Many years ago there was a tough Indian tribe leader named Chief Double Head. He was one of the most known leaders in Florence, Alabama. He was a tough and strong man with a big heart. He had scars on his face from wolves and other tribe fights. All of the scars give off a different story.
He was a role model to many of the children in his tribe, and even to many parents. He was one of the fiercest men of all of Florence Alabama. He took all of his tribe on a long adventure just to be the first Indian tribe to settle in Florence. The part of Florence he and his tribe settled in was blue water creek. One of the most peaceful places you could ever find. The water is sparkling clear and is covered with trees as high as the sky. The smell is as fresh as you can imagine.
It was a hard time for the tribe having to adapt to the new atmosphere, but the tribe didn’t give up and my great, great, great, great uncle kept supporting his tribe. Through the freezing cold nights and long hot days Chief Double Head still put the people of his tribe first. He was a kind and caring man but if you did something wrong you’re going to get your share of trouble.
After about five years of the tribe living there in blue water creek, outside of Florence Alabama there were some sheriffs that started making trouble with my uncles tribe. The sheriffs wanted to try and kick his tribe off of the land so they could make it a town. The tribe wasn’t about to let the sheriffs take over their land where they have settled and started to make a living. The sheriffs went to blue water creek thinking it would be easy to take from the tribe. After many kidnappings and small fights between the two my uncle had had enough of it. He wanted to put a stop to it. He and his tribe had planned to sneak attack on the sheriffs and scare them off so they would have no more problems and could just live life how they wanted.
After many weeks of making planes they finally went for it, they attacked the sheriffs. They didn’t want to hurt anybody. They just wanted to scare them out of Florence. Well, the sheriffs took this as a threat and reacted in fighting. The tribe kept their heads up and never gave up. Finally the sheriffs found out the hard way that the tribe was stronger than they had thought. So the sheriffs ran off to a small town named McGee town. A few weeks had gone by and the tribe thought they were free to live how they wanted again. But what the tribe didn’t know is that the sheriffs were just looking for more people to come and help them make the tribe leave their land.
About two more months had gone by and the sheriffs had found at least seventeen more men to help scare off the tribe. They planned to sneak up on the tribe at dark the next night. Luckily Chief Double Head knew something was going to happen. He had a few close friends of his stay close to the blue water creek at night to be safe. Then all of a sudden that next night one of the tribe members heard a weird noise as if someone was in the water sneaking up on him. The tribe member didn’t want to panic because he thought that he might have been surrounded. He slowly, calmly went back to the tribe village and when he got there went straight to Chief Double Head and told him he wasn’t sure if it was a person or not but he wanted to be sure. Chief Double Head made the big mistake by ignoring it. What he didn’t know was that in the next hour or so they were going to be under attack.
The other tribe member, still not feeling so strong about it being nothing, went and told some of the other tribe’s people. He told them to grab their weapons or anything to protect themselves and their families. About an hour later nothing happened. One of the sheriff’s people must have been close enough to see and hear the tribe member tell chief Double Head what he had heard and told the main sheriff they needed to plan it another day. The sheriff knowing what the tribe was capable of decided it would be best if they went another day or night. The sheriff planned to go two days from that night.
The next day Chief Double Head started to feel comfortable that the sheriffs were done messing with the tribe. He told the tribes people to stop worrying because they would be fine. That next day his people went hunting and got two buffalo’s so they feasted that night and had a little dance. Well the sheriff saw this as a great opportunity to attack and scare the tribe off of their own land. The sheriff gathered all of his men to attack on his go! At first the sheriff wanted to see if a few gun shots would scare them off so he and a couple others shot a few rounds into the air as warning shots. Because of the tribe having a feast and party nobody from the tribe heard the shots. The sheriff thought the tribe was just ignoring the shots to show that they weren’t afraid. So they lit a torch and rushed in on the tribes land on their horses yelling and shooting their guns in the air again. Some of the tribe’s people took this act as a threat so they sprinted to their huts and grabbed their bows, spears, and tomahawk’s and took fire at the sheriff and his men. With about three of the sheriff’s men already dead one of his men thought they should back down but the sheriff stood tall and fought back. There were a few of men that said they didn’t sign up to kill anyone but just to scare them off. Those three people then started to try and protect the tribe by firing at the sheriff and other men’s lower body to hurt them enough to leave. This made the sheriff furious so he took those three men out in a heartbeat. This allowed time for the tribe to still gather weapons.
By this time the sheriff moved to plan B which was too kill anyone in the way and torch their huts. This was very tragic for the tribe. But Chief Double Head did not show that he was upset. He kept his chin up and fought back like a crazy person in a biker bar fight. He and seven other of the tribe’s people fought back with pride to keep their land. It got down to where the sheriff was just going to torch the huts and ride off. The sheriff and the men he had left did so. Chief Double Head heard a man in one of the torched huts yelling for help. He ran as fast as he could to the hut. He ran into the hut and saved the man but for some reason Chief Double Head didn’t know why. He got the man out of the house and then heard another man across the village yelling again because the same thing happened. Chief Double Head got on his horse because it was on the complete opposite side of the village and rode like the wind. He got to the second hut and jumped off of his horse. He sprinted inside the hut and saved the man. The man was stuck under a log. Chief Double Head tugged and pulled with all of his might. Luckily he was strong enough and finally picked up the log enough for the man to crawl out. He then slammed the log down to the dusty hot ground, and slung the man onto his back. He ran out of the hut and gently put the man down on the soft grass. The man had passed out so Chief had gone and got a bucket of water and splashed it on the man’s face. The man woke up screaming and yelling out, “MY CHILD MY CHILD!”
