Native Stewardship / The Monacan Peoples

Native Stewardship, also, The Monacan Peoples. . Native Stewardship – Into the 1700s, the region known today as Appalachian Virginia was a hub for long-distance trade routes, a dynamic setting for shifting alliances between Native peoples of different languages and nations. For thousands of years, Indigenous people had lived in and migrated throughout the region. They hunted, fished, and cultivated wild edibles along with domesticated crops like corn, beans, and squash. , What we now call the New River Valley has long been stewarded by Eastern Siouan people. Before colonization, they called themselves “Yesa,” or “The People,” and identified with the Monacan Alliance. , Native settlements in the Virginia Tech area included the current locations of Ellett Valley (known as the Shannon site), Bissett Park in Radford (the Trigg site), and Kentland Farm, both on the New River. Archaeological explorations have revealed such features of Yesa culture as ceramic technology and settlement patterns. , Beginning around 1750, German, English, and Scots-Irish colonists moved into the area, severely disrupting Indigenous societies and their trading, hunting, and settlement patterns. By that time, moreover, the Virginia colonial government had barred Native people from voting, marrying white people, or testifying in court against white people. , Despite centuries of racism and suppression, Eastern Siouan peoples persevered. The Monacan Indian Nation achieved state recognition as a tribe in 1989 and federal recognition in 2018. In 2022, Indigenous peoples were fighting to protect the land from fracked gas pipelines and from development that threatened the ancient Monacan of Rassawek at the confluence of the Rivanna and James rivers. , [Captions (top to bottom)] , . Model of an Eastern Siouan town, c. 1650, based on archaeological findings at what is known as the Shannon site. (Mary Kate Claytor, 2021) , . Victoria Ferguson at the Monacan Indian Living History Exhibit at Natural Bridge State Park, 2019 (Heather Rousseau, Roanoke Times) , . Clay pots and gourds from the Monacan Indian Living History Exhibit at Natural Bridge State Park, 2017-2019 (Victoria Ferguson). Ceramic technology was an important part of eastern woodland culture. Monacans used earthen clay to make pots, bowls, beads, and pipes. , The Monacan Peoples – The French and Indian War (1754-1763) was triggered by Virginia setters' efforts to expand into the vast Ohio River Valley, claimed by various Algonquian and Iroquoian nations as well as by France. European colonists, mostly Germans and Scots-Irish, had been migrating into the New River Valley portion, typically through Pennsylvania. James Patton developed the Draper's Meadows tract, 10,000 acres enveloping present-day Blacksburg and Virginia Tech and stretching beyond Price's Fork. , Between 1755 and 1758, Shawnee warriors made a series of raids into what is now western Virginia. Retaliating against incursions into their territory, and seeking to discourage further settlement, they burned cabins and killed or kidnapped 300 Virginia colonists. One such raid, at Draper's Meadows, included the abduction and subsequent escape of Mary Draper Ingles. For a time, Native resistance proved effective, as the surviving settlers at Draper's Meadows fled east. , As the war ended, England sought to keep the peace with Native peoples by prohibiting colonists from settling west of the Proclamation Line of 1763, which ran along the Eastern Continental Divide and thus through what is now Blacksburg. In 1768, though, the Treaty of Fort Stanwix pushed the boundary much farther west. William Preston, a nephew of James Patton, bought land from earlier Draper's Meadows setters, and in 1774 established Smithfield plantation there. , Settlers transformed lands once under the stewardship of Monacan people into farms, large and small, often, like Smithfield, worked by enslaved Black people – between the 1770s and the 1860s, more than 200 at the Preston properties alone. As plantations developed, the proportion of enslaved people in Montgomery County surged to more than one in five. , The New River Valley was also a major thoroughfare for slave trading along what had once been Indigenous routes. Virginia slaveholders sold hundreds of thousands of enslaved people farther south, sundering countless Black families and enslaved communities. Many took an overland journey, whether from Alexandria or Richmond, west to Staunton, down what would become U.S. Route 11 (and then I-81), and on to Tennessee and then New Orleans. , [Captions (top to bottom)] , . This map overlays the Draper's Meadows lots with 1965 Blacksburg. William Preston established Smithfield on what are shown here as Lots 1 and 2 (acquired from original owners William Ingles and George Draper) as well as Lot 3. The Prestons later bought much of Lot 4, on which a cabin had been built that is now Solitude house. , . Slave traders marching people past Christiansburg en route to Tennessee, 1855 (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)