Myths of North America

[Ninurta]

Serpent Mound is well worth a visit if you get to southern Ohio.

Cheers

I've got a friend who lives not too far from it, in Newark.

The Cherokees and Some of the other southern tribes spun off from the Mound Builders, and there are some mounds in Lee County, VA, but no effigy mounds that I know of. The Spaniards were witness to the transformation. They had a Spanish settlement for a while at Santa Helena, on what is now Parris Island, the Marine Corps base. They also had a base for about a year or year and a half at Fort San Juan, at what is now Morganton, NC. A Sergeant and a few troops from Fort San Juan accompanied a raiding party of those Indians on a raid to Saltville VA in what is now Washington County VA, just across the mountain from me, and that raid, together with the fact that there are no mounds around here indicates to me that this area was just outside the Mound Builder culture.

The Fort Ancient culture also spun off from the Mound Builders and earlier Adena culture, and it did spread into northern Kentucky and for a distance up Big Sandy, but didn't make it all the way here, either. An old woman told me years ago that tehre was an "an old Indian burial mound" in northeast Russell County between Honaker and Belfast, Somewhere in the gap between River Mountain and House and Barn Mountain, but I've never been able to find one, and kinda think it might be an old BS story.

There are painted petroglyphs on Paint Lick Mountain That show the Thunderbird, a Turtle, and I think a Giant Horned Snake among other things. Those are protected now, and there is only one time a year you can actually go up the mountain and see them. They are attributed to the Cherokees, but I have my doubts about that. The Bureau of Ethnography maps this area out as Cherokee land, but as near as I've been able to determine the maps are incorrect, and the Clinch River marked the boundary between the Cherokees and the Shawnees. Both tribes raided this area when white folks started settling here, but for the most part they still observed that boundary line. The last battle between those two tribes was in 1769, at War Gap. By then, all of the local tribes were long gone - they left around 1650, leaving nothing but abandoned villages the settlers referred to as "Old Fields". There was one on the site of wht is now the hospital in Richlands, VA, one right at the current location of Witten's Fort Museum just southwest of Tazewell VA, two or 3 in Elk Garden, VA - with some burial caves also in that area, probably belonging to those villages - and two, one on either side of Rt. 19 at the top of Moccasin Gap of Clinch Mountain. Those two guarded the approach through the gap, and the ones in Elk Garden guarded the approach from Saltville through Hayter's Gap of Clinch Mountain.

European trade goods, like glass beads and copper, have been found in some of those villages indicating trade, but probably indirect trade via other tribes closer to the whites as intermediaries. There were no, or very few, whites who ever penetrated as far as here before the local tribes left. Some folks blame the abandonment on the Iroquois "Beaver Wars", but I believe otherwise. The Iroquois were mostly in New York, a long way from here, The Spaniards were a much more close and present danger around that time - Sgt Melendez and his men from Joara/ Ft San Juan raided Saltville, and De Soto's men had a battle with nearby indiand here, too. I think the pressure from Spaniards was a lot closer than any pressure the Iroquois could bring to bear, and that is more likely to be the cause for the abandonment to my mind.

Regarding Fort San Juan, Pardo had established a string of Spanish forts from Santa Helena up through the interior of SC and NC. he set up six forts, but none of them lasted more than a year and a half before the Indians rose up and slaughtered every one of the Spaniards but one, who made it back to Santa Helena to report the uprising. That, together with the massacre of Jesuit priests at a Spanish mission on York River near what later became Jamestown caused the Spanish to lose all interest in the area.

But the Indians here had already seen the handwriting on the wall, and got out while the getting was good. By the time Englishmen got here, there was nothing west of new River but Indian Old Fields, abandoned villages.

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