Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Senedo people

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect‎ to Shenandoah County, Virginia. There is rough consensus against keeping the article, and the redirect target mentions the topic. Whether and what to say about the Senedos there, given the discussion below about the unreliability of available sources, is a content matter to be resolved by further discussion on the target article talk page. Sandstein 08:29, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Senedo people[edit]

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Senedo people (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Almost no information about this group of people exists. Hodge includes one 1882 mention of them in his Handbook of North Americans North of Mexico but says that, "The statement is of doubtful authenticity." No further information can be added to this article. Yuchitown (talk) 20:54, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Yuchitown[reply]

- There were at least two accounts of Native people who claimed their entire nation was decimated in the 17th century
He further extrapolates:
- They lived along the North Fork Shenandoah prior to the 17th century
- In the 17th century, there was a massacre which killed all but at least 2
- There is a possible mass grave attributed to them in that area
The other main source is the 1882 book The History of Augusta County, which claims:
-The name Shenandoah means "beautiful daughter of the stars,"
-They lived on the North Fork Shenandoah until they were massacred (likely from Kercheval,1850).
As discussed, the authenticity of this claim, and thus Kercheval's original, were dismissed as doubtful by Hodge. There is, from what I can tell, no other credible source which mentions the Senedo, not stemming from Kercheval. So, what we have, is a tribe which is mentioned in one source which has been dismissed by an anthropologist. I don't think this merits any real mention in an article, much less an entire article. PersusjCP (talk) 05:32, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So, you've found two sources, plus further sources discussing those two sources. That sounds like it passes GNG and that there should be an article on WP about this, which would include the judgements of Hodge and others about the historicity of the people. Furius (talk) 18:47, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is one main source, in which it is just a few paragraphs worth of information. Blogs and other websites aren't reliable sources. The other reliable source, Peyton is just a summary of the first with no analysis, and is not very useful. The only other source is Hodge, who claims the original claim (through Peyton) is doubtful.
Looking at WP:GNG, it does not have "significant coverage" in the secondary sources. In Hodge and Peyton, it is a trivial mention. In Kercheval, it is more, but not "significant coverage." It doesn't have significant coverage in any source. If there is any article which discusses the Indigenous peoples of Appalachia, or the Shenandoah Valley, it should have a mention there. I don't think it merits its own article. PersusjCP (talk) 19:48, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the Kercheval source which contains a full page on the subject qualifies as SIGCOV at least. BeanieFan11 (talk) 19:59, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is one source enough for an entire article? PersusjCP (talk) 20:17, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not for any other subject on Wikipedia, but it's probably not worth wasting more time on this subject. Thank you for all your research! Yuchitown (talk) 18:37, 21 January 2024 (UTC)Yuchitown[reply]
  • Comment -- This is not a vote, as I know nothing, but Shenandoah County, Virginia has a short passage on the origin of the name that seems to cover the same ground. Would that be an appropriate redirect target? Peterkingiron (talk) 17:54, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - I've done research myself on the sources provided here and looking for others and it's my determination there isn't enough to keep. We have one source that is a few paragraphs long, some blogs and self-published websites, one source that says the other is doubtful, and then this Kercheval source which may or may not be considered SIGCOV. It might have been alright to create the article but once it comes under the eye of scrutiny I think it requires at least three sources independent of each other, meaning they do not simply repeat or summarize, giving the subject significant coverage. I don't see that in this case. --ARoseWolf 12:19, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect or selective merge as suggested into Shenandoah County, Virginia per Peterkingiron. This is one of those excellent cases where a redirect or smerger is appropriate; we try to do anything other than outright deletion for what is clearly useful, sourced information. Bearian (talk) 15:17, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Star Mississippi 15:39, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • The problem with the argument that we have sources now is exemplified thus:

    Following is a list of all of the known tribes residing in or resoring to the valley in 1716–1732 taken from Peyton's History of Augusta County:

    […]

    It is not known to what nation or tribe the Senedo belongs, as there is no reference to them in the older books; it is possible that the name was invented to account for the term Shenandoah […]

    — Fowke, Gerard (1894). Archeologic Investigations in James and Potomac Valleys. Bulletin. Vol. 23. Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology. ISSN 0081-0223., p.72

    This name is mentioned because Kercheval wrote about a supposed tribe called Senedo. The source of his information was tradition. Numerous other writers have copied with amplification what he wrote about these Indians, who were supposed to have lived on the North Branch of the Shenandoah and who were reported exterminated by the Southern Indians in 1731 (Peyton's History of Augusta County); some guess they were Cherokees and others presumed they were some other enemy tribe. If the Senedos ever existed they were exterminated before 1722, because at the Treaty of Albany (1722), Governor Spotswood expressly named each Indian tribe then living in Virginia, and the Senedoes were not among them. Furthermore, the Handbook of American indians published by the Bureau of American Athnology of the Smithsonian Institution dismisses references to the Senedoes as "of doubtful authenticity".

    — Couper, William (1952). History of the Shenandoah Valley. Vol. 1. Lewis Historical Publishing Company., p.122
    We have sources that do all of the AFD work for us. They tell us that there's just one source for this, they name it, and they cast doubt upon its reliability and factual accuracy. I'll take William Couper, local historian who worked for the Virginia Military Institute in the 20th century over the 19th century source that he casts significant doubt upon. If we have modern scholarship that says that old scholarship is unreliable, then we really shouldn't be totalling up the 19th century regurgitations and declaring things notable, let alone doing what this article currently does which is presenting as true something that modern scholarship has concluded to be false.

    Uncle G (talk) 18:14, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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