Description
The Moneton were a historical Native American tribe from West Virginia. In the late 17th century, they lived in the Kanawha Valley near the Kanawha and New Rivers. Their name translates to "Big Water" people. In the 1670s, Abraham Wood wrote their name "Moneton" and as another variant, "Monyton." The Moneton may have been a Fort Ancient culture, an Indigenous culture that thrived from 1000 to 1750 CE in the Ohio River Valley. They might have been related to the Shawnee, an Algonquian-speaking people.
Language
The Moneton language was a Siouan language
Culture
Peoples of the Northeast formed loosely organized bands and villages based on shared language and cultural traits. Bands tended to be smaller and to live in places where wild foods such as wild rice, salmon, or shellfish were plentiful. They moved often in pursuit of food sources. The Northeast culture area comprises a mosaic of temperate forests, meadows, wetlands, and waterways. The traditional diet consisted of a wide variety of cultivated, hunted, and gathered foods, including maize, beans, squash, deer, fish, waterbirds, leaves, seeds, tubers, berries, roots, nuts, and maple syrup. Rivers in the northern and eastern parts of the culture area had annual runs of anadromous fish such as salmon; in the north people tended to rely more upon fish than on crops as the latter were frequently destroyed by frost.