1. Community Archives
of Southwest Virginia, LLC
Virginia History for Yankees and Other
Outsiders
(plus other history the locals never
learned in school)
A workshop covering…
1. back in the 1950’s - how Virginia history was taught in school
2. a sampling of topics being addressed by historians in recent years
3. making a list of topics that should be covered in textbooks today
www.vahistoryexchange.com

2. 50 Years ago…how Virginia history was taught in school…
an example….Virginia’s History, a textbook from 1956

3. Virginia History told from an English perspective, starting with Sir Walter Raleigh…
“He knew that
Englishmen …would
like to find new lands
to make their country
great and strong…”
Question: Should Virginia history start with the Lost Colony?

4. What about the Spanish??? New evidence points to…
conquistadors in Saltville (many years before Jamestown)
• According to a retired chemistry professor at Virginia Tech, Jim Glanville,
Hernando de Soto brought an expedition into Southwest Virginia in 1539
• “Virginia’s recorded history began in Southwest Virginia”
• “An American Indian woman from Southwest Virginia married a Spaniard
long before Pocahontas was born”
• “On a spring day in 1567, a group of saber-wielding conquistadors
slaughtered hundreds of Indians at present-day Saltville, some 40 years
before the English landed at Jamestown”
If conquistadors had murdered hundreds of Indians at Jamestown—or
anywhere else in Eastern or Northern Virginia – there’d at least be an
historical marker at the site of the bloodshed, No such marker exists at
Saltville, although Glanville has designed one.

5. What about Christopher Columbus? Many scholars now speak
of the “Great Columbian Exchange,” and not much is said
anymore about the “Discovery of America”
• The Great Columbian Exchange…The term was coined
by Alfred W. Cosby in 1972, in his book by that name.
According to Cosby and others who have since
expanded his research, the Europeans brought horses ,
wheat, rice, onions, lettuce, honey bees, and apples to
the New World, and sent new plants and animals back
home to the Old World… maize, tomatoes, potatoes,
vanilla, turkeys, guinea pigs, rubber trees, cacao, and
tobacco.
• Sadly, “Old World diseases had a devastating impact on
Native American populations because they had no
immunity to the diseases….Smallpox epidemics
resulted in devastating death tolls for Native
Americans. ..Data for the pre-Columbian population is
uncertain, but estimates of its disease-induced
population losses between 1500 and 1650 range
between 50 and 90 percent.”

6. Revising our understanding of what Columbus represents
In a report Columbus sent back to court, he
wrote, “Hispaniola is a miracle. Mountains and
hills, plains and pastures, are both fertile and
beautiful…the harbors are unbelievably good and
there are many wide rivers of which the majority
contain gold…There are many spices, and great
mines of gold and other metals…” (All this, of
course was fantasy.)

7. Another attempt to plant a colony - Jamestown
“The governor found one clue that the
settlers had left. The clue was the word
CROATAN, carved on a tree trunk.”

8. There may have been other European settlers in Virginia
before the English came…the Melungeons
As early as 1654, English and French
explorers in the southern
Appalachians reported seeing dark-
skinned, brown- and blue-eyed, and
European-featured people speaking
broken Elizabethan English, living in
cabins, tilling the land, smelting silver,
practicing Christianity, and, most
perplexing of all, claiming to be
“Portyghee.”

9. Captain John Smith and Pocahontas
Question…Did
Pocahontas really
save Captain Smith’s
life? …An example
of how hard it is to
separate truth
from fiction…

10. Massacre of 1622…How did Captain Smith describe it?
What do we know about the Indians of Virginia?
From John Smith’s General History of Virginia,
about the Indian uprising that took place in the
spring of 1622:
“On the Friday morning that fatal day, being the
two and twentieth of March…as at other times
they came into our houses, with deer, turkeys,
fish, fruits, and other provisions to sell us, yea
in some places sat down at breakfast with our
people, whom immediately with their own tools
they slew most barbarously, not sparing either
age or sex, man, woman, or child, so sudden in
their execution, that few or none discerned the
weapon or blow that brought them to
destruction…and by this means fell that fatal
morning…three hundred forty seven men,
women and children…”

11. Bacon’s Rebellion
By the 1670s…The colony
spread out over most of the
eastern part of Virginia, and
more than 50,000 settlers
lived there…

12. Planters, rebels, Loyalists - 1676
“In May 1676, without a
commission from the
governor, Bacon
marched at the head of
an expedition that
descended upon the
Roanoke River to destroy
a Susquehannock village.
He was promptly
accused of treason, but
the governor pardoned
him when he
acknowledged his
offence. “ (Firsthand
America: A History of the
United States)

13. In Southwest Virginia…
First People: The Early Indians of Virginia
Keith Egloff and Deborah Woodward
• The first palisaded villages in the region were built around AD 1200. At
the Crab Orchard Site in Tazewell County, archaeologists excavated
portions of a Late Woodland village in 1971 (before a road was
constructed), and again in 1978. Evidence gathered there provided clues
as to what the Indian’s lives were like. Based on the excavated remains,
archaeologists can tell us about the village:
• The village at the Crab Orchard Site was built around AD 1500. It was 400
feet across and was surrounded with a wall that was replaced three times
as the posts decayed…
• Within the palisade, the Indians built circular homes in rows around the
central plaza and dug many storage and burial pits. They buried hundreds
of people at this site, mainly in the area between the homes and the
palisade…

14. Native Americans in the Mountains
(First People)
• The early colonial times were turbulent for the Indians of the Shenandoah
Valley. On only a few generations the Susquehannock, who wanted to
control the European’s fur trade, forced the Shawnee out. The Iroquois in
turn forced the Susquehannock out.
• The French and Indian War (1754-63) started over competing claims to the
Ohio territory between the British and French. Upon attack, the settlers
sought refuge at nearby forts that the colonial government constructed.
…Many settlers who lied in this area fled to the safety of the Piedmont and
Tidewater regions of Virginia and the Carolinas. Those who stayed risked
attack, death, or capture by the Shawnee from the Ohio Valley, later by
the great Indian Chief, Tecumseh.
• By the time enough Europeans came to set up towns, southwestern
Virginia had become another region devoid of Indian villages. The only
natives sighted were hunting and trading groups of Cherokee and
Shawnee passing through.

