Monongahela Culture - Disappearance

Disappearance

This late prehistoric culture peaked about AD 1300. The colder weather of the Little Ice Age may have caused inter-group battling over food, according to some scholars. The crops did not prosper as well during this colder period, causing food shortages for populations that had grown after their introduction. Some studies show that the culture began failing due to poor health conditions.

The Monongahela culture was progressively disappearing before the time the Iroquois League invaded the Allegheny Plateau through to the Lake Erie region in an effort to control new hunting grounds. About the year of 1635, it appears that a group of Monongahela refugees resettled in south-central Virginia at Halifax County. They were likely absorbed by a Siouan-speaking tribe of the area, but historians do not know for sure, as there were also Algonquian and Iroquoian tribes nearby.