Karenne Wood and Diane Shields
excerpts from The Monacan Indians: Our Story

"In the 1750’s, Thomas Jefferson described a party of passing Indians on his property (near Monticello) who visited the Monasukapanough burial mound. They stayed at the mound for quite some time, with expressions of sorrow on their faces, and then they returned to 'the high road' and went on their way. This episode shows clearly that the Monacan people traveled through the area and that they knew their ancestors were buried in the mounds and still visited them to grieve."

"By the 1770’s, a number of new settlers had chosen to stay in the area near the future Lynchburg. Among them were Robert Johns, who first patented land in 1758, and Thomas Evans. These men married Monacan women and became the European forebears of the modern Monacan Nation."

"In 1896, the Richmond Times published an article about the Monacan community in Amherst, which was titled 'Amherst County Indians—Highly Interesting History of an Old Settlement of Cherokees'. The article gives the history of this settlement as follows, 'About the year 1825 William Johns purchased of Landon Cabell, 500 acres of land on Bear Mountain… some of his descendents moved west to Ohio and West Virginia, but 258 remain in Amherst to this day.'"

"By the 1920’s, nearly 500 people were living in the mission community at Bear Mountain. During this time, Dr. Walter Plecker became head of the Bureau of Vital records for the State of Virginia. By 1925, [Plecker] had decided, based of flimsy evidence of conjecture, that there were no 'pure' Indians remaining in Virginia, and that all of those claiming to be Indian were in fact 'mixed blood Negroes.'"

"During 1930, a furious controversy erupted because the census was being taken, and Dr. Walter Plecker insisted that all Indian people in certain areas of the state, including Amherst, be classified as colored. A flurry of letters from Monacan people were sent to the census officials … it was finally decided that the Indian people could be listed as such, with an asterisk (*) next to the word 'Indian.'"

"In 1988, the Monacan Tribe incorporated as a nonprofit organization, and in 1989, the tribe was officially recognized by the State of Virginia, 381 years after the first encounter between Monacans and European colonists."