Native Americans
Indigenous peoples of various cultures lived along the waterways of present-day Virginia for thousands of years before European contact .linguistic, acrhelogical and anthropological studies have provided insights into their civilizations. Though not much is known of specific tribal movements prior to European contact, the Shenandoah Valley area, considered a sacred common hunting ground, appears by the 1600s to have been controlled mostly by the local Iroquoian-speaking groups, including the Senedo and Sherando.
Later in the century the Algonquian speaking Shawnee began to challenge the Iroquoians for the hunting grounds . The explorers Batts and Fallam in 1671 reported the Shawnee were fighting with the Iroquoians for control of the valley and were losing. During the later Beaver Wars, the powerful Iroquois Confederacy from New York (particularly Seneca from the western part of the territory) subjugated all tribes in the frontier region west of the Fall Line. Over the years between 1670 and 1712, the Seneca were more active to the southwest as far southward as present-day North Carolinam while the Mohawk extended their power north to Montreal and the St. Lawrence River valley. By right of conquest, the Iroquois (especially the Seneca) claimed the Ohio Valley as their hunting ground. In the early 18th century, the Iroquoian Tuscarora migrated to New York away from warfare in North and South Carolina;They were accepted by the Iroquois as the Sixth Nation of the Haudendsaunee in 1722
By the time European settlers arrived in the Shenandoah Valley around 1729 , the Shawnee were the principal occupants in the area around Winchester. During the first decade of white settlement, the Valley was also a conduit and battleground in a bloody intertribal war between the Seneca and allied Algonquian Lenape from the north, and their distant traditional enemies, the Siouan Catawba in the Carolinas. The Iroquois Six Nations finally ceded their nominal claim to the Shenandoah Valley at the Treaty of Lancaster (1744). The treaty also established the right of colonists to use the Indian Road, later known as the Great Wagon Road.
Until 1754 the father of the historical Shawnee cheif Cornstalk had his court at Shawnee Springs . On the eve of the French and Indian war in 1753 (Seven Years War), messengers came to the Shawnee from tribes further west, inviting them to leave the Valley and cross the Alleghenies, which they did the following year. The Shawnee settled for some years in the Ohio Country before being forced by the US government under Indian Removal in the 1830s to remove to Indian Territory.
Winchester had a notable role as a frontier city in those early times. The Governor of Virginia, as well as the young military commander George Washington, met in the town with their Iroquois allies (called the “Half-Kings”), to coordinate maneuvers against the French and their Native American allies during the French and Indian War.
