Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 15, 1993 TAG: 9307140155
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEAR MOUNTAIN LENGTH: Long
To the Monacan Indians of central Virginia, nothing is more degrading than being called an "issue."
George Branham didn't call anybody an issue; he merely used the word as a matter of relating a story.
But Kenneth Branham couldn't control himself. He flinched. An uncontrollable anger overtook him.
"When people say it ... My face is probably red now because George used it," said Kenneth Branham, assistant chief of the Monacan Indian Tribe.
"I've got in more fights by people using that word."
That word is "issue," as in "free issue," a term applied to slaves freed before the Civil War. The term's original meaning eventually was lost, and some white Amherst Countians came to use it to describe anyone with darker skin - black people and Indians alike.
In his book, "Indian Island in Amherst County," Dr. Peter W. Houck wrote that the locals used the term "issue" when they meant "Indian bastard." The Monacans despise the word more than "nigger," because "issue" implies illegitimacy.
That's why a seemingly peaceful man like Kenneth Branham, 39, can be brought to the edge of rage by the word.
"It's less than black, it's less than human," said George Branham.
George Branham said a ninth-grade history teacher told him that Branham's "grandfather was a savage, my father was a savage and I would be nothing but a savage." The incident occurred in another state, after Branham's family moved from Amherst County.
Despite the stories of fights, the Monacans have always been a nonviolent tribe. The 8,000 Monacans who originally occupied central Virginia were one of 10 divisions of the once-feared Sioux Nation. But they preferred not to fight.
During Virginia's settlement by the British, the Monacans (MON-uh-kins) were known to retreat skillfully to the hills and wait until intruders had safely passed.
And colonists who did encounter the Monacans were impressed with their stature.
In 1728, William Byrd observed: "The Monacan men are described as having something great and venerable in their countenances, beyond the common mien of savages, which agreed with their reputation as the most honest and brave Indians the Virginians had ever known."
Byrd's would be one of the last flattering recognitions of Virginia's Monacan Indians for more than 200 years.
The Virginia General Assembly officially recognized the Monacans in 1989 and made them the eighth tribe of American Indians in the state. That piece of legislation marked the beginning, not the end, of the Monacans' struggle to re-establish themselves.
The legislation, for instance, was instituted with a caveat: The Monacans could never sue the federal or state governments to get their land back.
Instead, they are organizing events - including a powwow in the Bedford County community of Big Island this weekend - to try to raise funds to buy land on Bear Mountain.
Even Houck, whose book gave the Monacans documented evidence of their legitimacy in Virginia's history, is impressed by the progress the tribe has made in rediscovering itself.
The Monacans not only were faced with the task of proving their existence to historians, Virginia's bureaucracy and their neighbors, but they also had to prove it to some of their fellow Monacans.
"There are so many folks that just want to forget what happened and just want to get on with their life, and `Don't bother me with the past,' " Houck said.
"It's really a driving force [for] the ones who want to know the answers and to get the history down and to reclaim their heritage. I didn't think it would happen so fast."
The only way to understand how much work the Monacans face in resurrecting their tribe is to hear some of the indignities they have suffered during this century.
The greatest setback ever dealt the Monacans can be explained with one name: Dr. Walter Plecker.
Plecker was the registrar at the state's Bureau of Vital Statistics from 1912-1936. During that time he, almost single-handedly, saw to it that the Monacan Indians became a nonpeople.
"He did to the Virginia Indians what Hitler did to the Jews," Kenneth Branham said. "I don't know who did the worst damage, to tell you the truth."
The comparison may seem exaggerated; Plecker, after all, did not round up and kill Virginia's Indians. Whereas Hitler pursued his "ethnic cleansing" through death camps, Plecker carried his out through bureaucracy.
Plecker pushed laws through the state legislature to classify all Indians as Negroes. On birth, death and marriage certificates, he made sure the Amherst County Indians were "Negroes."
Plecker even bragged that his genealogical records were more thorough than Hitler's, according to Houck's book.
In 1920, when 304 Virginians registered on the census as Indians, Plecker was outraged. He called the Bear Mountain people "triple mixes," and he successfully lobbied for the Virginia Racial Integrity Law of 1924. The law stipulated that white people should marry white people, and that only a person with one-sixteenth or less of Indian blood could be considered Caucasian.
