Abstract
Indians of Virginia. When English settlers reached Virginia early in the seventeenth century, they found the country from the river falls to the mountains was claimed by tribes of the Monacan confederacy belonging to the Siouan stock, who were at enmity with the Algonquian tribes, some of whom they had displaced not long before and whose villages lined the shores of the James from its mouth to the Monacan borders. The country west of the Blue Ridge was claimed at a later date by the Iroquois, but they do not appear ever to have settled there. The evidence of occupation of Albe-marle County, documentary and archaeological, has been examined by Mr. David I. Bushnell, Jr. (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collect., 89, No. 7), who describes a number of stone implements and the sites on which they were found. A large part consist of stone arrow-points from -hunting-grounds. The marked weathering of some of the implements is contrasted with the unchanged condition of others which have been exposed to identical conditions for two centuries and a half, pointing to the high antiquity of the former. There were evidently two periods of occupation, of which the earlier may be connected with an early culture found elsewhere, as for example, in Connecticut. This culture is there associated with soapstone mines. Such mines also occur in the piedmont of Virginia, but soapstone objects have not been found in the area under consideration. It is suggested, therefore, that the early culture of Albemarle County may be part of an early culture complex which once extended widely over a region ranging from the New England States southward through Virginia to a boundary difficult to define.
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Research Items. Nature 132, 1007–1009 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/1321007a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1321007a0