told, that the Great Spirit had given this
Valley to all Indians and it is not surprising that they resented the
coming of the white men who soon began to build homes, barns and fences
and who claimed the right to shoot the Indians if they came on their
property.

Then the French about this time began to build forts along the St.
Lawrence River, the Great Lakes and on down the Mississippi River to the
Gulf of Mexico. The French made every effort to make friends with the
Indians and told them the British had no right to take their lands. The
French said they would protect their rights if the Indians would let
them. Consequently, they became allies of the French and they began to
move their villages and towns toward the French lines. They continued to
keep a part of their homes and to send back bands of hunters to look
after the hunting grounds beyond the mountains.

If the Indians had not been friendly to those pioneers who dared to
build homes in the Valley, there would not have been any civilization
there until a much later date. But as we have seen, many of them came
from Pennsylvania where William Penn and his colonists had dealt so
fairly with the Indians. Naturally then, the Indians thought all the
settlers would be like those. Besides, there were so few of them, they
did not at first realize that their hunting grounds were being taken
from them. Consequently, the Delawares and Catawbas in hunting did no
harm, though they were bitter enemies and the settlers often saw them
with prisoners from the other tribes.

There were Indian villages on the Potomac and on both branches of the
Shenandoah. Numerous Indian mounds and graves are still to be seen in
certain sections of the Valley. Many of these have been opened and
skeletons found to be in a wonderful state of preservation; utensils,
pipes, axes, tomahawks, pots and hominy pestles have been found. Their
pots and utensils were made of a mixture of clay and hard shells, very
crude as to workmanship but very strong.

After twenty or more years of comparative peace, the Indians suddenly
left the Valley. In 1753 messengers came from the Western Indians into
the Valley and invited them to cross the Alleghany mountains. Historians
claim this was done through the influence of the French and later
consequences seem to establish the point.

Indian Tales

In the year 1774 the Indians began to give serious trouble to the
settlers on New River. One day several chi