Early Life
Born in the Overhill Cherokee town of Toqua, he was the redheaded mixed-blood son of a Scots-Irish trader named John Benge, who lived fulltime among the Cherokee. Upon the move of Dragging Canoe and his party to the southwest in 1777, John Benge moved the family (including Bob's sister Lucy) to a new home in Running Water, one of the Chickamauga towns. Soon "Captain Bench" and his half-brother The Tail and cousin Tahlonteeskee joined with their uncle John Watts in the Chickamauga wars. 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 clan system, maternal uncle-nephew connections were very strong. 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.
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