Monacan

The Monacan were a Siouan-speaking people of Virginia's Piedmont, with their principal town at Rassawek near the junction of the James and Rivanna rivers. They competed with the Powhatan confederacy of the coastal plain.

In 1608 Christopher Newport led English settlers up the James into Monacan territory and visited two towns. Monacan settlements were still occupied in 1670, but a village above the James falls had been abandoned by the eighteenth century and its land granted to Huguenot settlers.