Native Americans and the
Shenandoah Valley

Human Timeline

9500-9000 BC – Humans first appear in the Shenandoah Valley, where the climate was cooler, with longer winters and shorter summers than we know today. These first inhabitants were descendants of the Asian immigrants who crossed the land bridge that once connected Asia and North America.

6000 BC – By this time, the early inhabitants adopted campsites that shifted with the seasons.

3000 BC – There is more use of stone bowls and use of mortar and pestle implements to grind food products. Humans tended to return to base camps, with some staying in the same place for extended periods.

1500 BC – Pottery and storage pits appear, creating more of a record and indicating surpluses of food and other goods.

1200-1000 BC – There is more evidence of pottery and less seasonal movement of camps.

420 BC – Stone burial mounds, once frequently seen in the Shenandoah Valley, appeared and were used mostly by the elite among these inhabitants.

900-1400 AD – Agriculture becomes important, especially crops such as corn, beans, and squash. There is significant growth in the population of the Valley. Shelter is the circular wigwam, made from posts sharpened and driven into the ground in a pattern about 15 feet in diameter. Until this period, life in the Valley had been generally peaceful.

1500-1700 AD – Fur trade begins with Europeans. Intergroup hostilities become more common. Susquehannocks become pre-eminent by late 1500s. During the 17^th century various native groups, including the Cherokee from what is now eastern Tennessee and the Iroquois from New York, used the Valley as a hunting ground and travel corridor.

Other Eastern Woodland Indians said to inhabit the Valley include Monacan, Tuscarora, Shawnee, Occoneechee, Piscataway, Nahyssan, Oenock, Oustback, Ushery, Massawomack, Pamunkey and Algonquin. By 1648, the League of Iroquois was dominant. In 1669-70, John Lederer led the first exploration of the Valley to leave records.

1700-1800 AD – European settlers began arriving about 1730. Many were German or Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania and Maryland. Settlement of the Shenandoah Valley was encouraged by England as a buffer against expanding French influence in the Ohio Valley. A treaty made at Albany, New York in 1722 was still in effect between the chiefs of the Five Nations and the governors of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Under this treaty, the Iroquois agreed to stay west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. White settlers were supposed to stay east of the mountains. Many of the early settlers were Quakers. The tribes, whose experience with Pennsylvania Quakers had been favorable, generally welcomed these new inhabitants of the Valley despite the treaty violations. The local Indians distrusted and avoided the “Long Knives,” settlers from eastern Virginia. The Great Warrior’s Path – now Route 11 – went close by four of the five Quaker meetinghouses established in the Valley. Among the stories handed down in Quaker families is one from the Benjamin Allen family, which settled on the Great Warrior’s Path where it crosses Smith’s Creek about 1734. An aged man of the Senedo tribe frequently visited the Allens and told them that their farm was the place of a great battle when the Catawbas slaughtered his whole tribe except for himself and another boy. The Indian raids of 1750-65 marked the last significant Indian activity in the Shenandoah Valley.

Shenandoah, Daughter of the Stars
Before the first intrepid white settlers penetrated the mountain wall to discover the beautiful valley between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies, Native Americans fished and hunted and enjoyed the valley’s bounty. An ancient legend describes the valley’s creation.

After the Great Spirit made the world, the morning stars came together on the shores of a quiet silver lake bordered with blue mountains. It was the most beautiful place they could see. Hovering above the quiet waters and lighting the mountain tops with their robes of fire, the stars sang their songs of joy and pledged to gather there every thousand years.

Once, when the stars were singing, there came a mighty crashing sound. The mountain wall tore asunder. Through the deep opening, the waters of the lake began to pour out and rush to the sea.

As time passed, the stars looked all over the earth for another place to meet. They finally agreed upon a lovely valley through which a winding river ran. Soon, the stars realized that this valley had been the bed of their beautiful lake and the blue mountains around it were the same ones they had lit with their robes of light in ages past.

The stars were so joyous they placed the brightest jewels from their crowns in the river where they still lie and sparkle. And ever since that day, the river and its valley have been called Shenandoah, Daughter of the Stars.

Modern scholars believe the name Shenandoah actually derives from three ancient Indian names: Senedo; Cenantua; and Sherando.

As European settlers moved into the valley, the recorded rumors circulating among the current tribes about an ancient primitive people known as Senedoes who had long since been conquered by the Iroquois.

The Shawnee name Cenantua referred to the mountain range now known as Masanutten.

Sherando was a fierce Iroquois chief who fought off the advances of the Virginia coastal tribes and who camped frequently along the headwaters of the Shenadoah River’s South Fork.

How Valley Indians Lived
The Native Americans who lived, camped, and criss-crossed the Shenandoah Valley for thousands of years before the arrival of European settlers are generally known as Eastern Woodland Indians. They usually lived in small groups instead of large settlements and often moved with the change of seasons.

Their home was a wigwam, not a teepee, built by sharpening the ends of birch or willow saplings, driving them into the ground in the shape of a circle and lashing them together to form a dome. The wigwams are covered in bark or woven mats and have a hole in the center to allow smoke to escape.

Near the wigwam is an efficient garden with corn, beans, and squash. Eastern Woodland Indians ground corn in large wooden mortars with stone pestles. The women made flour, meal, and grits to use for food. Meals are cooked in clay pots suspended over a fire. Clay deposits from the riverbanks provide the raw material for making pottery. The small pebbles and other impurities are removed and the clay is kneaded to remove all the air bubbles. Coils of clay are wound around and around until the clay pot is the proper shape. Once the pot has dried, it is decorated and then fired to make it durable.

Delaware tribal legend about how Shenandoah Caverns were discovered
This legend is called the Lodge of the Bears. Nearly 200 years before the first white settlers broached the mountains to settle in the Shenandoah Valley, the wigwams of a long lost race graced the hills above the caverns we now call Shenandoah. Among these foothills and on either side of the river, the Senedoes camped and hunted.

Tradition tells of the coming of the warlike Catawbas from the south. The Catawbas came to Senedo camps near the caverns and killed all the Senedoes except one aged man and a youth. But the victory of the Catawbas was short-lived because warrior bands of Delawares came through the gaps in the Blue Ridge Mountains and there was intermittent warfare for many years. From the Delaware tribe comes the legend of the discovery of the caverns.

There was a chieftain named Great Feather who camped on the banks of the Shenandoah River and whose prowess in war and peace made him a great leader of his people. He dreamed of the day his son, Tiatsi, would be a chieftain. One day, the mighty chief displeased Nogama, the ruling spirit of the mountains and the valley that lay between them. Tiatsi was a victim of Nogma’s wrath. Great Feather lay dead and Tiasti was made a cripple.

When this news reached the enemy camp, they set out to conquer Tiasti’s people, whose symbol was the Bear. Nogama relented when he saw Tiasti’s danger. He called the boy up into the hills and told him to take his tribe of “Bears,” including women and children, and cross the Shenandoah for safety. A voice told him to follow a snow-white rabbit that disappeared into a cleft in the hillside. Tiasti and his followers found refuge in a cave, and on the walls they carved the symbol of the Bear.