My father spends a considerable amount of time researching our
family tree... It hasn't been an easy task because not only is he a pretty fair mix of nationalities, but
Alzheimer's has always run through my family rather rampantly which has also left many gaps. One connection we have made through the gaps is we are direct descendants of Jake Greathouse, an explorer and Indian butcher in the 1770's. He slaughtered Chief Logan's family in 1774 and was also credited with the death of Sitting Bull. There is some information on Jake Greathouse published in Allan W. Eckert's, The Frontiersmen. In this passage Jake and members of his party landed near the Mingo camp off the Ohio River. They were approached by Chief Logan's sister, who was pregnant, his brother and three others of the tribe. They proceeded to get them drunk on rum and entertained them with a marksmanship contest...
"Logan's sister suddenly ran towards the river, screaming an alarm in the still night air. The Mingoes looked up in surprise to find themselves quite alone, in the center of an arc of men who had leaped from hiding, their rifles at ready. Rafe snapped off a quick shot at the squaw and her screaming was cut short as she flopped disjointedly to the ground. The Mingoes dropped their useless guns and clawed for knives and tomahawks, but the volley of shots rang out and all five fell, dead or dying"...
Any Mangoes that came to investigate were also shot...
"Now the whites returned to the camp and methodically scalped all five dead men lying there. Logan's Sister, they found,was still alive. The rifle ball had entered her back and lodged in her right lung and she was only semiconscious. Under orders from Greathouse she was lashed by her wrists to a pole which was then raised and angled into the fork of a tree so that her feet hung a foot or two off the ground. The frontiersmen cut away her garb and tossed it aside; then he jerked the tomahawk from his underarm sheath and with one vicious swipe, laid open her belly, spilling its pitiful contents in an obscene hanging mass."
Logan discovered the body several hours later. Some of their tortures were even more obscene (tethering people to trees with an end of their own intestine, shooting others with only powder until death occurred)... pretty terrible guy in general. And yet partially responsible for my existence... yeah, a really bad guy.