Toward the end of his stint as registrar, Plecker carried out one of his more damaging efforts. He sent local registrars, court clerks and school administrators a hit list of people who had been "scientifically" shown to be more than one-sixteenth Indian or mulatto. In Amherst County, Plecker's so-called data was not difficult to come by: Nearly all Monacans carry a few last names, including Branham, Hicks, Johns, Hamilton.
Plecker succeeded in attaching a warning to the birth certificates of residents who might claim to be Indian:
"There are no descendants of Virginia Indians claiming or reputed to be Indians who are unmixed with Negro blood."
Plecker's arguments carried much weight with the state's politicians, Houck speculates, because they resulted in a practical solution to what could have been a big problem. If the Indians were classified as blacks, they would have to attend black schools; if they achieved their own status, the state would have to add another expensive tier to its already costly segregated school system.
The Monacans refused to attend black schools. They refused to socialize with blacks. If they worked with blacks - both groups performed much of the labor in Amherst County orchards - they tried to work in separate groups.
The Monacans weren't intentionally biased toward blacks, but it would have meant the end of their official existence if they had assimilated with either blacks or whites.
"Not that to be black is bad, Indian is better and white even better," Houck explained. "These people, their culture was stamped out by being labeled `black.' "
Even after the official end of the Monacans' segregation, some people tried to make it difficult for them to attend public schools. At least one Amherst County school-bus driver during the 1960s refused to pull over at bus stops where Monacan children were to be picked up.
Kenneth Branham remembers how flattering it was to win a college scholarship in 1972 - and how gut-wrenching it was to read it closely, and learn he got it because he was "Negro."
"I went back to the principal and said I could not accept that," Branham said. "I was kind of ashamed of it, so I didn't tell anybody."
In 1971, Wayne Hicks became the first Monacan to graduate from Amherst County High School. The next year, Kenneth Branham, Linda Branham and Brenda Garrison became the second, third and fourth Monacans to graduate.
Until the mid-1960s, the Monacans, as Negroes, were kept out of the public school system. Since they refused to attend the black schools, they made do at a one-room log-and-cement cabin at the base of Bear Mountain.
The cabin and St. Paul's Episcopal Church were set up by an enterprising University of Virginia student, Arthur P. Gray II, who established the mission during his summer breaks between 1908 and 1910.
Gray was a believer in "America First." He didn't see the point of dispatching Americans oversees to do mission work, when there were plenty of oppressed people in Virginia.
Most of the older Monacans attended the small first-to-eighth-grade school, and the Episcopal church's congregation is still largely composed of Monacans. Bear Mountain and the hollows surrounding the church and old school building are the focus of the Monacans' rebirth. The Monacan Indian Tribe would like to raise enough money to buy 200 acres of Bear Mountain.
The mountain is sacred to the Monacans, a tribe that cherishes its connection to the earth. "Monacan" comes from the Algonquin Indian language and means "earth people" or "diggers in the dirt."
After living in Maryland and South Dakota, George Branham returned to his birthplace, Amherst County. He runs a place called The Indian Store on U.S. 29 north of Lynchburg. He claims that a certain percentage of Indians always "stay with the land," and that's why reclaiming at least part of Bear Mountain is important.
Monacans who stayed in the area have since spread out to Bedford and Campbell counties. Kenneth Branham says there are at least 300 to 400 Monacans in central Virginia.
Some who moved out of Amherst and married non-Indians - thus shedding the easily identifiable last names - no longer admit to being Monacan. Some with lighter skin also deny their heritage.
Kenneth Branham and the Monacan leaders want to make their culture valued again. They want to establish a museum in the old schoolhouse. And Branham wants to set up a tribal scholarship fund so Monacan children can attend college.
Older Monacans can sign on or ignore the tribe's rebirth. But the tribe is determined to restore its culture through its younger generation. And there are encouraging signs.
"We just recently got our tribal [membership] cards, and I was going to take my daughter over there," Branham said, "and she had already got it. She was one of the first five in line."
by CNB