An author starts a landslide

Thomas Troxel was born in 1893 in Scott County, Tennessee.  He wrote a small booklet in 1958 called Legion Of The Lost Mine telling the romanticized story of Cherokee Chief Doublehead and Big Jake Troxel and the blossoming courtship between Troxel and Doublehead's daughter Princess Cornblossom.  The frontier love story tells of the noble chief with the beautiful daughter who meets the adventurous woodsman from the colonies.  Adventures, death, a hidden silver mine, and a marriage are all featured in this fanciful tale.

(Thomas Troxel, author of Legion Of The Lost Mine)

Troxel was born to white parents, yet ten years after writing this book he began claiming that he was chief of a nation of Indians know as the As'Quaw people.  In an article featured in the Knoxville News Sentinel, Troxel is photographed wearing a headdress and claims that Chief Doublehead, a factual Cherokee chief, was leader of the As'Quaw tribe.  The article is in its entirety here: 

Well how much damage has been done?  The mythical Princess Cornblossom now has a state historical marker in Stearns, Kentucky which tells the basic premise featured in Legion Of The Lost Mine.  This marker also mentions the mythical As'Quaw nation that Troxel inherited from his ancestors preserving a lie on the American landscape.