Doublehead's War

Doublehead’s War

In my latest book-Doublehead: Last Chickamauga Cherokee Chief, you can read much more about Doublehead's war.  Hopefully, the book will be available before the end of the year. Below are a few excerpts from several pages about the Chickamauga-Settler conflicts.

Doublehead’s personal war against encroaching settlers lasted for some 25 years from 1770 through June 1795.  From the southwestern most portions of the Cherokee land claims along the Muscle Shoals, Doublehead made his own declarations of war against the white settlers moving into his hunting grounds.  He decided when and where to attack whether it was only two, two hundred, or two thousand in his party.  If they were with him, he was in charge. 

Doublehead was considered the most ruthless, brutal, violent, and blood thirsty Chickamauga warrior to ever live along the Tennessee River's Muscle Shoals.  Even though his nephew Robert Benge personally took 45 scalps, historians agree that Doublehead far surpassed that mark.  Some forty years of his life was spent on the warpath-killing, scalping, stealing, burning, and destroying.  However, one day in June 1795, Doublehead ceased all hostilities against the white settlers and was never recorded on another raid to the day he died some twelve years later.     

Doublehead continued to build an Indian alliance as his predecessor Dragging Canoe had done the day before he died. Doublehead, John Watts, Jr., Bloody Fellow, and "Young Dragging Canoe" (Tsula) continued Dragging Canoe's policy of Indian unity, including an agreement with Creek Chief Alexander McGillivray of the Upper Muscogee to build joint blockhouses or trading posts from which warriors of both tribes could operate.  One trading post was at South West Point near the junction of the Tennessee and Clinch Rivers, one at Running Water on the Tennessee River in northeast Alabama, and one at Muscle Shoals.  Doublehead’s base of operations was at the mouth of Blue Water Creek on Big Muscle Shoals in order to be close to his Muscogee allies. At this site, Doublehead had a large trading post where the 100 mile long Doublehead’s Trace from Franklin, Tennessee crossed the Tennessee River at the mouth of Blue Water Creek.

           Doublehead’s Chickamauga alliance was a confederacy of Lower Cherokee, Upper Creek, Shawnee, Yuchi, and mixed blood warriors that he would command from his stronghold of the shoals in the Great Bend.  Doublehead and his warriors ruled the Muscle Shoals that consisted of a series of six rapids covering some 40 miles of the Tennessee River.  Beginning at the upstream or eastern end was Elk River Shoals, Big Muscle Shoals, Little Muscle Shoals, Colbert Shoals, Bee Tree Shoals, and Waterloo Shoals was the western most of these shoals.  It was from his sanctuary along these Muscle Shoals of the Big Bend of the Tennessee River that Doublehead and the Chickamauga staged raids against white settlers to the north along the Cumberland River, into Kentucky, and east to Virginia. 


           The Chickamauga made raids upon the frontiers of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, and left dark and bloody suffering on the side of white settlers.  The Chickamauga people were fighting for their families, their way of life, the preservation of their homelands, and their sacred hunting grounds.  White settlers were seeking the opportunities among unfamiliar people in a remote frontier that could be theirs for the taking but at some sacrifice, and many of these settlers made the supreme sacrifice.  From 1791 through the middle of 1795, Doublehead’s Chickamauga warriors killed several hundred white settlers with a large number wounded, and over two thousand horses were stolen.  Many more unknown white settlers were killed and not recorded or failed to be counted as casualties. 


            In the near future release of the book, many of the documented raids and battles waged by Doublehead’s Chickamauga will be identified by place and date in chronological order.  Details of death and destruction by the Chickamauga (Ravagers of the Cumberlands) will be revealed; therefore, be sure to sign up for your copy now.