Monacan

The Monacan were a Siouan-speaking people of the Virginia Piedmont, holding the James River valley between the Fall Line and the Blue Ridge Mountains. Their capital Rassawek lay at the fork of the James and Rivanna rivers, while the Monahassanugh and Monasukapanough, later known as the Tutelo and Saponi, dwelt upstream as their tributaries. Mound builders and rivals of the Powhatan confederacy, they were first visited by Christopher Newport's party in 1608.

Their eastern lands were granted to Huguenot settlers in 1700 and 1701, and the surviving Monacan merged into the Tutelo-Saponi, moving via Fort Christanna in 1714 to Pennsylvania and then to New York.

By 1753 they lived among the Cayuga, joined the British side with them in the American Revolution, and after the war settled on the Grand River in Ontario, where their descendants were absorbed into the Cayuga.