In contrast to both Algonquins and Iroquois, the Siouan tribes who ranged the Piedmont country from the Potomac south, were primarily nomads--and nomads, observes Mooney, have short histories. Modern scholarship inclines to place the origin of the great Siouan or Dakotan family possibly amidst the eastern foothills of the southern Alleghanies or at least as far east as Ohio, whence, after a long period, they probably were driven by the Iroquois and other enemies beyond the Mississippi. Being essentially nomadic, without permanent villages and relying on constant hunting for their food, following their game wherever it might lead, they necessarily ranged widely and covered broad areas. From the days of the earliest European invasion, locations of the Iroquois and Algonquin stock were known, but as the earliest English scouts and adventurers found no such long established villages in the Piedmont country, their tendency and following them, that of the early writers and historians, was to loosely assume that the Indians found there were, in common with their neighbours, either Algonquins or Iroquois. Later antiquarians and ethnologists seem to have followed their lead; with an exasperating paucity of record, tradition or material remains, there was but little on which to base knowledge of language, whence racial stock might be deduced. It was not until Horatio Hale announced, sixty years ago, his discovery of a Siouan language bordering the Atlantic coast and James Mooney, in 1894, published his _Siouan Tribes of the East_ that these Indians of the northern Virginia Piedmont, known to be members of the Manahoac Confederacy, were identified as of the Siouan stock. They "consisted of perhaps a dozen tribes of which the names of eight have been preserved. With the exception of the Stegarake," writes Mooney, "all that is known of these was recorded by Smith, whose own acquaintance with them seems to have been limited to an encounter with a large hunting party in 1608." As Smith's narrative, after its wont, paints a vivid picture of the Manahoacs, a picture which almost stands alone in the mist of conjecture and deductive reasoning making up what is left to us of them, it is well to quote it in full, bearing always in mind that while these people were found on the upper Rappahannock, we have excellent reason to believe that they also occupied all the land now within the bounds of Loudoun. As allied bands, without fixed habitation, they wandered over the lands between Tidewater and the Blue Ridge, from the James to the Potomac.