Two reasons were given for the assassination of Doublehead:
1) Treasonous land deals.
The signing of the Treaty of Washington in January 1806 is what is given as cause for execution
of Doublehead as a traitor. The Blood Law of the Nation called for the execution of anyone
selling lands without the whole Nation's approval. He was supposedly prosperous through his land
dealing with the whites. Yet Vann, who also signed the same treaty, was one of the richest men
not only in the Cherokee Nation but in the United States, when he died at the age of 41. Since he
signed the treaty, and Doublehead's signature was forged, why was Doublehead singled out for
execution?

Thomas Jefferson wrote the removal policy and openly supported genocide of Native Americans
declared, "If ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe we will never lay it down
till that tribe is exterminated, or is driven beyond the Mississippi.... they will kill some of us; we
shall destroy all of them."

Doublehead would not allow the yonegas to take is people's land. Therefore, Jefferson's policy
was carried out and Doublehead was murdered for his resistance efforts.


2)The 'murder' of his second wife, The Vann's sister of his favorite wife.
As noted the Blood Law was used to deal with treason. This wife of Doublehead was executed
for treason and adultery. The pronouncement of brutality lodged by Vann was like the pot calling
the kettle black. Vann was so well known for his drunkenness, violent behavior, and abuse of his
wives that the Moravian missionarie's he befriended soon moved out of his home, terrorized by
him. 

3)To prove that his murder was justified, the Blood Law was not invoked against his killers?

As noted below, fearful of reprisals for their murder of Doublehead, Major Ridge moved quickly
to get the Blood Law abolished by the new Cherokee Constitution in 1808.

James Vann lived by the sword, James Vann died by the sword in 1809. While
celebrating at a tavern, a single shot rang out from a partially opened door and James Vann fell
dead, holding a bottle in one hand, a drink in the other. Vann's body was buried near the tavern
(and eventually disinyterred). Speculation as to who committed the crime is rampant even nearly
200 years after the act. Was it Alexander Saunders, whom Vann had exiled? Or maybe a relative
of Doublehead's, getting revenge for his kin's murder.

As to the others?

The signing of the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 is given as the reason for the execution of
Major Ridge and the others. It might have been but there was another, the murder of Doublehead. 

Death came early for John Ridge at his Indian Territory home on Honey Creek, near the
northwest corner of Arkansas. About 30 avengers dragged him from his bed and into his front
yard around dawn on June 22, 1839. They knifed him repeatedly before his distraught family. Old
Major Ridge, John's father, was ambushed a few hours later while riding past a small bluff on the
road to Washington County, Ark. Rifle-toting bushwhackers opened fire, hitting him five times.
Boudinot, at about the same time, was approached by three Cherokees who told him they needed
to get medicine. One of the men quickly dropped behind him and stabbed him in the back.
Another axed him in the head, the same fate Doublehead met. Boudinot's brother, Stand Watie,
was also marked for death that day. But Boudinot's cries on being stabbed were heard by friends.
Warned, Stand Watie fled. Finally, the avengers were thought to be led by Saunders?

Justifiable assassination or murder? The evidence is clear that Doublehead was murdered for his
resistance to the US Government and its supporters, both white and red.


