On the recordMarch 17, 2022
I rise today to speak about a really important victory in Virginia yesterday--a victory for the Monacan Indian Nation, and it is a victory that I have had a hand in over the course of many years. I want to describe it and celebrate it. When the English came to Virginia first in 1607, there were thriving Virginia Native populations. The populations east--in eastern Virginia, east of Richmond--were part of a larger confederacy called the Powhatan Confederacy, and they spoke an Algonquian-based language. There were Tribes in the southern part of Virginia that spoke an Iroquois-based language, and Tribes in the western part of Virginia spoke a Sioux- based language. One of these Tribes was the Monacan Tribe. John Smith, in 1607, 1608, and 1609, traveled all around the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries and did some very detailed mapmaking of the area, including a town that he called the chief Monacan town named Rassawek. Rassawek is on a point of land in what is now Fluvanna County, VA, where the Rivanna River and the James River combine. Rassawek was the headquarters, or the chief administrative town, of the Monacan Tribal Nation. The story of the Virginia Tribes is one of triumph, but also one of tragedy. Many of the Tribes made peace treaties with the English in the 1670s. All of these Tribes were discriminated against, and some were driven far from their homes.…
