ut on others
who were entirely innocent. Indeed he did not know who had caused them.
The massacres at Captina and Yellow Creek occurred so near together that
they were confounded with each other; and not only the Indians but many
whites as well[51] credited Cresap and Greathouse with being jointly
responsible for both, and as Cresap was the most prominent, he was the
one especially singled out for hatred.

Logan instantly fell on the settlement with a small band of Mingo
warriors. On his first foray he took thirteen scalps, among them those
of six children.[52] A party of Virginians, under a man named McClure,
followed him: but he ambushed and defeated them, slaying their
leader.[53] He repeated these forays at least three times. Yet, in spite
of his fierce craving for revenge, he still showed many of the traits
that had made him beloved of his white friends. Having taken a prisoner,
he refused to allow him to be tortured, and saved his life at the risk
of his own. A few days afterwards he suddenly appeared to this prisoner
with some gunpowder ink, and dictated to him a note. On his next
expedition this note, tied to a war-club, was left in the house of a
settler, whose entire family was murdered. It was a short document,
written with ferocious directness, as a kind of public challenge or
taunt to the man whom he wrongly deemed to be the author of his
misfortunes. It ran as follows:

"CAPTAIN CRESAP:

"What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for? The white people
killed my kin at Conestoga, a great while ago, and I thought nothing of
that. But you killed my kin again on Yellow Creek, and took my cousin
prisoner. Then I thought I must kill too; and I have been three times to
war since; but the Indians are not angry, only myself.

"July 21, 1774. CAPTAIN JOHN LOGAN."[54]

There is a certain deliberate and blood-thirsty earnestness about this
letter which must have shown the whites clearly, if they still needed to
be shown, what bitter cause they had to rue the wrongs that had been
done to Logan.

The Shawnees and Mingos were soon joined by many of the Delawares and
outlying Iroquois, especially Senecas; as well as by the Wyandots and by
large bands of ardent young warriors from among the Algonquin tribes
along the Miami, the Wabash, and the Lakes. Their inroads on the
settlements were characterized, as usual, by extreme stealth and
merciless ferocity. They stole out of the woods with the silent cunning
of wild