Monacans and Miners: Native American and Coal Mining Communities in Appalachia

Monacans and Miners sheds new light on the indigenous and immigrant communities of southern Appalachia by comparing the political, economic, and social experiences of the Monacans, a historically significant Native American group in Amherst County, Virginia, with those of Scottish and Irish settlers who made their home in Wyoming County, West Virginia, in the late eighteenth century.

The Monacans are the descendants of a powerful people who both fought and traded with the Powhatan …