Near this site on both sides of the Rivanna River stood Monasukapanough, a Monacan Indian village and one of five Monacan towns that Captain John Smith recorded by name on his 1612 Map of Virginia, though many more existed. It was a chief’s village and was occupied for several centuries until it was abandoned in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Monacan descendants still live throughout central Virginia, and the tribe’s headquarters today is on Bear Mountain in Amherst County.