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This is a collection of discussions on the deletion of articles related to West Virginia. It is one of many deletion lists coordinated by WikiProject Deletion sorting. Anyone can help maintain the list on this page.

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West Virginia

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Kanawha people

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Kanawha people (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)
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WP:TNT, this doesn't appear to be about a notable topic, and I can't find any scholarly literature discussing the subject. The idea that the Kanawha people are the ancestor's of Native Americans appears to be fictitious, or at least incredibly fringe. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:42, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. This is a real people group mentioned in history journals and books. [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. I'm not saying the current text is accurate, but I have a big problem with deleting an article on a Native American people group. That would be participating in erasure which is morally problematic in light of the history of Native American genocide in the United States. The answer is to trim out unsupported content and validate what we can with the sources we can locate. Stubifying it would be better than deletion. 4meter4 (talk) 19:13, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    When people are writing "Kanawha people" are they referring to a distinct ethnic group, or a general term for Native Americans inhabiting the Kanawha area? If the latter, I hardly see how this warrants a standalone article. The sources you mention are passing references that are completely inadequate to construct any kind of meaningful article about the topic. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:23, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that sources better than this are needed. However, it is clearly a people group as they are being referenced as living in New England in one source, and Kentucky in another at various points in history. It's not attached just to the Kanawha Valley. I'll see if I can find anything in JSTOR or EBSCOE that gives a better defined definition.4meter4 (talk) 19:39, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The first four of those sources appear to be referring to white settlers in the Kanawha Valley. The only mention in the Cotterill source, in a passage about a surveying party in Kentucky, is in the sentence, So many of the Kanawha people had joined the expedition that there were now thirty-three men in the party, although four of the original members had returned home for fear of the Indians. The Stealy source is talking about the cost of hiring slaves in Kanawha County, and the only mention of Kanawha people is in the phrase, I discover that the people of this country don't like to hire to the Kanawha people, it is a long distance & near the state of Ohio. The Davisson source is about the Union army in Kentucky during the Civil War, long after Native Americans had been forced out of Kentucky, and the only mention of 'Kanawha people' is in the sentence, I propose ... to induce the Kanawha people to take a more decided course. The Engineering and Mining Journal source, from 1910, says, The New River and Kanawha people have been busy in New England territory this spring, offering coal at very low prices. I think it is quite clear that those sources are referring to white settlers/residents of the Kanawha Valley, and not to any group Native American people. Donald Albury 21:23, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It could be, but the Scoggins source below clearly is referring to a Native people group that the Kanawha Valley is named after (not the other way around). That people group lived in several places according to that source. That source is enough to establish that deletion is not the answer here and WP:ATD at the very least is necessary.4meter4 (talk) 22:05, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I must say that the Scoggins source does not support any content in the article other than the possibility that "Kanawha" was the name of a Native American group that moved to the valley. I do not think that there is anything in the present article that can be salvaged. Donald Albury 13:42, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your point? I said I didn’t think current text was accurate and the article should be stubified to the reliable sources we find. Clearly we could write a short paragraph based on Scoggins and the journal article provided above by the nominator. That would take all of five minutes to do.4meter4 (talk) 14:01, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And it would be a sub-stub, unlikely to ever be substantially expanded. Better to be a redirect to an article that can provide context. I understand that you are concerned with Native American history being covered in Wikipedia. I am too. But, if there is next to nothing reliably sourced to say about a group, it is better to put what little can be sourced as a section or sub-section in a larger article, or even as an entry in a Boldlist. Donald Albury 14:59, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I think this is referring to St. Albans Site. Haven't looked through all the "Kanawha people" links above but the appear to have been misread. fiveby(zero) 19:31, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This old article on the history of Kanawha County from West Virginia University political science department says that the Kanawha were a people who lived in the area during the early British colonial Period, but this honestly this isn't a great source and I haven't been able to find anything better, so maybe a redirect to Kanawha_River#History would be better. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:37, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the existing article there wood be Adena culture. oops colonial period, will look for more. fiveby(zero) 19:42, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    This tribe, a branch of the Algonquin family, was closely related to the Nanticokes and Delawares who resided in what are now the states of Delaware and Maryland. During the seventeenth century, the name of this tribe was variously recorded by early English settlers as “Conoys,” “Conoise,” “Canawese,” “Cohnawas,” “Canaways,” and ultimately, “Kanawhas.”

