Bob Benge

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 Cherokee–American wars (1783-1794) in the area of present-day Tennessee.

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 mother's clans, and their mother's 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. When 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 Cherokee–American 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.

Living at Running Water Town (now Whiteside, Tennessee), 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. 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 accomplishments was saving the population of the town of Ustally in 1788 which John Sevier had slated for destruction.

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