On September 9, 1671, the first Europeans to explore Southwest Virginia reached the Roanoke Valley. On September 9, 2021, Thomas Klatka, archaeologist with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, will describe the Virginia they discovered and the Virginia Indians they encountered. The talk will be hosted by the Salem Museum at 7 pm on Zoom. The link will be posted on the Salem Museum’s website, salemmuseum.org, on the morning of the talk. When Thomas Batts, Robert Fallam, and Thomas Woods trekked into the western part of Virginia 350 years ago in search of a quick route to the Pacific, they traversed a territory that they did not understand. The land had long been settled by a large group of indigenous people of diverse tribal names who were linked by kinship, beliefs, shared needs, and the encroachment of global circumstances. Klatka will focus on the events of September 9-11, 1671, when Batts and Fallam visited Totera Town, likely in the vicinity of Salem. The Totera people that the explorers met there deserve to be remembered today, 350 years later. Klatka’s presentation will also offer a platform for encouraging a greater understanding of these people during a significant period of shared history in Western Virginia.