of local autonomy. This was true even on the north Pacific coast where food was so abundant that great numbers could maintain themselves in close contact with one another for long periods. It is still more apparent among the purely hunting, fishing, and food-gathering tribes of Texas and northeastern Mexico. Tribal solidarity and a certain measure of governmental unification begin to make their appearance, however, when we reach the coast tribes which also raised corn, but an examination of such tribes often discloses certain disturbing factors. Thus the Chitimacha were rather a lacustrine and inland people than a purely coastal tribe, and the same may be said of most of the tribes of northern Florida. Spanish records indicate that the Indians of the Georgia coast, in the province known as Guale, recognized a head chief. It is, however, doubtful how long they had been in this section and to what extent this headship was of purely native origin. The Indians of the adjoining "province" of Orista, in what is now South Carolina, seem to have been closely related in both language and culture, but to have had no supreme chief and no central organization. Exceptions also seem to confront us in the tidewater sections of North Carolina and Virginia, but the larger tribal aggregates appear to have been superficial and unstable. The most conspicuous governmental unit here was the so-called Powhatan Confederation, or "Empire of Powhatan." In 1607, when the English came to Jamestown, more than 30 tribes belonged to it, but we are informed that all but 6 of these had been brought under one government by the chief, Powhatan himself, and the others represented conquests by his father. It is likely that a state built up in such a summary manner might dissolve with equal rapidity, and this very thing probably happened in the case of the Weapemeoc, which, when the Raleigh colonists landed at Roanoke, extended over the greater part of the present North Carolina mainland north of Albemarle Sound, but by 1650 had been replaced by 4 or 5 independent bands. These "empires" were merely temporary aggregations of the small local units normally found in fishing and hunting territories. It must also be remembered that most of the coastal tribes which formed larger aggregations raised corn and pursued communal methods of agriculture of the kind in vogue among the interior nations and that this was a main factor in the evolution of their several tribal organizations. Elsewhere I have suggested that the littoral states may have represented in some measure a protective reaction against the pressure of the interior agrarian nations.

In one place, southwestern Florida, we have what appears to have been a powerful littoral community which grew up without any assistance from agriculture. This was the Calusa tribe, which, if we may trust our Spanish authorities, was under the well-nigh auto

cratic control of one chief. The economic life was based mainly upon fish, shellfish, and the gathering of certain roots. It seems to have owed its origin in part to the pressure of alien peoples toward the north, in part to trade, and in part probably to rather recent migration from the vicinity of the great inland nations. On other sections of the coast, such as the northern Gulf shore from the mouth of the Mississippi to the Apalachicola, in southeastern Florida, and on the coasts of South Carolina and most of North Carolina, only small tribes were to be found, often tribes confined to a single town.

Upon the whole, we may say that the tendency of the coast peoples was toward small units which only sporadically were gathered into larger bodies. Inland it was quite the other way. Along Yazoo River, and in parts of Louisiana, there were a few so-called "tribes" of insignificant proportions, but some of these, like the Taposa, Ibitoupa, and Avoyel, appear to have been temporary offshoots of the large nations; others, such as the Yazoo, Koroa, Tiou, Taensa, and Chakchiuma, vestiges of people once very much greater. In southern Georgia there were a number of small tribal groups, but they were united into the Creek Confederation at such an early period that we cannot speak with certainty regarding their original condition. The Siouan tribes of the Piedmont country were also for the most part small, but a tendency is evident among these to form larger groups or confederations such as the Manahoac and Monacan Confederacies, and the associations of tribes at Fort Christanna, and on the upper Pee Dee, while there is some reason to think that many of the southern Siouans had broken away from the Catawba at an earlier period. The greater part of the Southeastern interior, however, was occupied by large tribes or confederacies, including the Tuscarora, Catawba, Yamassee, Apalachee, Creeks, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Natchez, and Caddo. The Utina and Potano of Florida might also be included as well as the Quapaw and Shawnee. Four of these, together with the later-formed Seminole, were perpetuated to modern times as the Five Civilized Tribes, and existed as small republics under the suzerainty of the white man until the beginning of the twentieth century.

A word might be said regarding the position of our tribes relatively to the life zones. The Cherokee and some western Siouan tribes of Virginia were the only ones occupying the tongue of the Transitional Zone, which comprises the Alleghanian Faunal Area and the bits of the Canadian Zone. The Cherokee also extended into the Carolinian Faunal Area of the Upper Austral Zone, where lived also most of the Siouan tribes of Virginia and the Carolinas, excepting some that extended from the fall line to the coast. The Shawnee also were generally to be found in this area as well as the

Yuchi in early days and some Muskhogean tribes along the River Tennessee. The Tropical Zone of southern Florida was the home of the important Calusa tribe and a number of small, probably related, peoples on the east coast. All of the other tribes of this cultural province made their homes in the Austroriparian Faunal Area of the Lower Austral Zone. Only some of the wilder hunting peoples were found in the edges of the Upper and Lower Sonoran Faunal Areas, and these fall outside of the section under discussion.

