S8 Ep277: THE MURDER OF LOGAN AND THE PERSISTENCE OF VIOLENCE Colleague Professor Robert G. Parkinson. Twenty years after the lament, a surveyor encountered a weeping Native man in the woods who revealed he was Logan's nephew. The nephew confessed to killing his un

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🗓️ 4 January 2026

⏱️ 6 minutes

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Summary

THE MURDER OF LOGAN AND THE PERSISTENCE OF VIOLENCE Colleague Professor Robert G. Parkinson. Twenty years after the lament, a surveyor encountered a weeping Native man in the woods who revealed he was Logan's nephew. The nephew confessed to killing his uncle near Lake Erie around 1780. Logan had become a "dangerous" free agent and powerful orator whose influence threatened the political stability of the Six Nations during the Revolutionary War, leading to an order for his silence. This revelation underscores the brutality of the Ohio country, which remained the bloodiest ground of the revolution even after the British surrender at Yorktown. NUMBER 6

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0:00.0	I'm John Batson with Professor Robert Parkinson. His book is Heart of American Darkness,
0:06.0	Bewilderment and Horror on the early frontier. This is supposed to be overwhelming. It was at the time.
0:13.9	There were no easy categories. You were what you said that day. I'm a patriot. No, I'm the love of the crown. I'm married to a Native American, or I am a land speculator, and here's my money, and I'll buy your property from you, even though you don't have a deed. Anything's possible.
0:40.4	The Cressob family, however, remains at the center of our interest, and we need to follow the Logan family, the Shikolami family. Because there's
0:45.5	another twist here. A man who is a surveyor comes across a Native American weeping, a young man who is Mingo.
1:00.0	Who is he, who is he weeping, why is he weeping, and what does he tell the surveyor?
1:06.0	So the surveyor, this is 20 years after Logan's Lament and Yellow Creek. This is 1794. And this
1:12.6	surveyor who is out there scouting around for Pennsylvania's interests comes upon this weeping
1:22.0	man. And so they sit down and they have a conversation. They have a long conversation over the course of a whole day.
1:28.9	In the morning, they talk about why he's there and what's been going on.
1:34.4	And then this native person brings up some pretty bad memories and says some pretty ugly
1:41.7	things about the United States' native policy during the revolution and after.
1:48.2	And so he said, to change this subject, he says, why don't we have lunch?
1:52.4	And then while they're eating lunch, he says, hey, your name's Logan?
1:58.0	That's so funny.
2:00.0	What about the famous Logan Mingo Chief? Do you have any relation to him? And this native person says, yeah, that was my uncle. And he says, oh, really? That was your uncle? That's crazy. Is your uncle still alive? And this native person says, no, I killed him. And the surveyor is shocked beyond belief and can't believe.
2:19.2	What do you mean?
2:20.1	You killed your uncle?
2:21.2	Why did you do that?
2:23.1	And so he goes into the reasoning why he was, he believes he was ordered by the Six Nations to take care of James Logan Shekelemi,
2:36.5	the Logan of Logan's Lament,
2:40.1	and murders him close to Lake Erie in Sandusky, Ohio,
	...

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