Located thirty minutes north of Lynchburg, The Monacan Indian Nation of Virginia is a small tribe composed of about 1,000 people, located in the Amherst County area and recognized as a tribe by the State of Virginia. Our culture in this region dates back 10,000 years, and the original territory of our tribe comprised roughly half of the state of Virginia, including most of the Piedmont region.We are one of the oldest groups of indigenous people still existing in our ancestral homeland, and we are the only group of Eastern Sioux in the state. The Monacan community today centers around Bear Mountain in Amherst County. At this site, a log cabin was built in the late 1870s and used as a church for the Indian people.