Alexander Spotswood led twelve men, his band of Knights of the Golden Horse Shoe, along an unmarked and difficult trail through torrents, dew, heat, stone, ravines, scarps, and jagged boulders to reach a high mountain height, where at dawn they looked beyond the deep blue hills and discovered the Shenandoah Valley, a land of jeweled rivers, pine-clad slopes, and a beauty long known only to Native people who understood its hidden paths and waters.