    — KANAWHA Michael C. Scoggins
    Conoys redirects to Piscataway people
    looks like a museum bulletin but by a published author. fiveby(zero) 19:49, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok, that's definitely an improvement. Looking at other sources, they seem to agree on the synonymy between Conoys and Piscataway, so I would support redirecting to that article (though I am unclear if as to whether the term "Kanawha" has been applied to multiple distinct Native American groups). Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:55, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure how much forward we are here. Scoggins looks to be from Hale, John P. (1891). History of the great Kanawha Valley. p. 63. That's this John P. Hale. I'd like to find something more recent and more affirmative than the author's "probably derived by evolution from..." fiveby(zero) 21:51, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    There does appear to be some confusion about the issue in the literature. The Lenape and Their Legends (1885} states: [7]
    The fourth member of the Wapanachki was that nation variously called in the old records Conoys, Ganawese or Canaways, the proper form of which Mr. Heckewelder states to be Canai. Considerable obscurity has rested on the early location and affiliation of this people. Mr. Heckewelder vaguely places them "at a distance on the Potomac," and supposes them to have been the Kanawhas of West Virginia. This is a loose guess. They were, in fact, none other than the Piscataways of Southern Maryland, who occupied the area between Chesapeake Bay and the lower Potomac, about St. Mary's, and along the Piscataway creek and Patuxent river.
    The Indian wars of Pennsylvania (1929) p. 53 states [8]: The Conoy, also called the Ganawese and the Piscataway, inhabited parts of Pennsylvania during the historic period. They were an Algonquin tribe, closely related to the Delawares, whom they called "grandfathers," and from whose ancestral stem they no doubt sprang. Heckewelder, an authority on the history of the Delawares and kindred tribes, believed them to be identical with the Kanawha, for whom the chief river of West Virginia is named ; and it seems that the names, Conoy and Ganawese, are simply different forms of the name Kanawha, though it is difficult to explain the application of the same name to the Piscataway tribe of Maryland, except on the theory that this tribe once lived on the Kanawha.
    The 2022 book chapter "Tribal Collaborations and Indigenous Representation in Higher Education: Challenges, Successes, and Suggestions for Attaining the SDGs" states: The Piscataway Rico Newman, Piscataway elder and MIHEA participant, relays some history of the Piscataway people: The Piscataway-Kanawha (Piscataway) are the “People Who Live Where Waters Blend Below Rapids.” Prior to colonization, the Piscataway developed well-orchestrated lifeways that sustained them for centuries.
    Reading the literature. "Kanawha" also appears to be used for a stone projectile point type produced in the early Holocene, long before the colonial period. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:07, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This discussion has been included in the list of West Virginia-related deletion discussions. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 20:08, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Based on Scoggins, it seems like it would be possible to keep the article if it were substantially rewritten. However, it would be equally plausible to incorporate that content into the Piscataway people article and redirect it to that page. Either would be fine, but I do think closing this AFD is going to require someone to step in do the work of either recrafting the current page, or writing a bit in the Piscataway people article so that a redirect is appropriate. That article currently doesn't even mention the Kanawha people.4meter4 (talk) 21:16, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think there is really anything to say in any article yet. Appreciate your view on erasure but in my opinion worse would be getting this wrong and creating some fiction about a people or tribe. fiveby(zero) 22:04, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think there is enough evidence between the journal article presented by the nominator above (who is advocating for a redirect) and the Scoggins source to put something into the Piscataway people article at the very least. Scoggins is after all a published historian. At some point, we just have to trust subject matter experts and their judgement. Worse in my view would be to ignore these sources as a form of WP:Systemic bias; something wikipedia struggles with when it comes to marginalized people groups (which has been researched).4meter4 (talk) 22:14, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The confusing name has led us down the path of looking at the colonial era Conoy tribe and whether or not Kanawha is a synonym. There was some dispute about the name in sources since John Heckewelder's suggestion that Kanawha was from Conoy but i think in our recent sources that has been accepted and not really questioned. Redirects from Kanawha to Piscataway are appropriate but then we have some additional confusion to work out. That is the difference between a 'tribe' and a 'people'. I think there is widespread confusion as to peoples and subdivision such as 'tribe' or 'band' and how they are recorded and named throughout history and how they might be organized or recognized today. There were both a Conoy tribe (the Conoy proper or Piscataway) and it seems a Conoy people.pp 125-6 I think this is represented on WP as Piscataway people (Conoy people) and Piscataway-Conoy Tribe of Maryland (Conoy tribe)?
I don't really have a whole lot of confidence for much of this, so i think input from some more knowledgeable editors is necessary. fiveby(zero) 16:39, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, i do not think it would be easy or practical to have an article that only covers the prehistoric people. The content should probably be merged somewhere but i have no real idea to where. It should definitely not be merged to any Piscataway or Conoy people or tribe. fiveby(zero) 16:50, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The content is frankly so lacklustre that it would need to be entirely rewritten to include anywhere. I think Kanawha Valley (prehistoric people) and Kanawha valley people can be redirected to Kanawha River#History as these clearly relate more to the geographical location. