Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/146

132 ſeated on the Nottaway River, in Southampton county, on very fertile lands. At a very early period, certain lands were marked out and appropriated to theſe tribes, and were kept from encroachment by the authority of the laws. They have uſually had truſtees appointed, whoſe duty was to watch over their intereſts, and guard them from inſult and injury.

The Minacans and their friends, better known latterly by the name of the Tuſcaroras, were probably connected with the Maſſawomees, or Five Nations. For though we are told their languages were ſo different that the intervention of interpreters was neceſſary between them, yet do we alſo learn that the Erigas, a nation formerly inhabiting on the Ohio, were of the ſame original ſtock with the Five Nations, and that they partook alſo of the Tuſcarora Language. Their dialects might, by long ſeparation, have become ſo unlike as to be unintelligible to one another. We know that in 1712, the Five Nations received the Tuſcaroras into their confederacy, and made them the Sixth Nation. They received the Meherrins and Tuteloes alſo into their protection: and it is moſt probable, that the remains of many other of the tribes, of whom we find no particular account, retired weſtwardly in like manner, and were incorporated with one or other of the weſtern tribes. (5)

I know of no ſuch thing exiſting as an Indian monument: for I would not honor with that name arrow points, ſtone hatchets, ſtone pipes, and half-ſhapen images. Of labor on the large ſcale, I think there is no remain as reſpectable as would be a common ditch for the draining of lands, unleſs