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Histories &
Mysteries
Judy and John Tole
evrgreenl@earthlink.net
The Indians periodically burned the forest to flush out game (quite an inefficient method, one might say) and to regenerate the grasslands. This often put them at odds with early White settlers whose homes might be in the paths of the conflagrations. Madison County historical records apparently document some of these pyrotechnical conflicts. Looking for evidence
Other than the artifacts of stone and clay that these people left behind, the only other remaining indicators of their presence here are burial mounds. These fairly small mounds (as compared to some great ones in the Mississippi River region), which may have been constructed to hold groups of bones moved from individual graves, have been found in the Shenandoah Valley and south of here in Madison, Greene, and Albemarle Counties. The existence of at least one burial mound in Rappahannock has been reported; however there seems to be no documentation of the site. It would certainly seem possible that there could have been many more, though these may have been unrecognized and plowed under in the past 300 years.
The decimation of the various North American tribes from European diseases is pretty well known. Less familiar may be the indirect contribution the White men made to the Indian’s decline through their desire for the beaver flu* and deer hides. There were great riches to be made during the late 1600s by trading these commodities. The
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