go the evil monethoes (Devils) [manitous] are after me. My house, the trees & the air, are full of Devils, they continually haunt me, & they will kill me. All things tell me how wicked I have been." He stood pale & trembling, apparently in great distress. His eyes were fixed on the ground, & the sweat run down his face like one in agony. It was a strange sight. I had several times seen him at Pittsburgh & thought him the most martial figure of an Indian that I had ever seen. At the conclusion of his awful description of himself, he asked me what he should do? Recollecting to have heard at Pittsburgh, that he had been a bloody enemy against the poor defenseless settlers on the Susquehanna, & the frontiers, in the last french war in 1758, & 9, & it was also reported of him, (though positive proof could not be had) that he had murdered a white man (one Chandler) on the Allegany [sic] mountains. I observed to him, perhaps Capt. Logan, you have been a wicked man, & greatly offended God, & he now allows these Devils, or evil thoughts which arise in your heart to trouble you, that you may now see yourself to be a great sinner & repent  & pray to God to forgive you. If you will repent & ask forgiveness of God from the bottom of your heart, & live a better life, the Great Spirit above will not suffer the Devils to torment you, & he will give you peace.

       He attended to what I said, & after conversing a little longer, in the same strain, We left him, in the same distress, as I found him. After parting from him, various thoughts, but none satisfactory, occurred to me, relative to the cause of the distress & agitation of so renowned a warrior. I sometimes thought (such was his ferocious character) that knowing of my journey, he had placed himself in a convenient spot for robbery or murder, but was disappointed, finding us armed. For my interpreter & Nickels had each a loaded piece, the Indian a common musket, & the english man a rifle always loaded, for the purpose of killing game. Perhaps it was some sudden compunction, arising from reflections on his past guilt.

       This same Logan is represented as making a very eloquent speech at the close of the revolutionary war, on the murder of his family by Col. Cressup [Cresap]. ¹

Most everyone who has read any histories of the colonial frontier has heard of Logan’s famous speech.  Here we see a real glimpse into the heart of the warrior-chief, a heart that was troubled by the torment of his sins.  The same Savior that was revealed to Logan is the same Savior who sits eternally at the right hand of God the Father, with power to save sinners today who come to Him in repentance and faith.  May Jesus Christ be praised!

Christ, not man, is King!

Dale

1)   Franklin B. Dexter, ed., Diary of David McClure (New York, NY: Knickerbocker Press, 1899), p. 56-8.

Joseph Doddridge on Backcountry Foodways

   In keeping with the theme of my last post, I decided to take a look at Joseph Doddridge’s perspective on the backcountry culture of his day.  Here is how Doddridge describes the culinary life of the frontier settlers.

       The furniture for the table, for several years after the settlement of this country, consisted of a few pewter dishes, plates and spoons; but mostly of wooden bowls, trenchers and noggins.  If these last were scarce, gourds and hard shelled squashes made up the deficiency.  The iron pots, knives and forks, were brought from the east side of the mountains along with the salt and iron on pack horses. These articles of furniture corresponded very well with the articles of diet on which they were employed.  "Hog and hominy" were proverbial for the dish of which they were the component parts.  Johnny cake and pone were at the outset of the settlements of the country the only forms of bread in use for breakfast and dinner.  At supper, milk and mush was the standard dish.  When milk was not plenty, which was often the case, owing to the scarcity of cattle, or the want of proper pasture for them, the substantial dish of hominy had to supply the place of them; mush was frequently eaten with sweetened water, molasses, bear's oil, or the gravy of fried meat.

       Every family, besides a little garden for the few vegetables which they cultivated, had another small enclosure containing from half an acre to an acre, which they called a  truck patch, in which they raised corn for roasting ears, pumpkins, squashes, beans and potatoes. These, in the latter part of the summer and fall, were cooked with their pork, venison and bear meat for dinner, and made very wholesome and well tasted dishes. The standard dinner dish for every log rolling, house raising and harvest day was a pot pie, or what in other countries is called sea pie. This, besides answering for dinner, served for a part of the supper also. The remainder of it from dinner, being eaten with milk in the evening, after the conclusion of the labor of the day.

