Logan’s “Lament”

In an idyllic wilderness scene, Tah-Gah-Jute (or “Logan”) delivers his “lament” in this engraving encircling the title page of The American Pioneer (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 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 refused to attend the peace negotiations and instead reportedly issued this message, which was published in the February 4, 1775 edition of the Virginia Gazette (Dixon & Hunter). Thomas Jefferson later published Logan’s letter in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1784).

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. Engravings like this are an example of that legacy.