With Smith's return to the mouth of the Rappahannock the mist descends again upon Loudoun for many years.
In 1669 and 1670, John Lederer made three journeys into the interior of Virginia. His first journey took him up the York River; his second, up the James; and the route of his third he describes as "from the Falls of the Rappahannock River to the top of the Apalataen Mountains." Although he obtained the consent of Sir William Berkeley before making his explorations, he seems to have incurred the ill-will of the Virginians themselves and by them was forced to flee to Maryland. There he met Sir William Talbot, who sympathized with and befriended him and translated his story of his travels from the latin in which it had been written. It was published in London in 1672 with a "foreword" by Talbot in Lederer's defense.
Of the "Indians then Inhabiting the western parts of Carolina and Virginia," Lederer says:
"The Indians now seated in these parts are none of those which the English removed from Virginia, but a people driven by the Enemy from the northwest, and invited to sit down here by an Oracle above four hundred years since, as they pretend for the ancient inhabitants of Virginia were far more rude and barbarous, feeding only upon raw flesh and fish, until they taught them to plant corn, and shewed them the use of it."
Concerning the whole Piedmont region, called by Lederer "The Highlands" he writes:
"These parts were formerly possessed by the Tacci, alias Dogi, but they are extinct and the Indians now seated here, are distinguished into the several nations of Mahoc, Nuntaneuck, alias Nuntaly, Nahyssan, Sapon, Managog, Mangoack, Akernatatzy and Monakin &c. One language is common to them all, though they differ in dialects. The parts inhabited here are pleasant and fruitful because cleared of wood and laid open to the Sun."
Apparently in Lederer's "Monakins" and "Mangoacks" we may recognize Smith's "Monacans" and "Mannahocks" or "Mannahoacks"; but on his third or Rappahannock journey he does not speak of such Indians as he may have actually met. James Mooney thinks that by that time the Manahoacs may have been driven out of their earlier hunting grounds. The "Tacci, alias Dogi" described by Lederer are suggested by Mooney to have been only a mythic people, a race of monsters or unnatural beings, such as we find in the mythologies of all tribes and had no relation to the Doeg, named in the records of the Bacon rebellion in 1676, who were probably a branch of the Nanticoke.
What became of the Manahoacs? Did their pursuit of the game they hunted gradually draw them westward or were they, more probably, driven from the Piedmont country by their terrible foes the northern Iroquois, aided perhaps by the Susquehannocks who next appear upon the scene? But before taking up the story of the Iroquois and Susquehannock influence in Loudoun, we must turn to the English Kings and their grants of Virginia and particularly its Northern Neck, that spacious territory lying between the Rappahannock and Potomac, extending from the Chesapeake to a disputed western boundary.