      In our whole display of furniture, the delft, china and silver were unknown. It did not then as now require contributions from the four quarters of the globe to furnish the breakfast table, viz: the silver from Mexico; the coffee from the West Indies; the tea from China, and the delft and porcelain from Europe or Asia.  Yet our homely fare, and unsightly cabins, and furniture, produced a hardy veteran race, who planted the first footsteps of society and civilization in the immense regions of the west. Inured to hardihood, bravery and labor from their early youth, they sustained with manly fortitude the fatigue of the chase, the campaign and scout, and with strong arms "turned the wilderness into fruitful fields" and have left to their descendants the rich inheritance of an immense empire blessed with peace and wealth…

    The introduction of delft ware was considered by many of the backwoods people as a culpable innovation.  It was too easily broken, and the plates of that ware dulled their scalping and clasp knives; tea ware was too small for men; they might do for women and children. Tea and coffee were only slops, which in the adage of the day "did not stick by the ribs." The idea was they were designed only for people of quality, who do not labor, or the sick. A genuine backwoodsman would have thought himself disgraced by showing a fondness for those slops. Indeed, many of them have, to this day, very little respect for them. ¹

It is interesting to note Doddridge’s remarks concerning coffee and tea.  In essence it would appear as though the settlers primarily subsisted on only those things which they produced themselves.  From a re-enactor’s perspective, this might lead me not to carry those things in my pack if I’m portraying a backwoodsman from the areas to which Dr. Doddridge is referring.  Certainly one would imagine that these items must have been quite rare in the backcountry by the early days of the Revolution.  Real men drink… milk?  Who would’ve thought?

Christ, not man, is King!

Dale

1)   Joseph Doddridge, Notes On The Settlement And Indian Wars Of Virginia And Pennsylvania (Albany, NY: Joel Munsell, 1876), p. 137-38, 140.

"A New Guide For Emigrants To The West"

I ran across this excerpt from John Mason Peck’s work “A New Guide For Emigrants To The West” and even though it was published in 1836, I have to think there was a great deal of similarity between the backwoodsmen of Peck’s day and those of the colonial era.

1. Dress.—The hunting shirt is universally worn. This is a kind of loose, open frock, reaching half way down the thighs, with large sleeves, the body open in front, lapped over, and belted with a leathern girdle, held together with a buckle. The cape is large, and usually fringed with different colored cloth from that of the body. The bosom of this dress sometimes serves as a wallet for a "chunk" of bread, jerk or smoke-dried venison, and other articles. It is made either of dressed deer skins, linsey, coarse linen, or cotton. The shirt, waistcoat and pantaloons are of similar articles and of the customary form. Wrappers of cloth or dressed skins, called "leggins" are tied round the legs when travelling. Moccasins of deer skins, shoe packs, and rough shoes, the leather tanned and cobbled by the owner, are worn on the feet.

The females' [sic] dress in a coarse gown of cotton, a bonnet of the same stuff, and denominated in the eastern states a "sun-bonnet." The latter is constantly worn through the day, especially when company is present. The clothing for both sexes is made at home. The wheel and loom are common articles of furniture in every cabin.

2. Dwellings.—"Cabin" is the name for a plain, rough log-house, throughout the west. The spot being selected, usually in the timbered land, and near some spring, the first operation of the newly arrived emigrant is to cut about 40 logs of the proper size and length for a single cabin, or twice that number for a double one, and haul them to the spot. A large oak or other suitable timber, of straight grain, and free from limbs, is selected for clapboards for the roof. These are four feet in length, split with a froe six or eight inches wide, and half an inch thick. Puncheons are used for the floor. These are made by splitting trees about eighteen inches in diameter into slabs, two or three inches in thickness, and hewn on the upper surface. The door way is made by cutting out the logs after raising, of a suitable width, and putting upright pieces of timber at the sides. The shutter is made of clapboards, pinned on cross pieces, hung by wooden hinges, and fastened by a wooden latch. A similar aperture, but is wider made at one end for the chimney. The men of the settlement, when notified, collect and raise the building. Four stout men with axes are placed on the corners to notch the logs together, while the rest of the company lift them up. After the roof is on the body of the building, it is slightly hewed down both out and inside. The roof is formed by shortening each end log in succession till one log forms the comb of the roof. The clapboards are put on so as to cover all cracks, and held down by poles or small logs.

The chimney is built of sticks of wood, the largest at the bottom, and the smallest at the top, and laid up with a supply of mud or clay mortar. The interstices between the logs are chinked with strips of wood and daubed with mortar both outside and in. A double cabin consists of two such buildings with a space of 10 or 12 feet between, over which the roof extends.

A log house, in western parlance, differs from a cabin in the logs being hewn on two sides to an equal thickness before raising,—in having a framed and shingled roof, a brick or stone chimney, windows, tight floors, and are frequently clapboarded on the outside and plastered within.

