the Alleghany mountains and the Ohio river, within the present limits of Virginia, there were some villages interspersed, inhabited by small numbers of Indians; the most of whom retired northwest of that river as the tide of emigration rolled towards it. Some, however, remained in the interior after settlements began to be made in their vicinity.
"North of the present boundary of Virginia, and particularly near the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, and in the circumjacent country, the Indians were more numerous, and their villages larger. In 1753, when General Washington visited the French posts on the Ohio, the spot which had been selected by the Ohio Company as the site for a fort, was occupied by Shingess, King of the Delawares; and other parts of the proximate country were inhabited by Mingoes and Shawanees [Shawnees]. When the French were forced to abandon the position which they had taken at the forks of Ohio, the greater part of the adjacent tribes removed further west. So that when improvements were begun to be made in the wilderness of North-western Virginia it had been almost entirely deserted by the natives; and excepting a few straggling hunters and warriors, who occasionally traversed it in quest of game, or of human beings on whom to wreak their vengeance, almost its only tenants were beasts of the forest."
We have no statistics of Indian population in 1753. A Captain Hutchins visited most of the tribes in 1768, and made the most accurate estimate he could of their numbers at that date. The Indian population was no doubt much greater in 1753 than in 1768; ten years of war having thinned their ranks considerably. In the latter year the statistics were as follows, as reported by Hutchins: The Cherokees, in the western part of North Carolina, now Tennessee, numbered about two thousand five hundred. The Chickasaws resided south of the Cherokees, and had a population of seven hundred and fifty. The Catawbas, on the Catawba river, in South Carolina, numbered only one hundred and fifty. These last, although so few, were remarkably enterprising. They are said to have frequently traversed the Valley of Virginia, and even penetrated the country on the Susquehanna and between the Ohio and Lake Erie, to wage war with the Delawares. The more northern tribes were the Delawares, Shawnees, Chippewas,
