John Armstrong named the Valley in 1759 after a friendly Shawnee chief.

"[1] Joseph Yoder portrayed the late nineteenth-century Valley in his semi-autobiographical novel, Rosanna of the Amish (1940).

[2] Twelve Amish and Mennonite groups live in the valley, "one of the most diverse expressions of Anabaptist-Mennonite culture anywhere in North America," according to John A. Hostetler, a renowned scholar of the Amish.

Accents identical to those heard in the Lancaster region are frequently heard in the valley, and some of the population continue to speak a dialect of the German language known as Pennsylvania Dutch (from Deutsch, meaning German).

It drains via the Kishacoquillas Creek through the Mann Narrows water gap in Jacks Mountain to the Juniata River.