SUMMARY The Monacan Indian Nation is a state- and federally recognized Indian tribe whose tribal area is located near Bear Mountain in Amherst County. The original territory of the Siouan-speaking tribe and its allies comprised more than half of present-day Virginia, including almost all of the Piedmont region and parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Early in the twenty-first century about 1,600 Monacans belonged to the tribe, one of the oldest groups of indigenous people still existing in its ancestral homeland, and the only group in the state whose culture descends from Eastern Siouan speakers. Scholars believe that thousands of years ago, in the Ohio River Valley, the Siouan-speaking people lived as a unified group, and that eventually the tribes moved both east and west, separating into the Eastern and Western Siouan speakers. Monacan Indians spoke a language related to other Eastern Siouan tribes, such as the Tutelo. The Monacan people are also related to the Occaneechi and Saponi peoples located in present-day North Carolina, and they were affiliated with the Mannahoac Indians, who occupied the northern Piedmont in what is now Virginia.