6. Logan's Murder and Jefferson's Defense of America Professor Robert G. Parkinson, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier This section explores the fate of Logan and the cultural impact of his lament. A surveyor learned

Season 1, Episode 30,   Oct 27, 01:23 AM

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6. Logan's Murder and Jefferson's Defense of America Professor Robert G. Parkinson, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier

This section explores the fate of Logan and the cultural impact of his lament. A surveyor learned that Logan was murdered by his nephew, Todkahtos, around 1780 near Lake Erie. Logan was silenced because the Six Nations feared the powerful orator was too persuasive and unpredictable in the volatile Ohio country. The discussion pivots to Thomas Jefferson, who obtained the lament and featured it in his Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson used Logan's eloquence to counter the French naturalist Buffon's theory that everything in America was inferior and degenerate, aiming to prove American intellectual superiority in the Enlightenment.