Monacans in Fluvanna CountyAs stated above, the village of the Monacan people was Rassawek at present-day Columbia. Rassawek was not just a town as white settlers would have built, it was more of a series of spread out camps that stretched several miles along the James River with a central hub being the convergence of the Rivanna with the James at Columbia.
Monacan Indian Items (click picture for enlargement)
Rassawek was an ideal site for a village in the eyes of the Monacan: a bend in the river, with a southern exposure in the winter, water on both sides with high bluffs on the northern bank of the villages entrance (Houck, p.22). Up river as far away as Seven Islands, which is perhaps fifteen miles upriver from Columbia, Indian artifacts such as spear points, ax heads, and arrow points are occasionally found. The river and surrounding lowlands yield these artifacts with enough frequency to suggest the possibility of a camping area over the generations. It can be speculated that the chain of islands in the river at Seven Islands must have provided excellent hunting and agricultural opportunities. The soil on the islands is pure silt, which is rich in nutrients and would have easily supported the growth of corn, beans and squash in the summer months. Later white settlers of the area recognized the fertile land on the islands and surrounding lowlands and quickly cleared them and farmed corn, and tobacco.
Where are the Monacan People Today?
In the 1750s, Thomas Jefferson remembered viewing a party of Monacan people visiting burial grounds on his property at Monticello, and recalled that they resided on the upper James River (Cook, p. 50). In Fluvanna, stories tell of Indians visiting ancestral burial grounds in the county well into the nineteenth century, which would support the idea that not all the Monacan people left Virginia.
After being displaced by the warring Iroquois and the white settlers, the Monacan people became intermixed with other tribes in similar situations. However, some Monacans did not move north after 1728 to join the Iroquois Five Nations as did a large majority (Houck, p. 28: Cook, p. 48). These displaced Monacans may have followed the James upriver into what was then the frontier, Amherst County (Cook, p. 46). As stated by Cook, "Amherst County is the dividing line between the Piedmont and Blue Ridge Mountains" (p. 51). Much like Fluvanna County, Amherst is bordered by the James River's north bank. However farther inland are the Tobacco Row Mountains of which there is Bear Mountain, which has been home to Monacan descendents for generations. Not all of the Monacan Indians in Amherst County were displaced residents of the Piedmont. The Monacan people had lived in the Tobacco Row Mountains for generations before Europeans discovered North America. Enduring racial discrimination and cultural assimilation in the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century, the Monacan people of Amherst County have lived their lives around Bear Mountain and weathered the unjust persecutions thrown upon them. In 1989 the Monacan Indian Tribe was recognized by the Virginia General Assembly as one of the eight indigenous tribes of Virginia (Wood, p. 5). The Monacan Nation, with its headquarters in Amherst County, is today a non-profit organization that is some 900 members strong (Wood, p. 5). For a more detailed presentation of the Monacan Nation, please visited their web site: http://www.monacannation.com .
