The Siouan tribes of the East / by James Mooney.

  • James Mooney
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Siouan tribes of the East / by James Mooney. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Near the village Lederer noticed a pyramid of stones, and was told that it represented the number of a colony which had left a neighbor¬ ing country because of overpopulation, a condition easily reached among hunting tribes. The emigrants, having been chosen by lot, had come to their present location under the leadership of a chief called Monack, from whom they derived their name of Monacan (Lederer, 1). As the explorer stopped with them only long enough to learn the road to the next tribe, his version of their migration legend must be taken with due allowance. In another place Lederer states that the country between the falls of the rivers and the mountains was formerly owned by the “Tacci” or uI)ogi,” who were then extinct, and their place occupied by the Mahoc (not identified), Nuntaneuck or Nuntaly (not identified), Naliyssan | (Monahassano or Tutelo), Sapon (Saponi), Managog (Mannahoac), Man- I goack (Nottoway), Akenatzy (Occaneechi), and Monakin. All these, he says, had one common language, in different dialects. This was probably true, except as to the Nottoway, who were of Iroquoian stock. He describes the region, the piedmont section of Virginia and Carolina, as a pleasant and fruitful country, with open spaces clear of timber and abounding in game. Farther on he says again that the Indians of this piedmont region are none of those whom the English removed out of Virginia, but that they had been driven by an enemy from the north¬ west and directed to settle here by an oracle, according to their story, more than four hundred years before. He also says that the ancient inhabitants of the region, presumably the Tacci, were far more rude and barbarous than the more recent occupants, and fed only on raw flesh and fish, until these latter taught them how to plant corn and instructed them in the use of it (Lederer, 2). AsLederer’s narrative was written originally in Latin, his names must be pronounced as in that language. In regard to the origin of these tribes, Lawson, speaking of the Indians of Virginia and Carolina, says that they claimed that their ancestors had come from the west, where the sun sleeps (Lawson, 1). The Catawba, as will be shown later on, had a tradition of a northern origin. All these statements and traditions concerning the eastern Siouan tribes, taken in connection with what we know of the history and traditions of the western tribes of the same stock, seem to indicate the upper region of the Ohio—the Alleghany, Monongahela, and Kan¬ awha country—as their original home, from which one branch crossed the mountains to the waters of Virginia and Carolina while the other followed along the Ohio and the lakes toward the west. Linguistic evidence indicates that the eastern tribes of the Siouan family were established upon the Atlantic slope long before the western tribes of that stock had reached the plains. The Tacci or Dogi, mentioned as the aborigines of Virginia and Caro¬ lina, may have been only a mythic people, a race of monsters or unnat¬ ural beings, such as we find in the mythologies of all tribes. They have
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