Indians of Historic Times. Although many parts of West Virginia had substantial Indian populations in prehistoric times, the first white explorers and settlers found almost no Indian residents. Popular theories once attributed the exodus of the Indians to devastating epidemics and scarcity of game. A far more plausible explanation is that they were forced out by the Iroquois confederation, which sought domination of the Ohio Valley as part of their effort to control the fur trade with the Dutch, and later the British, at Albany. Armed with superior weapons supplied by the Dutch and the British, the Iroquois reduced numerous tribes in the eastern United States to vassalage.
Small families or tribes of Indians sometimes returned to West Virginia during historic times, but they did so at the sufferance of the Iroquois. They were chiefly Shawnee and Delaware from Ohio. For the Shawnee, the visits may have represented a return to their old homes, but the Delaware had never been native to the state, originating instead in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Indian villages in West Virginia in historic times included one of Shawnee at Oldtown near the mouth of the Kanawha River and one at Bulltown, on the Little Kanawha, where Delaware, under Chief Bull, made salt in the 1770s.
Indian Trails and Place Names. Networks of trails and scores of place names serve as reminders of Indian occupation of West Virginia. Thousands of years ago wild animals blazed trails in their endless search for grazing lands and salt licks. Indians followed these trails in pursuit of game and in tribal warfare. Later, fur traders, explorers, and settlers used them in their relentless march westward. In time they became packhorse trails, wagon roads, and turnpikes.
The most important north-south trails in the state were the Warrior Path and the Seneca Trail. The Warrior Path, one of the most important in the eastern United States, connected western New York and the Carolina Piedmont by way of the Valley of Virginia. The West Virginia portion roughly paralleled present U.S. Route 11 and Interstate 81. The Seneca Trail, which passed along the South Branch of the Potomac to Elkins, Lewisburg, and Bluefield, is now U.S. Route 219, appropriately called the Seneca Trail.
East-west trails also became routes of modern highways. The Scioto-Monongahela Trail connected the Lower Shawnee Town in Ohio with the Monongahela Valley, following U.S. 50 for much of its course. The Kanawha, or Buffalo, Trail ran along the north bank of the Kanawha River to Cedar Grove, then through the back-country to Ansted, whence it followed U.S. 60 to Lewisburg and beyond. One branch extended southward along Paint Creek and Flat Top Mountain toward Virginia and North Carolina. Another trail, connecting southern Ohio with the Valley of Virginia, ran along the Big Sandy and its Tug Fork, approximating U.S. Route 52. The McCullough, or Traders, Trail connected the Valley of Virginia and the Monongahela Valley by way of Wardensville, Moorefield, and Mount Storm.
Indian names, many of them of great beauty, have also been preserved in West Virginia. Rivers included the Ohio, “river of whitecaps” or “the white foaming waters”; Shenandoah, “daughter of the stars”; Monongahela, “river of falling banks”; and Kanawha, “place of the white stone” or, in the language of the Shawnee, Keninsheka, “river of evil spirits.” The names Potomac, Cacapon, Opequon, Elk, once the Tiskelwah, and perhaps Guyandotte are of Indian origin. Kanawha, Logan, Mingo, Monongalia, Ohio, Pocahontas, and Wyoming counties also are reminders of Indian occupation. Relatively few towns bear Indian names, but Aracoma, Logan, Matoaka, and Monongah are prominent exceptions.
Although much of Indian life in West Virginia remains shrouded in the mists of the past, Indian names, trails, and artifacts serve as reminders that the culture of the state has Native American as well as other origins.
1Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. William Peden (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955), 19.
2The best short account of the geological history of West Virginia is Raymond E. Janssen, Earth Science: A Handbook on the Geology of West Virginia (Clarksburg: Educational Marketers, Inc., 1973), of which pp. 35-43 and 210-226 have been of special value for the above summary.
30f special value for the preceding summary of prehistoric inhabitants of West Virginia is Edward V. McMichael, Introduction to West Virginia Archeology, 2d ed. rev. (Morgantown: West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, 1968), the best single work relating specifically to the prehistory of the state.
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Explorations and Early Settlements
An Unknown West. For about one hundred and twenty-five years after English colonists landed at Jamestown, settlements in Virginia did not extend beyond the Tidewater and Piedmont regions. Virginians kept busy with the burdensome tasks of taming a wilderness and with transplanting and adapting essential political and social institutions. Culturally, they remained tied to England, and English demand for their tobacco and furs formed the economic underpinnings of their colony.
In spite of more immediate concerns, seventeenth-century Virginians had a deep curiosity about the unknown West. Some envisioned the discovery of gold, silver, and other treasures such as the Spaniards had found in Mexico and Peru. Others, with an optimism born of erroneous concepts of North American geography, entertained hopes of following one of the interior waterways a few hundred miles to the South Sea, as they called the Pacific Ocean, and opening a shorter route to China and the Indies. For some, the sheer joy of adventure was enough to lure them into the depths of the great forests.
Indian wars in 1622 and 1644, brought on by the relentless pressure of settlements upon tribal lands, dashed dreams of riches, discovery of the elusive passage to the Pacific, and high adventure. Following appalling massacres of settlers in 1644, Virginia established forts at the falls of the James, Pamunkey, Chickahominy, and Appomattox rivers. Completed in 1646, they guarded the trails by which hostile Indians gained access to exposed settlements. Each fort was erected by a contractor known as an undertaker, who received the fort property, six hundred acres of land adjoining it, and important tax exemptions on the condition that he maintain ten armed men there for three years to defend the frontiers.
Fur Trade and Seventeeth-Century Exploration. The defense posts built by the undertakers became key centers for the expansion of the fur trade in Virginia. In August 1650 Abraham Wood, the builder of Fort Henry at the falls of the Appomattox River, set out for the western country in the company of three gentlemen, their servants, and an Indian guide. Wood's party passed through the land of the Occaneechi Indians, who had acted as middlemen in the fur trade, and beyond the point where the Staunton and Dan rivers unite to form the Roanoke. Although remote tribes evinced some hostility, Wood foresaw possibilities for a profitable trade and placed orders in England for trading goods, including guns, powder, shot, hatchets, and kettles. Edward Bland, a member of the expedition, wrote an account entitled “The Discovery of New Brittaine,” later published as a pamphlet in London. It aroused much interest, but unsettled political conditions in England precluded further advancement of the fur trade in the 1650s.
The growth of the Virginia fur trade in the quarter of a century following the Stuart Restoration was part of a great territorial and commercial expansion that absorbed English energies. In three wars between 1652 and 1674, England dealt the Dutch, her old commercial rival, staggering blows, and in a series of navigation acts, particularly those of 1660, 1663, and 1673, she moved the center of European commerce from Amsterdam to London. In 1664 she acquired New Netherland, which controlled the heart of the American fur country. Other evidence of the importance of furs in the British economy stemmed from the organization of the Hudson's Bay Company, the world's largest fur-trading corporation, in 1660.
Spearheading the fur trade and western exploration in Virginia was Sir William Berkeley, who returned to the colony as governor in 1664, and several planter-traders, including Abraham Wood and William Byrd. Their interest in furs resulted in expeditions that later pointed the way toward West Virginia. When King Charles II denied him permission to lead an expedition into the Indian country, Berkeley engaged a young German, John Lederer, then in Virginia, to undertake three journeys into the backcountry. On the third