Chief didn’t quite understand what the man was saying, but he could tell something was wrong. With all the other people dealing with their own problems like their families, nobody really noticed what was going on with the chief and the other man. The man finally gathered enough oxygen in his lungs to speak and say, “Can you go help my baby son! PLEASE?” The man cried. Chief went in the house in a hurry looking for the child. He found the child but it was too late, the baby was dying. He sprinted out of the hut with the baby covered in black smoke not breathing. The man he had first saved was dead by the time the chief had got outside, and the baby was also dead. Chief Double Head was not about to let them both die, so he started doing CPR on both of them. The baby was obviously not coming back to life, but he kept trying on the baby’s father.
After about three or four minutes the man woke up with burns all on his face and black smoke all over his body. The man was in so much pain it hurt him so much to move. Chief’s new project was to keep this man alive. The long and dreadful night went by slowly but surely. The next morning with no sleep chief was still going around trying to find people that needed help. The man that chief had saved somehow got better and was up in walking in about two or three weeks. But still from then on had trouble breathing. About a month later after everyone started to go back to normal and rebuild their huts and homes. Chief was still furious that the sheriff had done what he did and killed some innocent people. So chief gathered the other two most furious and tough men out of the tribe and went on a search for the sheriff. They found the sheriff in a log cabin down in McGee town with some friend’s playing cards drunk from whisky. They busted the wooden door down and ran inside and hogtied them all. They were so drunk they had no idea what was happening.
As they went to put the three individual men on each horse, the sheriff’s clock fell out with a picture of his family. The chief saw it and then threw the man down to the hard rocky ground, and picked up the picture. He looked at the picture and thought to himself what on earth am I doing other than trying to get back at someone? What will this prove other then I’m a killer. This isn’t me he said to himself. Then one of the other men said lets go we need to get back home and show what these people had down to our home. Chief wasn’t about to let the men of easy but didn’t want to kill them because he thought of his own children and thought what they would do if he was killed. The other man from the tribe didn’t know what chief was doing other than staring at the picture. About three minutes later Chief Double Head folded the picture put it in the sheriff’s pocket, and picked him up and threw him onto the horse. Chief jumped onto his tall and soft horse and took off.
About half way back to Blue Water Creek chief stopped and told the other two tribe members what he stopped for and explained that he thought it was wrong to kill these men. The two men were speechless because they thought that he had wanted revenge as much as them. The men argued with him and said they are still taking them to the creek. Chief was ok with this and when they returned to the creek people started throwing things at the sheriff and his other men like rocks, stick, fruit, and vegetables. It was getting dark and the chief said they were going to tie them to a tree and he would watch them over night. The tribe thought this was a great idea. But what they didn’t know was that chief felt sorrow for these men.
It was around two or three in the morning and everyone was asleep except the chief and the three bad men. Chief said “I’ll make you a deal. I let you go and you never come back or speak of us again.”The sheriff agreed. Chief double head cut them free from the tree and went to sleep.
He woke up in the morning with people all around him freaking out that they were gone. He acted shocked and went with it, looking for them. The sheriff and other men were long gone. Then all of a sudden a kid that didn’t know better walked up to chief and asked why he let the men go? Chief still acted as if he hadn’t. The little boy said yes you did last night you cut them free and talked to them. One of the tribe members heard the little boy talking and started telling people he let them go. This got around really fast and people started questioning him. He stuck with his side of the story. Then someone noticed that the rope that had them tied up was cut and not untied. This clearly gave it away that Chief Double Head had let them go. Many were furious he had let them go so they started arguing at him that he shouldn’t have done this. Then they started saying you set this up. You did this on purpose. Chief asked everyone now why would I do this to the friends and families I have known for my whole life? People couldn’t think of why but still they accused him of all of this. They were thinking of making him not leader anymore but thought that was too nice. They all decided that they would make him no longer be chief and kick him from the tribe. They also gave him the name baby killer because they thought he let the baby die on purpose. They gave him no supplies and kicked him from the tribe and none of the tribe’s members felt sorrow for him. His wife and two sons didn’t even go with him they stayed with the tribe and the wife remarried one of the tribe’s people. Nobody really knows where he went from there but there were more stories about this Native American that I am kin to.



(I am related to Chief Double Head. He is my great, great, great, great, uncle. Where all this took place is in Blue Water Creek, Alabama, right outside of Florence. He was found in the town of McGee town not a wealthy man. Because of what he had been through he was the first ever person to be buried in butler cemetery. My great aunt Barbra lives right at Blue Water Creek. We always take walks down to the creek which is less than 100 yards away from her house. Every time I visit her and the rest of my family we always go looking for Chief Double Heads arrow heads. We would usually come back home after a couple hours with two or three arrow heads. We then would just keep adding it to our collection of the other hundreds of arrow head we have found. This is a really peaceful place the weather is always perfect and you would usually wake up with a few deer in her front yard. I love to visit here just to get out and involved in the outdoors. We go for about a week every time we go we just take a break from drama and just relax. The creek is always clear and flowing so it’s always at least 50 degrease or bellow. You can always see the fish swimming upstream and it’s just a scene you have to see for yourself.)