A log house thus finished, costs more than a framed one. Cabins are often the temporary dwellings of opulent and highly respectable families. 

The axe, auger, froe, drawing knife, broadaxe, and crosscut saw are the only tools required in constructing these rude edifices;— sometimes the axe and auger only are employed. Not a nail or pane of glass is needed. Cabins are by no means as wretched for residences as their name imports.

They are often roomy, comfortable and neat. If one is not sufficient to accommodate the family, another is added, and another until sufficient room is obtained.

3. Furniture and mode of living.—The genuine backwoodsman makes himself and family comfortable and contented where those, unaccustomed to his mode of life, would live in unavailing regret, or make a thousand awkward apologies on the visit of a neighbor or traveler [sic]. A table is made of a split slab and supported by four round legs. Clapboards supported by pins stuck in the logs answer for shelves for table furniture. The bedstead is often made in the corner of the room by sticks placed in the logs, supported at the outward corner by a post, on which clapboards are laid, the ends of which enter the wall between the logs, and which support the bedding. On the arrival of travellers [sic] or visiters [sic], the bed clothing is shared with them, being spread on the puncheon floor that the feet may project towards the fire.

Many a night has the writer passed in this manner, after a fatiguing day's ride, and reposed more comfortably than on a bed of down in a spacious mansion. All the family of both sexes, with all the strangers who arrive, often lodge in the same room. In that case the under garments are never taken off, and no consciousness of impropriety or indelicacy of feeling is manifested. A few pins stuck in the wall of the cabin display the dresses of the women and the hunting shirts of the men. Two small forks or bucks-horns fastened to a joist are indispensable articles for the support of the rifle. A loose floor of clapboards, and supported by round poles, is thrown over head for a loft which furnishes a place to throw any articles not immediately wanted, and is frequently used for a lodging place for the younger branches of the family. A ladder planted in the corner behind the door answers the purpose of stairs.

The necessary table and kitchen furniture are a few pewter dishes and spoons, knives and forks, (for which however, the common hunting knife is often a substitute,) tin cups for coffee or milk, a water pail and a small gourd or calabash for water, with a pot and iron Dutch oven, constitute the chief articles. Add to these a tray for wetting up meal for corn bread, a coffee pot and set of cups and saucers, a set of common plates, and the cabin is furnished. The hominy mortar and hand mill are in use in all frontier settlements. The first consists of a block of wood with an excavation burned at one end and scraped out with an iron tool, wide at top and narrow at the bottom that the action of the pestle may operate to the best advantage. Sometimes a stump of a large tree is excavated while in its natural position. An elastic pole, 20 or 30 feet in length, with the large end fastened under the ground log of the cabin, and the other elevated 10 or 15 feet and supported by two forks, to which a pestle 5 or 6 inches in diameter and 8 or 10 feet long is fixed on the elevated end by a large mortice, and a pin put through its lower end so that two persons can work it in conjunction. This is much used for pounding corn. A very simple instrument to answer the same purpose, is a circular piece of tin, perforated, and attached to a piece of wood like a grater, on which the ears of corn are rubbed for meal. The hand mill is in the same form as that used in Judea in the time of our Savior. Two circular stones, about 18 inches in diameter constructed like ordinary mill stones, with a staff let into the runner or upper stone near its outer edge, with the upper end inserted in a joist or board over head, and turned by the hands of two persons while one feeds it with corn. Horse mills follow the mortar and hand mill in the scale of improvement. They are constructed variously. A hand mill is the most simple. A large upright post is placed on a gudgeon, with shafts extending horizontally 15 or 20 feet. Around the ends of these is a band of raw hide twisted, which passes around the trundle head and turns the spindle and communicates motion to the stone. A cog mill is formed by constructing a rim with cogs upon the shafts, and a trundle head to correspond. Each person furnishes his own horses to turn the mill, performs his own grinding, and pays toll to the owner for use of the mill. Mills with the wheel on an inclined plane, and carried by oxen standing on the wheel, are much in use in those sections where water power is not convenient, but these indicate an advance to the second grade of society.

Instead of bolting cloths, the frontier people use a sieve or as called here, a "search." This is made from a deer skin prepared to resemble parchment, stretched on a hoop and perforated full of holes with a hot wire.

Every backwoodsman carries on all occasions, the means of furnishing his meat. The rifle, bullet pouch and horn, hunting knife, horse and dog are his constant companions when from home, and woe be to the wolf, bear, deer or turkey that comes within one hundred and fifty yards of his trail.

