It's difficult to imagine the land upon which Blacksburg and the Virginia Tech campus are built was like before the arrival of European settlers. Before the stone facades, before the pavement, shopping centers, Drillfield, and Duck Pond, this was a land of meadows nestled in the mountains. The grass grew as tall as a person. It fed deer and buffalo, which in turn fed native populations of humans—and panthers. According to Lee Pendleton, author of Indian Massacres - Montgomery County 1755-1756, the first European explorers of the Batts and Fallam exploring party in 1671 were unfamiliar with the terrain of rolling hills and mountains. Apparently they saw little reason to stick around, because it wasn't for another 75 years or so that White folk came to stay. Scots- Irish and German settlers made their way down from Pennsylvania to what they called a "land flowing with milk and honey." Dr. William Henry Foote wrote in 1856 in his Sketches of Virginia, "For seclusion, abundance of the means of living, and the pleasure and excitement of hunting, Draper's Meadows might have been an enviable spot."

VPI’s 6th President(1907-1913) Paul Brandon Barringer’s daughter at the
site of the Draper’s Meadow Massacre ca.1910

It's interesting to imagine the intrigue, excitement, and opportunity the Draper, Ingles, and other families must have felt that compelled them to settle in this area. The move would have meant a characterbuilding life of hard work and boundless natural beauty. There was certainly also a calculated risk in living beyond the borders of the ever expanding leviathan of which the colonies were a part. Nowadays it is easy to look back with a mixture of awe and disdain on a people who marched into a beautiful foreign land, killed and displaced its occupants, and began using and abusing the natural resources present there. Nevertheless, these people were many of our ancestors. It is also possible to imagine the temptation they must have felt when confronted with the opportunity to live in this wild new land. After all, they were riding the first breakers of what would become an immense and unstoppable tide.

Prior to this time, the French had been in the area, although these Europeans lived as semi-nomadic trappers and hunters, developing good relations with the natives. The new Scots-Irish and German settlers of this area, however, brought families, built houses, planted fields, and made like they meant to stick around. This didn't sit so well with the native folks, and thus local lines were drawn in the French and Indian War.

The native attack on this settlement of about 20 Europeans which was by then called Draper's Meadows was not without precedent. According to Pendleton, other deadly raids had occurred at Holston River in 1754 and '55, and more recently at New River and Reed Creek. Colonel James Patton, a close friend of the Draper and Ingles families, believed the settlers should stay to defend the territory. He requested the protection of two Ranger companies, but men were slow to enlist and the attack came before any reinforcements were assembled. The settlement had no defense beyond personal firearms.

The memorial by the duck pond lists the date of the attack as July 8, 1755, but it is now generally agreed that the attack took place on the 30th or 31st of the month. Such conflicting information is typical of the documentation surrounding the attack. It is agreed, however, that a group of Shawnee from what is now Ohio made their way to the settlement and killed four people, including Colonel Patton himself, a woman, an old man, and a baby. The Shawnee wounded another settler and captured five more to be held for ransom. The attack is referred to as the Draper's Meadows Massacre, which is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. The word, "massacre," generally evokes thoughts of a somewhat larger number of people being killed.

The Sandy Creek Expedition was subsequently mounted by Major Andrew Lewis, seeking revenge against the Shawnee, but the party got lost and had to go back. Meanwhile, two of the captives, Mary Draper Ingles and the Dutch wife of John Draper, were able to escape from their captors and make a return journey that has been greatly aggrandized by popular history. A monument in Radford claims the journey was some 800 miles, but Pendleton claims that based on the reports of where the Shawnee settlement was, it was probably more like 200 miles. Regardless, the two brave women were able to steal a horse and some corn, cross streams and rivers, and resist hunger-induced temptations towards cannibalism to return to their husbands some four months after the attack.

After the attack, the remainder of the settlers left the area. The Drapers headed for Pulaski County, putting down roots in what would become known as Draper's Valley, and the Ingles embarked on a ferry trip on the New River that would operate for almost 200 years. By contrast, Thomas Ingles, the son of Mary Draper Ingles and another of the captives, lived with the Shawnee for many years and followed many of their ways for the rest of his life. Several years and a lot fewer natives later, Smithfield Plantation was created by William Preston, another who had lived in the old settlement and survived the attack.

It seems clear that we don't learn from history as we should. When an invading force moves into another people's territory to take advantage of their natural resources, they will naturally be met with fierce resistance. In its collective desire to expand its territory, European-American civilization cannot come to terms with this reality and make appropriate changes. Instead it just comes up with new rhetoric and more colluded justifications to repeat the past. "Manifest Destiny" becomes a quest to bring "Freedom" to the rest of the world. Attacks on our foreign "settlements" that occur today are unilaterally labeled as terrorist actions, and treated in much the same way: by sending out war parties looking for revenge and submission rather than listening to the actual reasons the "terrorists" themselves state for their actions and doing something to fundamentally address those root problems.

This powerful piece of history which occurred right here in our own backyards can be dealt with in one of two ways—as an interesting piece of trivia, innocuously carved in a stone monument, or as a close-to- home piece of evidence that there was and is something deeply wrong with our culture. It is a culture that not only supports the principle of might makes right, and believes it can take whatever it wants, but one that is also unable to learn from its mistakes, at least when to do so would mean to question the culture's very own foundations. Let us hope we can begin to learn from the past and the present, so that we can begin to build a better future for everyone.