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Indians
in the Mountains
Little
is known from the written record of the Indians who lived in the
mountains of western Virginia.
John Lederer was the first European to view the Shenandoah
Valley from the Blue Ridge in 1670 when his party traveled up
the headwaters of the Rappahannock River.
The Robert Fallam and Thomas Batts expedition of 1671 marked
the first contact with the Totero people living in either the
Roanoke or New River Valleys.
By 1706, when Louis Michel, a French Swiss traveler, proceeded
up the Shenandoah River to a point near Edinburg, he noted that
"All this country is uninhabited except by some Indians."
The area was presumed devoid of any permanent settlements,
with only hunting parties of Shawnees, Susquehannocks, and Iroquois
moving through.
Thomas
Walker, a physician who became a surveyor for the Royal Land Company, saw
no Indians in his 1750 expedition through southwestern
Virginia.
Twice, however, he came across Indian tracks on the trail.
When he reached Long Island in the Holston River at Kingsport,
Tennessee, he described an abandoned village that may have
been Cherokee: "In the Fork between the Holston's and the
North River, are five Indian Houses built with logs and covered
with bark, and there were an abundance of Bones, some whole Pots
and Pans, some broken and many pieces of mats and Cloth."
By
the time Europeans came to settle western Virginia, it had become
another region void of Indian villages.
The only natives sighted were hunting, trading, and raiding
groups of Cherokees and Shawnees passing through the region.
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An unusual
copper pendant
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