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:10, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That is much better content, and now i see you suggested that as a target above and i missed it distracted by the Conoy. My confusion is probably more due to distaste as to how WP titles and scopes people and tribe articles in general. The closer might have a tough time with all the confusion and redirects involved but i think you have the best plan here so Note to closer: consider my vote what Hemiauchenia says. fiveby(zero) 17:55, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect to Piscataway people: per the reasoning given by Hemiauchenia. TarnishedPathtalk 04:16, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect to Piscataway people per Hemiauchenia.Bcbc24 (talk) 19:27, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Convert to disambiguation page, because no single redirect target is satisfactory. Most of the article as written (really more of a school essay than anything) covers the whole experience of the colonization of the Americas by settlers from Asia thousands of years ago. But the object, and the last couple of sections, seems to have been to describe the native people who lived in the Kanawha Valley before it was settled by Europeans. Those were decidedly not Piscataway, even though the word "Kanawha" may have been used at one point synonymously with "Piscataway" and perhaps derived from "Conoy". Our article about the Piscataway seems to exclude any possibility that they ever lived in the Kanawha Valley, and that alone would confuse readers who come across this title.
At the same time, I cannot determine whether there is any other article on a group of American Indians who would be described this way, and be the definitive redirect target: the last major groups who might have inhabited the Kanawha Valley would be the Fort Ancient culture and the Shawnee, who may or may not have been identical (evidently that has not yet been determined). But the degree to which the Kanawha Valley was inhabited, rather than merely transited during this period is also unclear; most archaeological sites are older and probably date to the time of the Mound Builders, a vague term which in this case really refers to the Adena and Hopewell cultures. All of these would correctly be described as "Kanawha people", and it is not unlikely that some readers would also expect this title to describe the later, European settlers of the valley, including but not limited to modern-day Kanawha County, another possible redirect target.
Since all of these are plausible targets, and the article contains almost nothing that is not already in one or more of them, the best way to resolve the issue is to convert this into a disambiguation page—either one that strictly follows the normal disambiguation page criteria, or perhaps a more narrative one that explains how the phrase might apply to different but related groups—including the Piscataway, of course, but certainly not redirecting to them, since that would likely astonish most readers. P Aculeius (talk) 15:51, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have no disagreement with this proposal. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:40, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: While a closer might redirect this article to Piscataway people because of the bolded statements, it's not clear to me that this is the consensus or would be appropriate. First, there are doubts where this "people" is a Native American tribe or just referring to "people who live in Kanawha". Secondly, there is no mention of Kanawha people at this suggested target article. Finally, there are alternative suggestions including Keep, Delete or redirection to a different target article based on the location of Kanawha, West Virginia. So, since I don't see a firm consensus and lots of different arguments floating around here as recently as yesterday, I'm going to relist this discussion.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 20:54, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment the arguments that "Kanawha" is an alternate spelling of "Conoy" have some merit. But (largely for the reasons expressed by Liz) I can't endorse the redirect to Piscataway people. Perhaps a DAB page would be an option. Walsh90210 (talk) 23:33, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I think the assertion that there is no "Kanawha people" is fundamentally not true as Scoggins was absolutely clear that the "Kanawha Valley" was named after the "Kanawha people" who lived elsewhere prior to being the first people to settle in the Kanawha Valley. The valley was named after the people group, not the other way around. The sources are also pretty clear that Kanawha were/are a branch of the Piscataway people (ie. Conoy). The best solution here is to add a sentence to the Piscataway people article and then redirect to that page. Best.4meter4 (talk) 23:35, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • A viable second option would be to turn this into a dab bage with a reference to the Conoy/Piscataway people. And a possible second meaning of people living or from the "Kanawha Valley". That might be the best so we cover all bases.4meter4 (talk) 23:38, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Why would that be better than a redirect? Any group known to have lived in the valley should be mentioned in the history section of the Kanawha County article. I see that the Kanawha River article does list various cultures and peoples that have occupied the valley, although nothing is sourced. But I don't think people will be looking for "Kanawha people" when they are interested in the Adena or Fort Ancient cultures. And if they are interested in earlier occupants of the valley, how would they look for "Kanawha people" rather "History of Kanawha County" or "History of the Kanawha River"? Donald Albury 02:08, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am strongly opposed to any solution which doesn't include either a redirect or a navigational link at a DAB page to Piscataway people per the journal article cited towards the top and the Scoggins source. Not doing that erases that this is indeed a real Native American people group and not just natives who happened to live in the Kanawha Valley. Scoggins is clear the Kanawha were the Kanawha before they ever arrived in the Kanawha Valley, and the valley was named for them.4meter4 (talk) 02:14, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And a redirect is my preference. I don't think there is any case for calling any other group that has lived in the valley "Kanawha people" in an encyclopedic sense. Donald Albury 02:52, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are some people commenting who oppose redirecting to Piscataway people arguing that the term "Kanawha people" has been applied more generically to people living the "Kanawha Valley" in some cases. (This is true according to Scoggins who points out the term has been used inconsistently) A dab page would allow us to articulate the discrepancy by saying "Kanawha people" could refer to 1: an alternative spelling of the Conoy people which is a subset of the Piscataway people or 2. people who reside or originated from the Kanawha Valley. This would allow for the various uses of the term as described by Scoggins. Best.4meter4 (talk) 03:54, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

West Virginia Proposed deletions

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