With the first emigration there are few mechanics; hence every settler becomes expert in supplying his own necessaries. Besides clearing land, building cabins, and making fences, he stocks his own plough, repairs his wagon and his harness, tans his own leather, makes his shoes, tables, bedsteads, stools or seats, trays and a hundred other articles.

These may be rudely constructed, but they answer his purpose very well.” ¹

Christ, not man, is King!

Dale

1)   John Mason Peck, A New Guide For Emigrants To The West (Boston, MA: Gould, Kendall & Lincoln, 1836), p. 116-123.

The Attack on Merrill's Cabin

It seems that all the recent talk about the “war on women” has led both sides of the political spectrum to debate what a courageous woman actually looks like.  One side believes a courageous woman is one who demands that public tax dollars should pay for her contraceptives; the other side believes a courageous woman is one who overcomes significant obstacles in her formative years to become successful in later life.  I believe we find incredible examples of courageous women in the stories of the early settlement of our country.  Here is one author’s account of how and why women displayed courage in the face of great opposition, including death.

A similar development was silently wrought in the female character.  Women who, in 1773, terror stricken by the Indian attack near Cumberland Gap, demanded the retreat of the first emigrants to Kentucky, in later years stood unswerving amid the vicissitudes that made death, wounds, and captivity the almost daily fate of their sex.  So accustomed did they become to the violent form of death that, as Judge Hall relates on one occasion, when a young man died the natural way, the woman of the station sat up all night, gazing at the remains as an object of beauty.  The matrons of the frontier, in time, seemed to lose all womanish fears and weaknesses, and emulated the dexterity of their fathers, brothers and husbands in the use of the gun and ax in defense of their homes and children. ¹

One such example is found in Wither’s “Chronicles of Border Warfare.”  Although there is some debate as to when this incident occurred (Perrin’s account says the summer of 1787, Wither’s account say winter of 1791), the essential elements of the store are exactly the same and should be accepted as factual.

On the 24th of December 1791, a party of savages attacked the house of John Merril, in Nelson county [Kentucky]. Mr. Merril, alarmed by the barking of the dogs, hastened to the door to learn the cause.––On opening it, he was fired at by two Indians and his leg and arm were both broken.  The savages then ran forward to enter the house, but before they could do this, the door was closed and secured by Mrs. Merril and her daughter.  After a fruitless attempt to force it open, they commenced hewing off a part of it with their tomahawks, and when a passage was thus opened, one of them attempted to enter through it.  The heroic Mrs. Merril, in the midst of her screaming and affrighted children, and her groaning suffering husband, seized an axe, gave the ruffian a fatal blow, and instantly drew him into the house.  Supposing that their end was now nearly attained, the others pressed forward to gain admittance through the same aperture.  Four of them were in like manner despatched [sic] by Mrs. Merril, before their comrades were aware that any opposition was making in the house.  Discovering their mistake the survivors retired for awhile, and returning, two of them endeavored to gain admittance by climbing to the top of the house, and descending in the chimney, while the third was to exert himself at the door.  Satisfied from the noise on the top of the house, of the object of the Indians, Mr. Merril directed his little son to rip open a bed and cast its contents on the fire.  This produced the desired effect.––The smoke and heat occasioned by the burning of the feathers brought the two Indians down, rather unpleasantly; and Mr. Merril somewhat recovered, exerted every faculty, and with a billet of wood soon despatched [sic] those half smothered devils.  Mrs. Merril was all this while busily engaged in defending the door against the efforts of the only remaining savage, whom she at length wounded so severely with the axe, that he was glad to get off alive.

A prisoner, who escaped from the Indians soon after the happening of this transaction, reported that the wounded savage was the only one, of a party of eight, who returned to their towns; that on being asked by some one, “what news,”––he replied, “bad news for poor Indian, me lose a son, me lose a brother,––the squaws have taken the breech clout, and fight worse than the Long Knives.” ²

No, I can’t see courageous womanhood as exercising the “right” to murder an unborn baby or demanding that the taxpayer provide free contraceptives.  True courageous womanhood is seen here in this story, a woman risking her all to save her own.  God give us more women like this!

Christ, not man, is King!

Dale

1)   W.H. Perrin, et al, Kentucky: A History Of The State (Louisville, KY: F.A. Battey & Company, 1887), p. 204-5.

2)   Alexander Scott Withers, Chronicles of Border Warfare (Cincinnati, OH: Stewart & Kidd Company, 1912), p. 405-6.