Warren’s Heritage: Native American History-Part 3

Yesterday in our series on Native peoples of Virginia we completed a brief look at the history of the eight state-recognized tribes of Virginia and the locations they still call home, beginning with the Mattaponi and Upper Mattaponi, Chickahominy and Eastern Chickahominy, Rappahannock and Pamunkey. Today we will conclude this review with the Nansemond of Tidewater and the Monacan Nation of the Piedmont.

The Nansemond Tribe today lives in the cities of Suffolk and Chesapeake (remember when Suffolk City used to be Nansemond County before 1972?) The Nansemond were a tribe of the Powhatan,
and very early in the 1600s were driven away from their farmland along the Nansemond River. They held reservation lands in Virginia until 1792, at which point these lands reverted to the state and the Nansemond existed as a community, albeit unorganized, for the next 130 years. In the 1920s the Nansemond reorganized and today claim around 300 tribal members, and are planning a museum on the Nansemond River.

The Monacan Indian Nation is the eighth and most recent Native American tribe in Virginia to receive state recognition, earning that officially in 1989. Centered at the community of Bear Mountain in Amherst County, Virginia, south of Charlottesville, the Monacans have a presence historically and still today in the counties of Nelson, Bedford, Albemarle and other adjoining counties. Not of the Algonquin speaking Powhatan, the Siouan speaking Monacan were related and/or allied to the Saponi and Occaneechi of southern Virginia and the Tuscarora of North Carolina. Today’s Saponi and Occaneechi tribes are centered in the northern piedmont of North Carolina and the Tuscarora removed almost completely to New York, but in the 1700s some of the survivors of these marginalized tribes moved to live amongst the Monacans.

The Monacans very likely also absorbed the Manhoacs, a tribe reported by John Smith in 1607 to be living along the headwaters of the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers, in what today are the western parts of Rappahannock and Fauquier Counties, bordering Warren County. The Manahoacs in all probability traversed what is now Warren County — especially to gain access to the Flint Run area of the Fork District, where stone for arrow and spear points was quarried – and quite possibly resided here, making today’s Monacan Indian Nation a descendant population at some level of the original inhabitants of our immediate area.

Always distrustful of the English, and living farther west in Virginia than the Powhatan, the Monacans avoided contact when possible with the colonists from their first contact in 1607 with Jamestown explorers to the 1760s, at which time settlement had encroached into every part of their homeland in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge along the James River. Thomas Jefferson
recorded a visit of Monacans to Monticello, the guests paying respects at a cemetery burial mound of their people that had become part of the Jefferson property. Jefferson eventually excavated this mound, acquiring in the process the reputation of being the “Father of Archaeology in America.”

During the 1700s some Monacans migrated west or north, but a Monacan community along the upper James River always remained. The Monacans worked tobacco near Lynchburg for generations in the 1800s, preserving their community identity all the while, but it was in the 1920s that Virginia laws passed that prohibited the intermarriage of Indians and Whites and prohibited Indians from identifying themselves legally drove many Monacans away from Virginia, those remaining no longer living as openly as Indians. The modern rebirth of the Monacan Nation is drawing attention to this fascinating Native American community in the heart of Virginia who, since recorded history in Virginia has occupied the same homeland along the upper James River.