page_title: Protohistory of West Virginia
section_title: Kanawha
hierarchical_section_title: Protohistory of West Virginia / Other historic groups / Kanawha
caption_attribution_description: This is a map of the New River watershed. I, Pfly, created it based on USGS data.
context_page_description: The protohistoric period of the state of West Virginia in the United States began in the mid-sixteenth century with the arrival of European trade goods. Explorers and colonists brought these goods to the eastern and southern coasts of North America and were brought inland by native trade routes. This was a period characterized by increased intertribal strife, rapid population decline, the abandonment of traditional life styles, and the extinction and migrations of many Native American groups.
  Written accounts of the area begin by the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century with the scattered documentation and journals of early explorers. These accounts frequently portray a sparsely inhabited area, possibly due to the Iroquois wars to monopolize the European fur trade or the devastating effects of new diseases introduced by Europeans.
context_section_description: Kanawha canoemen moved trade along the Ohio Valley and its tributaries of the Oniasantkeronons and Siouan, while Messawomeake moved trade from here across the Allegheny Mountains in the Earliest Historic period. Kaháwa means "boat" (canoe) in the local Iroquois dialect. It varies with Iroquois "kahôwö". Chief Cornstalk's Shawnese (Chalahgawtha) word for canoe was locally "Olagashe". Iroquois (Tuscarora, Mingoe & Canawagh) call the anglicized Kanawha River "Ka(ih)nawáˀkye," meaning "waterway," and "kye" is an augmentive suffix. The ih and variant h, a string of moving water as to a stream, river. "Kényua" is a verb meaning to row a boat or to ferry someone across a stretch of water. The Canawagh (Kanawhas) were last reported as a band in 1774 in the St. Albans area (Hanson Journal) and reportedly joined other Iroquois (Lewis) while some Kanawhan mixed with Shawnee moving to the Potomac near the trade posts.
  Iroquois warned the French in 1669 that they would be threatened by the Andastes if they traveled down the Ohio River. The Maryland Accokeek Creek site (1300–1650 CE) is associated with the historic Piscataway Indians. For several centuries there were no archaeological sites of established Piscataway of the lower Potomac Valley in the Ohio Valley nor West Virginia. The Piscataway moved up to the Conoy Island in the Maryland region in 1699 after a long Siouan occupation. Later researchers declared that "Kanawha" was not Algonquian Shawnee. The state does have Algonquian phrases, though these may be from protohistoric Ouabano, ancient Telegwa, or later Makujay influence.
  White traders began establishing trading houses in the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela valleys in 1717, according to University of Pittsburgh's Historic Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania fur trader Michael Bezallion made a record of his trip from Illinois country up the Ohio en route to Philadelphia in 1717. The Iroquois established a town at Kanaugha opposite the Mouth of the Kanawha before 1748, and the French constructed a fort nearby prior to the French and Indian War. James (Jacob) Le Tort, Sr. moved his Penn permit trading house of the 1720s and 1730s from the Allegheny's Beaver Creek fur trade area to near the Letart Falls by 1740. Céloron de Blainville, a French Canadian officer with a flotilla of canoes, encountered English traders with canoes nearby on August 12, 1749. Trade artifacts found in this area have dated from at least the seventeenth century.
  Hudson's Trading Post Inn and canoe landing, a hunter's camp, village, and archaeological mound site, appeared on Madison's 1807 map opposite St. Albans. Colonial maps from this period depict the upper Ohio River as an extension of the Alleghany River along the West Virginia shores. A Delaware Indian legend of ancient time states that the Allegheny Indians were defeated and allowed to cross the Allegheny River to arrive on the east coast, which became their homeland.
caption: Kanawha-New River watershed.
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