SIOl' 

 MOONET 



j^ey] the "tacci" or "dogi." 29 



Near the village Lederer noticed a pyramid of stones, and was told 

 that it represented the nnniber of a colony which had left a neighboi- 

 in*;- country because of overpopulation, a condition easily reached among 

 hunting tribes. The emigrants, having been chosen by lot, had come 

 to their present location under the leadership of a chief called Monack, 

 from whom they derived their name of Monacan (Lederer, 1). As the 

 explorer stopped with them oidy long enough to learn the road to the 

 next tribe, his version of their migration legend nuist be taken with due 

 allowance. 



In another place Lederer states that the country between the falls of 

 the rivers and the mountains was formerly owned by the "Tacci" or 

 "Dogi," who were then extinct, and their place occui)ied by the Mahoc 

 (not identified), Nuntaneuck or Nuutaly (not identified), Nahyssan 

 (Monahassano or Tutelo), Sai)on (Saponi), Managog (Maunahoac), Man- 

 goack (Nottoway), Akenatzy (Occaneechi), and Monakin. All these, 

 he says, had one common language, in different dialects. This was 

 l)robably true, except as to tlie Nottoway, who were of Iroquoian stock. 

 He describes the region, the i)iediuont section of Virginia and Carolina, 

 as a pleasant and fruitful country, with open spaces clear of timber and 

 abounding in game. Farther on he says again that the Indians of this 

 piedmont region are none of those whom the English removed out of 

 Virginia, but that they had been driven by an enemy from the north- 

 west and directed to settle here by an oracle, according to their story, 

 more than four hundred years before. He also says that the ancient 

 inhabitants of the region, presumably the Tacci, were far more rude and 

 barbarous than the more recent occupants, and fed only on raw fiesh 

 and fish, until these latter taught them how to plant corn and instructed 

 them in the use of it (Lederer, 2). AsLederer's narrative was written 

 originally in Latin, his names must be pronounced as in that language. 



In regard to the origin of these tribes, Lawson, speaking of tlie 

 Indians of Virginia and Carolina, says that they claimed that their 

 ancestors had come from the west, where the sun sleeps (Lawson, 1). 

 The Catawba, as will be shown later on, had a tradition of a northern 

 origin. All these statements and traditions concerning the eastern 

 Siouan tribes, taken in connection with what we know of the history 

 and traditions of the western tribes of the same stock, seem to indicate 

 the upper region of the Ohio — the Alleghany, Monongahela, and Kan- 

 awha country — as their original home, from which one branch crossed 

 the mountains to the waters of Virginia and Carolina while the other 

 followed along the Ohio and the lakes toward the west. Linguistic 

 evidence indicates that the eastern tribes of the Siouan family were 

 established upon the Atlantic slope long before the western tribes of 

 that stock had reached the plains. 



The Tacci or Dogi, mentioned as the aborigines of Virginia and Caro- 

 lina, may have been only a mythic people, a race of mcmsters or unnat- 

 ui'fVl belugs, such as we find in the mythologies of all tribes, TUey have 