The number and location of these various groups were evidently determined by a complex series of causes and cannot be derived immediately out of the environment. However, the adoption of a horticultural complex was without doubt one major reason behind the integration of these peoples into tribes, and the location of suitable cornland and suitable fisheries were determining factors of considerable weight. We have already noted the bearing which the position of the fall line had on the size and location of some Siouan tribes, and on the situation of the Creeks. The Apalachee were on the most important high land in Florida. The value of southern Appalachian quarries to the Cherokee and the significance of the Appalachians as means of defence have already been dwelt upon. The fertility of the old Choctaw, Chickasaw, Natchez, and Caddo territories contains a partial explanation of them, but it is probable that many important tribes formerly living along the Mississippi River had been driven out later by the chronic flooding to which the territory was subjected and, in more recent times, apparently, by wide-spread epidemics. The Natchez Bluff explains in considerable measure the prominence of the Natchez people, and the bluffs in the neighborhood of Vicksburg, the Tunica people. In the case of the Catawba, perhaps we must suppose that they were sufficiently far from the lowlands to escape the embarrassment of heavy forests to be cut down in the process of preparing fields, and were in proximity to Saluda Pass and the mountain quarries, and in a strategic position at trail crossings.

It is evident, however, that the manner in which the geographical features were utilized depended largely upon nongeographical factors such as race, language, and intertribal contacts. Nearly all of the tribes were homogeneous internally in respect to language and culture, not as much so as regards race. A few governmental organizations had reached a point of development which enabled them to take in tribes of alien speech, but in all such cases the tribes thus incorporated constituted a minority element. In the case of the Creek Confederation, it is true, the adopted elements at one time constituted nearly half of the federated body, but these were themselves diverse, and the dominant people, the Muskogee, always vastly outnumbered any one

of them. The Natchez had taken under their protection two small alien tribes, and the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Catawba, and Caddo added foreign elements at various periods, but the incorporated peoples were insignificant in numbers and in many cases related to the dominant group.

As has been elsewhere intimated, adjustment to the environment was dependent in some measure upon the methods that had been evolved for exploiting it, notably the use of corn, beans, squashes, and a few other plants.

By comparing the location of prehistoric archeological sites with the location of tribes in historic times, we are able to form some idea of the change in adjustment that had taken place. The greatest shift of population seems to have occurred in the abandonment of the greater part of the lower Mississippi Valley above the mouth of Red River, though much of this cccurred after the time of De Soto and may have been due to epidemics of European origin. Abandonment of the northwest coast of Florida appears to have taken place at a still earlier date, though the experience of Pineda suggests that it may not have antedated by many years the discovery of the New World. The abandonment of the Georgia coast and part of the Georgia hinterland was post-Columbian. If we consider marginal areas, we find that another extensive displacement of peoples of high culture had taken place along the Ohio River and the upper course of the Mississippi and its branches. This constitutes one of the great problems of eastern archeology.

PREHISTORIC MOVEMENTS

(See map 10)

Our strictly historical knowledge of these tribes is naturally confined almost entirely to the period after they came into contact with the whites, though it is hoped that a comparison of their known arts and industries with the remains in process of resurrection by archeologists will enable us to trace them back to a still more remote epoch. In Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletins 43 (Swanton, 1911), 47 (Dorsey and Swanton, 1912), and 73 (Swanton, 1922), I gave all of the information available to me at the time of writing regarding the histories of the Indians of the Muskhogean, Tunican, Timucuan, and Uchean stocks and the southern Siouans, and in Bulletin 22 (1895) Mr. Mooney performed a similar service for the Siouan tribes of the east. In the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau (Mooney, 1900), he gave the history of the Cherokee. The Carolina region has recently been covered very competently by Dr. Chapman J. Milling in Red Carolinians, and the entire field in an elementary fashion in the articles in the Handbook of American In

dians (Hodge, 1907, 1910). For the present undertaking it will not be necessary to go into details, but an outline of the general course of history in the section is called for.

The traditions of most Southeastern tribes indicate a belief that they had come into the section where we find them from the west or north, the region most often indicated being the northwest. This is natural when one considers that the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico lie east and south. Still, it would have been possible for population to enter by way of the West Indies and the Florida Peninsula, or from Mexico along the Gulf shore. However, tradition is here borne out by the testimony of language because we find that relationship even in the case of the aberrant Timucua tongue of Florida is with the north and west (Swanton, 1929, pp. 450-453). This is not to deny earlier movements from the West Indies and, as we shall see later, there are clear traces of cultural contact in this quarter, but as a whole we must regard the flow of population in the Southeast as having been eastward and southward.

The only migration legends in any manner contradicting such a conclusion may readily be explained. Thus, some Hitchiti stories recorded by Gatschet gave the Gulf coast as the earlier home of that Creek subtribe, but the individuals from whom this came were probably Sawokli, and it is known historically that they had moved northward into the Creek Nation at a late period (Gatschet, 1884, pp. 77-78). Similarly, James Adair informs us that the tribes about Fort Toulouse, at the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers, had come "from South America" (Adair, 1930, pp. 267–268). It is not at all probable, however, that the Indians whom he interviewed had any clear conception of the southern continent or its distance, and we know that a part of the Alabama, including the Tawasa and Pawokti towns, had lived for a time near Mobile before settling among the Upper Creeks. We also know that they had come to Mobile under pressure from the Creeks and that one of them was found near the upper Alabama by De Soto, so that they appear to have moved in a circle. Finally, Du Pratz tells us that the chief of the guardians of the sacred fire, the one who related to him the Natchez origin legend, indicated the southwest as the direction from which his ancestors had come and Du Pratz believed that he meant Mexico. But the missionary De la Vente understood "northwest" instead of "southwest" and this is more in line with Muskhogean legends generally (Swanton, 1922, pp. 191-201; 1911, pp. 182-186). Evidently Du Pratz was led to tie these Indians up to Mexico on account of the relatively advanced state of Natchez culture.

Migration legends indicating a western origin include all of those, so far as I am aware, which have been collected from the Muskogee, and all of the legends preserved from the Hitchiti and Alabama with