Chances are that sometime this fall every PATC member will hear the mountains beckon. A good number of you will actually get up and answer the call, heading to the Blue Ridge to hike familiar trails, explore new sights and soak in the l beauty of the season.

This is nothing new.  People have been drawn to these ancient mountains long before the National Park, the Skyline Drive, or the Appalachian Trail were created. Centuries ago European pioneers found their way to the mountains, Often with the help of Indian guides or trails. Some settled the sides of the mountains, clearing forests for homes and farms and dramatically changing the landscape. Reaching back further in time there is evidence that these mountains were visited regularly by nomadic groups and later by tribes more settled into village and farming communities. The fall season drew large numbers of hunters and gatherers to these mountain forests and streams to harvest nuts, roots, and berries, to select wood and stone for tool-making, and to hunt the deer, turkey, elk, and bear fattened by abundant food supplies. Unlike the Europeans that came later, these people left little trace of their presence and left the great expanses of forests relatively undisturbed. What little we do know about these first people of Virginia comes from archeologists, written accounts of European explorers, and stories passed down through generations of Virginia Indians.

Archeological evidence suggests that no permanent settlements were ever made in the mountains. Only temporary encampments have been found, but some of these dates back as far as the late Ice Age period 9500 - 8000 BC As the climate warmed and nomadic groups became more settled, more permanent sites were established to the east of the Blue Ridge in Piedmont and in parts of the Shenandoah Valley to the west. Among the better-known tribes in Piedmont were the Monacans and the Manahoacs. These were the people that German explorer John Lederer encountered on his trip to the Blue Ridge in 1669. Lederer is credited with being the first white man to climb the Blue Ridge with the help of native guides. Most likely the guides came from one or both of these Piedmont groups.

Captain John Smith had encountered a large group of Manahoacs earlier in 1608 at the falls of the Rappahannock River and he learned from a Powhatan informant about the existence of five Monacan settlements along the James River. The Manahoacs, he found, were friends of the Monacans and enemies of the Powhatans, the name commonly given to the coastal tribes in the Jamestown area. These Piedmont tribes probably did what they could to prevent the Powhatans from venturing west into the mountains, especially during the crucial autumn harvest. Much more is known about the Powhatan tribes thanks to the reports and drawings of colonists at Jamestown Settlement established in 1607 as well as earlier explorers to the area. These early years of contact provide the least-disturbed picture of what life might have been like for these native people before the English occupation. Of course, these reports contain considerable misinformation and bias but they are central to any study of these people and their lifeways.

The name "Powhatan" refers to the Algonquian-speaking tribes of the Virginia tidewater or coastal plain. By 1607 many of the villages in this area were brought under one rule by the powerful "werowance" or chief, Wahunsunacock, to form the Powhatan empire. This paramount chief came from the town of Powhatan, near the falls of the James River and he used his hometown name to refer to himself and his chiefdom. At the time of English contact, the native Tidewater population numbered around 14,000. There were hundreds of settled towns and satellite villages built near the Chesapeake Bay or in the inlets and rivers which flow into it. (Continued)