Along the North Fork of the Shenandoah are the fertile bottomlands that made the valley famous. Between Strasburg, Woodstock and New Market, VA the river snakes its way through rich alluvial soils. Here, there is archival and unstudied archaeological evidence that an advanced Native American culture once existed in the Shenandoah Valley. Because of the lack of archaeological studies of Mississippian type sites in the Shenandoah Valley, the discussion on this period must remain highly speculative.
Native American platform mounds still exist in Virginia. They will be discussed within Part Four. It should be noted that the Shenandoah Valley is between the two remaining platform mound sites and would have been the travel route between the two towns.
It is a definite fact that Muskogean mound builders lived in southwestern Virginia until the 1730s, when they returned to Georgia and joined the Creek Indian Confederacy. They were the Tamahiti, known to Virginia anthropologists by the name used by Algonquians, the Tomahitans. Tamahiti means “Merchant People” in the Itsate Creek language. The word for maize in several Shawnee dialects is “tama.” Tama means trade in the Totonac language of Mexico. The Creek Indian languages contain many Totonac and Itza Maya loan words.