36 CHEROKEE TRAGEDY

"The resentment grew more bitter still when news leaked out that
a secret agreement, unsanctioned by the Cherokee council, had reserved two tracts for
Doublehead's use at the mouths of the Clinch and Hiwassee rivers. To make matters worse, a
similar reserve at the mouth of Duck River was held for Tahlonteskee, Doublehead's kinsman. As
a result, many Cherokees considered Doublehead a traitor. His leasing of farmlands to white men
on the tracts he had secured at Muscle Shoals through the treaty he had signed at Washington in
December 1806 added fuel to the fire. Moreover, another land deal with Colonel Meigs was
brewing in the summer of 1807. But Doublehead's land manipulations were only one reason for
his having become the most abhorred chief in the Nation. "As he sought office with selfish views,"
McKenney wrote, "he very naturally abused it, and made himself odious by his arbitrary conduct.
He not only executed the laws according to his own pleasure, but caused innocent
men to be put to death who thwarted his views. The chiefs and the people began alike to fear
him."
     Certain principal men- the Vann faction led the movement- determined that he should die
for his crimes. The Ridge, Alexander Saunders, and James Vann were "selected" as his
executioners. The Ridge had detested Doublehead since the outrage at Cavett's Station, but Vann
had a family score to settle. Doublehead had married the sister of his favorite wife and had treated
her brutally, having 
Beaten her when she was pregnant until she died. The Vanns regarded the death as murder;
revenge became a paramount issue in their household. Vann's wife had even vowed to seek
vengeance with her own hands and she pushed her husband to act. He was still incensed over a
row he had had with Doublehead in Washington when he had called the Speaker a traitor. "High
words [had] ensued," according
to Payne, "and dirks were drawn; but the parties were separated and no blood was shed." Now,
however, Vann volunteered to execute the "traitorous murderer," with the help of Saunders and
The Ridge. The three decided to stage the execution before a large assembly, the August meeting
of the Cherokees to collect the tribal annuity from the American agent.
     On the way to the agency at Hiwassee, Vann fell ill (drunk) and could not proceed. He
yielded "the honor of destroying Doublehead" to Saunders and The Ridge, and they decided to
eliminate the chief not as a wife-killer but as a traitor and a lawless speculator in Cherokee lands.
On reaching Hiwassee, The Ridge went with Saunders to Mcintosh's tavern to wait for
Doublehead's arrival. While they waited, the chief paddled up to Hiwassee in his canoe and,
without their knowledge, rode off on horseback to a ball-play three miles away. He did not return
to town till long after dark, and when he entered the tavern, he seemed excited, half drunk. There
was a bandage on his hand. An old white man named John Rogers began to revile him.
     Doublehead replied: "You live by sufferance among us. I've never seen you in council or
on the warpath. You have no place among the chiefs. Hush and interfere no more with me."
     Someone suddenly seized a candle that flickered on the table and held it close to
Doublehead's face. A moment later The Ridge darted and blowing the candle out, he shot
Doublehead through the jaw near the lower part of the ear. In the darkness he and Saunders
slipped from the tavern, thinking their purpose had been achieved, that the traitor was dead.
     Soon they heard that Doublehead had killed another man that afternoon. The ball-play had
drawn a large crowd, and at dusk while the spectators milled from the field, excited over the
bloodiness of the game, "the whiskey kegs of the whites met them in every direction." Many were
soon tipsy, including Doublehead and a warrior named Bone-Polisher, who approached the chief
as he sat astride 
his horse, and grasping the bridle, called him a traitor. Doublehead ordered him to release the
bridle and go away or he would kill him, but Bone-Polisher became more abusive. Doublehead
drew his pistol; he threw the priming out, intending merely to snap it at his assailant to intimidate
him. But enough priming remained to discharge the pistol. Bone-Polisher retaliated with a blow
from his tomahawk, chopping off one of Doublehead's thumbs, "all but some skin by which it
hung." After that Doublehead lashed out with his pistol and drove the cock so deep into
Bone-Polisher's skull that the warrior died. And so more blood had flowed to justify The Ridge's
act, if it needed vindication.
     But The Ridge and Saunders also learned that Doublehead was still alive, though his jaw
was shattered, with the ball lodged in his neck. They heard that during the night the tavernkeeper
had moved the chief to his house, thrusting him in secret through a back window; that, later still,
Doublehead was spirited off to a safer place. It took Saunders and The Ridge till after dawn to
find the new hiding spot- the loft of a Mr. Black, who taught in Gideon Blackburn's school. With
war whoops they rushed into the room where Doublehead lay, two men of Bone-Polisher's clan
joining their company. As they approached, the wounded chief sprang up, drew a dirk, caught at a
pistol, but "the sheet clung to his limbs & clogged his heels." The Ridge and Saunders leveled
their guns at him, but both missed fire. Doublehead sprang on The Ridge and grappled at him with
a
terrible, desperate strength, till Saunders reprimed his pistol and shot
him through the hips. Then Saunders drove his tomahawk into the chiefs forehead with such force
that it took two hands and a foot against the cloven skull to pry it loose. A third Indian pounded
the head with a spade and crushed it to a pulp.
     After the killing, The Ridge "addressed the crowd who were drawn together by this act of
violence, and explained his authority and his reasons." No one mourned the slaughtered chief,
unless it was Meigs, who had a treaty to conclude; nor was there any retaliation. The consensus
was that, however crudely, justice had been done.
     Doublehead's death on August 9, 1807, benefited the Cherokees in
a number of ways, including increased tribal unity. It led to the entire
abolition of the Blood Law at the Council of Broomstown on September 11, 18o8, which
abrogation was reaffirmed in 1810 at Oostanaula. As most Cherokees felt that the destruction of
Doublehead was justified and that his relatives should not be forced by clan responsibility to take
revenge, there was an incentive to remove the question from the jurisdiction of the clans and base
punishment on
a sounder principle than mere retaliation. Gideon Blackburn, spurred by the fact that "the
execution" had taken place in the house of one of his teachers, encouraged sentiments for reform
among a number of principal men. And when the Cherokees came together at Broomstown, they
took pains to negate the Blood Law when framing their first written constitution. In reporting the
reforms to
Jedidiah Morse, Blackburn declared that "All criminal accusations must be established by
testimony; the infliction of punishment is made a governmental transaction." This provision in
itself proscribed the Blood Law as an instrument of clan revenge. But the question was resolved
even more specifically. "One law," Blackburn wrote, "is that no murderer shall be punished until
he has been
proved guilty before the council." Thus, The Ridge was legally immune from retaliation from
Doublehead's clan, though enforcement of the new provisions was another matter."

[Cherokee Tragedy, Thurman Wilkins, The Mac Millan Company, 1970]