72 JAMES AND POTOMAC ARCHEOLOGY [ethnology 



These various tribes huuted and fought over all this region. Each 

 year, before going into winter quarters, they set fire to the dry grass 

 in order to prevent timber from growing and thus diminishing the area 

 of their hunting grounds. For this reason the country was almost 

 devoid of trees, except along the streams and to some extent in the 

 mountains, the forests which now exist having sprung up since Spots- 

 wood's day. 



In 1744 one of the chiefs of the Six Nations, at the treaty of Lan 

 caster, Pennsylvania, claimed that all the country west of the Blue ridge 

 belonged to his people by right of concjuest, and a clear title to it could 

 only be obtained from thean.' How long they may have been in posses- 

 sion of it is not known. Golden ^ states that they formerly lived near the 

 present site of Montreal, whence they were driven by the Adirondack 

 Indians shortly before the French settled in Canada in 1603, and settled 

 where they were found by the whites, and that they did not extend their 

 coiKjuests into the south till furnished with firearms by the English ; but 

 Smith records that he saw several canoes full of them in Chesapeake 

 bay in 1008, and that they were then known and feared by all the east- 

 ern Indians. He speaks of procuring from them arrows, shields, etc., 

 but makes no mention of firearms or other weapons that they could have 

 obtained from the whites, which is very good evidence they did not 

 possess them at that time. By the seaboard Indians they were called 

 " Massawomec," but are better known by the various names of Mingo, 

 Mengwe, Iroquois, Maqua, and Five Nations, or, after the admission 

 of the Tuskarora, Six Nations.' 



Besides the aboriginal villages above mentioned, a number of Shaw- 

 nee had settlements along South branch until the wliites became numer- 

 ous enough to drive them out; the villages above Romney may have 

 belonged to them. At the samei^eriod the Delaware were represented 

 by a branch upon the Cacapon; while the Seneca had a village opi)osite 

 Hanging rock, and another at the mouth of Seneca creek, which takes 

 its name from that fact. It is not known to what nation or tribe the 

 Senedo belonged, as there is no reference to them in the older books; 

 it is possible that the name was invented to account for the term 

 Shenandoah, which is popularly derived from them and interpreted 

 " Sparkling daughter of the shining stars." On the earliest deeds it 

 is spelled "Gerando," and by successive orthographic changes has 

 reached its present form." It is really a corruption of the Iroquoian 

 word "Tyonondoa," meaning literally "there it has a large (high) 

 mountain;" that is, "in that place there is a high range of mountains." 

 On some old maps the name "The Endless Mountains" is given to some 

 of the ranges of Pennsylvania and Virginia, probably an attempted 

 translation of the above meaning; the descriptive portion of the word 



'Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, vol. iv, p. 512. 



^Colden C, History of tlie Five Nations, 1747, p. 2.?. 



3 Jefferson, Notes, p. 350; Craig, N. B., Olden Time, 1876, vol. i, p. 4. 



