Historical Highway Markers

Monacan Indian Village

G-29

Near here, on both sides of the Rivanna River, was located the Monacan Indian village of Monasukapanough. This village was one of five Monacan towns that Captain John Smith recorded by name on his 1612 Map of Virginia, though many more existed. Monasukapanough was a chief's village and was occupied for several centuries until it was abandoned in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Monacan descendants still reside throughout the central Virginia area. The tribe's headquarters today is on Bear Mountain in Amherst County.

Department of Historic Resources, 2005

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

David Bushnell, "The Indian Grave" A Monacan Site in Albemarle County, Virginia, William & Mary Quarterly 23(1914): 106-112; Bushnell, David, The Five Monacan Towns in Virginia, 1607 (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections Volume 82, #12, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1930); Jeffrey L. Hantman, "Between Powhatan and Quirank: Reconstructing Monacan Culture and History in the Context of Jamestown, Paper, September 1988; Jeffrey L. Hantman, "Monacan Archaeology of the Virginia Interior, A.D. 1400 –1700," in David S. Brose, C. Wesley Cowan, and Robert C. Mainfort, Jr., eds., Societies in Eclipse: Archaeology of the Eastern Woodlands Indians, A.D. 1400-1700 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001),107-123; C.G. Holland, "Albemarle County Settlements: A Piedmont Model?," The Archeological Society of Virginia 33 (December 1978): 29-44; Monacan Indian Nation, http://indians.vipnet.org/tribes/monacan.cfm, 17 October 2005; Cheryl Pellerin, "Righting History: Following in the Footsteps of Thomas Jefferson, Jeffrey Hantman's Excavation of a Monacan Indian Village is Setting the Historical Record Straight," American Archaeology 5 (Spring 2001): 29-33.