26 SIOUAN TRIBES OF THE EAST. KNoroov 



and Batts, in 1670 and 1671, which supplied the first definite informa- 

 tion in regard to the country along the base of the mountains. Under 

 the colonial period we may include everything else, as after the Revo- 

 lution the small remnant incorporated with the Iroquois in Canada vir- 

 tually disappeared from history. Up to 1670 the Monacan tribes had 

 been but little disturbed by the whites, although there is evidence that 

 the wars waged against them by the Iroquois were keeping them con- 

 stantly shifting about. Their country had not been penetrated, except- 

 ing by a few traders who kept no journals, and only the names of those 

 living immediately on the frontiers of Virginia were known to the 

 whites. Chief among these were the Monacan proper, having their 

 village a short distance above Richmond. In 1670 Lederer crossed the 

 country in a diagonal line from the present Richmond to Catawba 

 river, on the frontiers of South Carolina, and a year later a party under 

 Batts explored the country westward across the Blue ridge to the 

 headwaters of New river. Thenceforward accounts were heard of 

 Nahyssan, Sapona, Totero, Occaneechi, and others, consolidated after- 

 ward in a single body at the frontier. Fort Christanna, and there- 

 after known collectively as Saponi or Tutelo, The Monacan pro^jer 

 form the connecting link between the earlier and the later period. The 

 other tribes of this connection were either extinct or consolidated under 

 other names before 1700, or were outside of the territory known to 

 the first writers. For this reason it is difiicult to make the names of 

 the earlier tribes exactly synonymous with those known later, although 

 the i^roof of lineal descent is sometimes beyond question. 



We shall deal first with the Monacan and confederated tribes men- 

 tioned by Smith. According to this explorer the Monacan confederacy 

 in 1607 held the country along James river above the Powhatan, 

 whose frontier was about the falls at which Richmond was afterward 

 located. Among the tribes of the confederacy Smith enumerated the 

 Monacan proper, the Mowhemenchugh, Massinnacack, Monahassanugh, 

 and Monasickai)anough, and says there were others, which he does 

 not name. Like their neighbors, the cognate Manahoac on the Rap- 

 pahannock, they were "very barbarous" and subsisted chiefly by hunt- 

 ing and by gathering wild fruits. They were in alliance with the Mana- 

 hoac and at constant war with the Powhatan, and in mortal dread 

 of the Massawomeke or Iroquois beyond the mountains (Smith, 7). 

 He seems to imply that the Monacan tribes named spoke different lan- 

 guages, although in another place (Smith, 8) we are led to infer that 

 they had but one. The ditterence was probably only dialectic, although 

 the cognate and confederate tribes farther southward probably used 

 really different languages. 



Strachey derives the name Monacan from the Powhatan word mono- 

 hacan or monowhauk, "sword," while Heckewelder, through the Dela- 

 ware language, translates it "spade" or "digging instrument." It is 

 more probable that the word is not Algonquian at all, but that the 



