Blue Ridge Mountains - History

History

The English who settled colonial Virginia in the early 17th century recorded that the native Powhatan name for the Blue Ridge was Quirank. At the foot of the Blue Ridge, various tribes including the Sioux Manahoacs, the Iroquois, and the Shawnee hunted and fished. A German physician, John Lederer, first reached the crest of the Blue Ridge in 1669 and again the following year.

As more settlers moved into Virginia, their economic and at times martial competition pushed the native inhabitants west.

Read more about this topic:  Blue Ridge Mountains

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
    —Milan Kundera (b. 1929)

    “All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
    —José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)