15. Draper’s Meadows
Pioneers in the Southwest

16. Attack at Drapers Meadows
Interesting to compare with other accounts:(Trans-Allegheny Pioneers, Follow the River)

17. Follow the River – The Long Way Home

18. Friends of the Draper and Ingles families on the frontier…
Adam Harmon and Andrew Lewis
“Adam Harmon took Mrs. Ingles
To his cabin and gave her food
and took care of her. When she
was stronger he took her to a nearby
fort.”
“There were many other brave people
in the Southwest during the French and
Indian War. One of them was named
Andrew Lewis. Andrew Lewis grew up
in Augusta County. He was tall and strong
and a fine hunter. When he went to live in
the Southwest, his home was near the place
where the town of Salem stands today.”

19. Battle of Point Pleasant - 1774
Chief Cornstalk,
Governor Dunmore,
Colonel Andrew Lewis

20. Virginia’s most famous heroes…
Starting with Patrick Henry
Two of Patrick Henry’s sisters married
men who played prominent roles in
Virginia’s frontier history…
Anne married William Christian
Elizabeth married (1st) William Campbell
And (2nd) William Russell

21. Patrick Henry’s home, as described by one of the best authors of fiction for
children: Ann Rinaldi… Or Give Me Death…

22. Thomas Jefferson – Idyllic Family

23. About Sally Hemings
“of all the women in Thomas Jefferson‟s life,
Sally Hemings has been the most controversial
ever since the angry journalist James Callender
proclaimed in 1802 that „the man, whom it delighteth
the people to honor, keeps, and for many years
has kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves.
Her name is Sally.‟ The accuracy of Callender‟s
assertion has been disputed ever since he
printed it, and his veracity may never be
determined with absolute certainty. Nevertheless,
the available evidence now suggests that
Callender was essentially correct about Jefferson‟s
relationship with Sally Hemings. Thomas
Jefferson fathered six children born to his slave
Sally Hemings between 1795 and 1808.”

24. Battle of Kings Mountain

25. Two books that explain how Virginians moved ever westward

26. Virginia is often called the “Cradle of America,” because so many were born here, but
moved to land further to the west, as seen from these two maps…

27. Lewis and Clark – Exploring Louisiana

28. Albion’s Seed – David Hackett Fischer
Left – “The log cabin did not spring
spontaneously from the American forest.
It was a type of vernacular architecture
that had been carried out of Europe
by Scandinavians, Germans and
especially North British borderers.”
Right – “The old border custom
of bridal abduction continued in the
American backcountry. The petitions of
the Regulators complained of frequent
abductions, and even members of the
border ascendancy resorted to this
practice. The leading example was
Andrew Jackson and Rachel
Donelson. This was a case of voluntary
abduction; Rachel went willingly. But
her departure started a feud that
continued for many years.”

29. Folk Ways
“Crackers, Rednecks, Hoosiers – words
that described the largest social class in
the American backcountry- were not
coined in the New World. They were
carried out of North Britain. For three
centuries these terms were variously
used as praise words and pejoratives,
according to context and occasion. But
always they described the same paradox
of poverty and pride. Something of that
spirit was captured by the American
painter Frederick Remington in a sketch
from which this drawing is taken.”
David Hackett Fischer…Albion‟s Seed

30. Four British Folkways in America
“During the very long time period from 1629 to 1775,
the present area of the United States was settled by
at least four large waves of English-speaking
immigrants. The first was an exodus of Puritans from
the East of England to Massachusetts during a period
of eleven years from 1629 to 1640. The second was
the migration of a small Royalist elite and large
numbers of indentured servants from the South of
England to Virginia (ca. 1642-75). The third was a
movement from the North Midlands of England and
Wales to the Delaware Valley (ca. 1675-1725). The
fourth was a flow of English speaking people from the
borders of North Britain and northern Ireland to the
Appalachian backcountry mostly during the half-
century from 1718 to 1775.”
David Hackett Fischer…Albion‟s Seed

31. Conditions for African Americans were “tragical”

32. Hatfields and the McCoys
The Coffin Quilt – Ann Rinaldi
Folkways of the Southern
Appalachians…
In the hands of a master story-teller,
the famous feud between the
Hatfields and McCoys comes to life.
Here, a girl named Roseanna
(McCoy) flirts with Johnse Hatfield,
and they go off together… while
Roseanna’s younger sister waits for
her to return…

33. In this Virginia textbook, notice that chapter 26 is entitled..
”The War Between the States.”

34. Much has been written at Stonewall Jackson
Here are two very interesting sources of information – one a biography, and
the other a diary written by a medic in the field hospital

35. “the eyes of Lee’s army” – JEB Stuart

36. Social History – Women, Children…and scenes from daily life
A Girl’s Life in Virginia Before the War, by Letitia M. Burwell

37. Interesting to Compare family life In the North and South

38. After the War – Booker T. Washington

39. The view from the 1950s

40. Assignment #1
How would you organize a children’s textbook?
Working in small groups, make a list of
30 chapter headings. Just to make things
easy, this book should only cover through the
end of the nineteenth century…Writing about
the twentieth century would be much harder!