The Yellow Creek Massacre - April 30, 1774
Along the Ohio River at Yellow Creek, two villages — so different and yet so similar — sat on opposite banks in the spring of 1774. On the west bank, Mingo Chief John Logan, lived with his family, their tribe chased westward by colonial settlers encroaching on ancient Iroquois homelands.
Across the river was the white settlement of Baker’s Bottom with a tavern frequented by trappers, traders, long hunters, and surveyors, those venturing through the border area to explore the wilderness of northern Kentucky. Mingos and other tribesmen also enjoyed, if not the welcome of the white patrons, at least the intoxicating beverages served there.
On the morning of April 30, four Mingo men and three women, one with an infant, crossed the Ohio River in a canoe. The young Mingo mother was the sister of Chief Logan. On the evening before, she had come over to the Baker home, where Joshua Baker’s wife provided cow’s milk for the baby. Greatly distressed, she eventually confiding in Mrs. Baker that some Mingos intended to kill some settlers there the next day. The Mingos were upset and angry about recent murderous attacks by Captain Michael Cresap on small parties of Mingos and Shawnees elsewhere along the river. The avenging young Mingos would restore balance, they believed, by killing only enough whites to offset the loss to their tribe. Mrs. Baker alerted her husband to the threat; a neighbor, Daniel Greathouse, mustered a party of 21 armed men. Four hid in readiness in an adjacent tavern room. The others hid in the brush along the river, watching for any approaching hostility.
Unarmed Mingos, arriving with Logan’s sister and infant, loitered around the tavern and drank through the morning. In an initially playful act, one donned from a wall peg the coat and hat of a tavern patron. The tipsy Mingo, Logan’s brother, began parading in a mocking fashion decrying the arrogance of whites coming down the river. “I’m a white man,” he mimicked standing with his arms akimbo. “White man, son of a b**ch,” he blurted out defiantly, the alcohol loosening his tongue.
Irritated at the spectacle, one white patron demanded the fellow remove the coat and hat, but the reveler headed for the door. Perhaps inebriated himself and acting beyond sober reason, the fellow grabbed his rifle and shot Logan’s brother. Hearing the single shot, the men hiding in the next room poured into the tavern, shooting all the other Mingos including the young mother. The Massacre at Yellow Creek had begun.
Outside, canoes of Mingo came across the river, whether as attackers or would-be rescuers, the men hiding in the brush took no time to discern. They fired at those crossing the river, killing several, driving away others. The horrible incident was a tragedy precipitated by the lethal combination of fear, arrogance, mistrust, misunderstandings, and alcohol.
Word of the settlers killing 13 Mingos spread quickly across both sides of the river. Having lost a sister, a brother, and his mother, an inconsolable Chief Logan took two dozen warriors into western Pennsylvania to exact revenge. Throughout the summer of 1774, Logan’s band of avengers attacked settlers, traders, and trappers in the Ohio valley and up the Kanawha/New River, leaving a war club as a warning in the Holston River Valley. Logan took 13 scalps, one for each of his family and tribe killed at Baker’s Bottom.
Settlers who had anxiously ventured down the Ohio hurriedly streamed back east to safety. Virginia’s Royal Governor Lord Dunmore called out the militia to quiet the unrest on the frontier, reasoning that a dominant and decisive victory over the Shawnee would increase his popularity and help diffuse the rising rancor about the British Crown.
Across the summer, militiamen gathered on the Virginia frontier under Colonel Andrew Lewis and marched up the Kanawha River to camp along the Ohio River at Point Pleasant. On October 10, a daylong battle against an attacking force of Shawnee would help determine the immediate future and eventual fate of America’s First Frontier.