January 22, 1793: In Drippings Springs , Kentucky, Chickamauga Chief Captain Bench, Doublehead, and Pumpkin Boy attacked two men leading pack animals. After killing the two men, the Indians ate them. ========================================================== No, they did not eat them because they were starving. It was a sacred ceremony of the Cherokee and Chickamauga; to devour your enemy so that their spirits would never return to harm you again. In war times, warriors did what was needed. You may call them blood thirsty Indians but they were not the ones trespassing after being told not to.... they were not the ones who attacked first. They were intentionally trying to strike fear into the hearts of settlers so that these settlers would leave their lands and leave them alone. What one would call a savage.... I call a warrior for his peoples. If I sound as if I admire and respect Captain Bench then it is only because I do. ========================================================= Bob Benge (c. 1762–1794), also known as Captain Benge or The Bench to frontiersmen, was one of the most feared Cherokee leaders on the frontier during the Chickamauga wars (1783-1794) in the area of present-day Tennessee, United States. Early life Born as Bob Benge about 1762 in the Overhill Cherokee town of Toqua, he was the redheaded mixed-blood son of a Cherokee woman and a Scots-Irish trader named John Benge, who lived full-time among the Cherokee. He had a sister Lucy. The available sources strongly imply, but do not prove, that young Benge and his sister Lucy were also half-siblings with George Guess, better known as Sequoyah. Both Sequoyah and Benge were great-nephews of Old Tassel and Doublehead. Under the Cherokee matrilineal kinship and clan system, children were considered born into their mothers clans, and their mothers brothers were very important figures, especially for boys. When Dragging Canoe and his party moved to the southwest in 1777, John Benge moved his family to a new home in Running Water, one of the Chickamauga Lower Towns. Bob, who became known as Captain Bench, his half-brother The Tail, and cousin Tahlonteeskee got old enough, they joined with their maternal uncle John Watts in fighting the Chickamauga wars. During the Cherokee Removal of 1838, the fourth wagon train of a thousand Cherokees from Alabama was conducted by Captain John Benge, son of the Chickamauga warrior. Exploits as a warrior Living at Running Water enabled him to meet and operate with the Shawnee band of Chiksika and his brother Tecumseh. Benge often went with them on raids and forays during the time they were at Running Water. In one of his early raids, in spring 1777, he is said to have captured two women while raiding around Fort Blackmore, Virginia.[1] Afterward he often ran with the mixed group of warriors led by Doublehead out of Coldwater Town at the head of Muscle Shoals, Alabama on the Tennessee River. Among his exploits was saving the population of the town of Ustally in 1788 which John Sevier had slated for destruction. Benges raided as far north as the Ohio River, as far northwest as deep southwestern Virginia, all over East Tennessee, and even occasionally southeast into Georgia and South Carolina. These included a joint raid between his party and that of Doublehead into the Kentucky hunting grounds. They killed and ceremonially ate two woodsmen in imitation of the tactics of the Iroquois during the Beaver Wars. The Brown family Benge was at Running Water Town when word came that an agreement had been reached with John Sevier for an exchange of hostages; it mentioned the Brown family, who had been taken captive in 1788 as they reached Nickajack, passing through the Five Lower Towns on the Tennessee River. Only three of the surviving members remained among the Cherokee, the other three having been sent to the Muscogee. Joseph Brown and his sister Polly were brought immediately to Running Water, but when runners were sent to Crow Town to retrieve Jane, their youngest sister, her owner refused to surrender her. Benge mounted his horse and hefted his famous axe, saying, I will bring the girl, or the owners head. The next morning he returned with Jane. The three were later handed over to Sevier at Coosawattee. Cavetts Station Benge came to a parting of the ways with his former close ally, Doublehead, over an incident at Cavetts Station. In 1793 John Watts led a raid on the Holston River settlements, aiming at Whites Fort. There, Benge negotiated the surrender of the garrison and its defenders with the promise of safe passage; Doublehead and his band violated the parole by immediately attacking and killing them all, men, women, and children, indiscriminately, as soon as they were outside the small fort, over the pleas of Benge, Watts, and James Vann. Benge never operated with Doublehead after this incident. It also contributed to the bitter animosity between Doublehead and Vann that led to a division between the Upper and Lower Towns after the end of the wars in 1794. Death Benge often raided as far as the westernmost counties of Virginia, attacking Gate City, Virginia in 1791, and Moccasin Gap and Kanes Gap on Powell Mountain in 1793. He was killed 6 April 1794 in an ambush in what is now Wise County, Virginia during an extended raid deep into enemy-held territory, while escorting prisoners captured from a settlement earlier in the day back to the Lower Towns. The militia took his scalp and sent it to the Governor of Virginia, Henry Lee III, who sent it on to President George Washington. Credit for killing Benge went to militia leader Vincent Hobbs Jr, son of one of the original white settlers of current Lee County, Virginia. Robert Addison, History of Scott County, Virginia
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 16:59:02 +0000
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