Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 8, 1995 TAG: 9503080099
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: AMHERST LENGTH: Medium
The Episcopal Church will donate the land, at the foot of Bear Mountain, within the next month, church officials said Monday.
With the land, the tribe also will acquire the old schoolhouse where the county's Indians once were educated. The Monacans were prohibited from attending public schools until the mid-1960s.
``It's a very special place to the Monacan people,'' Chief Kenneth Branham said. ``This is the only place in Amherst County we had to go to church or get an education.''
Branham himself attended the mission school.
The property to be donated also includes a tribal meeting center and a circa-1840 log cabin. The Monacans have lived along the Blue Ridge Mountains for thousands of years and on Bear Mountain land for centuries.
``It's been a center of our people's lives,'' Branham said of the wooded land cut through by a small creek.
H.M. Darby Jr., chancellor for the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, said the diocese has begun the process of transferring the land.
``We just have to draw up the deed,'' Darby said, adding that the deed should be transferred to the tribe within a month.
The church will keep a quarter-acre on which St. Paul's Church and the rectory stand. Several hundred Monacans attend the church.
The church has owned the land since it built the mission church and school there for the Monacans in 1908.
Branham said the tribe, which has 700 to 800 members in the area, has been working on getting the property from the church for about 18 months.
The tribe plans to put a Monacan Indian museum in the schoolhouse and to use the property for tribal programs, Branham said.
He said the land will not be used to build a casino, as is allowed on Indian land.
``Nobody in our tribe is in favor of having gambling,'' Branham said. ``That is the furthest thing from our minds.''
by CNB