Peopling the Shenandoah Valley

The expansion by the French into the Ohio River Valley led to conflicts with claims by the Virginia frontier settlers. The Indian natives also viewed the increased number of European settlers, especially those in the Shenandoah Valley, with alarm, seeing them as unwelcome encroachers on land they considered theirs.

African Americans lived, worked, built, and died in the Valley. Stories centered in what is today Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park spread across the Valley encompassing the lives of many.

Early Native Americans used the fertile Valley of the Shenandoah for hunting, agriculture, and warfare. Frequent travel, trade, and migration throughout the Valley developed the trail network known as The Great Warrior Path.

Major Isaac Hite, Jr. and his family recorded 276 enslaved people that they owned between 1783 and 1851.

The Shenandoah Valley had small family farms that owned none, one or a few enslaved people. The Valley also had larger plantations with many enslaved people. White residents of the Valley were all economically connected to slavery. Therefore, their culture, like that of the rest of the United States, was part of a system of race-based slavery and they used racism, violence, and fear to maintain it.