their allies were probably late comers into the Piedmont region of Virginia, which they had apparently reached from the upper Ohio. The same force that caused this migration was perhaps responsible for the movement of the Biloxi to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, which conjecturally took place via the Tennessee, Coosa, and Alabama Rivers. Capinans, a Biloxi town or a tribe associated with the Biloxi, may have been the Capitanesses of the earlier Dutch maps, shown on the Juniata in Pennsylvania, or more probably beyond in eastern Ohio. Shortly after white contact, a Siouan tribe moved from some point on the upper Ohio River to the Cumberland, and thence successively to Arkansas River, to the Taensa at Lake St. Joseph, La., and finally to the Yazoo, where they were known as Ofogoula (Ofo) and established their settlements near the Tunica on the Yazoo. The rest of the Siouan tribes were driven, or moved, toward the west and northwest, and the linguistic test indicates that they had not been long separated from the Biloxi, Ofo, and Tutelo when the whites appeared (Swanton, 1936; Dorsey and Swanton, 1912). It was at about this time that the Quapaw must have left the Ohio, known to the Illinois as the River of the Arkansas, for their later homes at the mouth of Arkansas River (Shea, 1861, p. 120).

Traditional evidence as to Cherokee prehistoric movements is supported, it will be noticed, by that drawn from Spanish documents. Since Hiwassee is a good Cherokee word meaning "savannah," and it appears to be identical with the Guasili of the De Soto chroniclers minus a locative ending, we may infer that this town was occupied by Cherokee Indians, but "Xuala," entered just before, is Siouan, and Canasauga just beyond is probably Creek, so it would seem that the Cherokee invasion had but just begun (U. S. De Soto Exped. Comm., 1939, p. 50). Traditional and historical evidence regarding the origin of the Cherokee is here supported by circumstantial evidence, since north was the direction in which the other Iroquoian tribes lay. We must suppose that the Tuscarora, Meherrin, and Nottoway all came from the same direction, but their affinities are more nearly with the Iroquois proper than the Cherokee and we may assume that they had separated from the Susquehanna Indians.

Algonquian origin stories are reinforced similarly, for the Shawnee language is nearest Kickapoo, Fox, and Sauk, while Gerard and Michelson both find Cree resemblances in the Powhatan dialect. (Gerard, 1904; Michelson, personal information.)

A more easterly and northerly habitat for the Caddo is indicated in some measure by the distribution of Caddo pottery, by the resemblances between certain Caddo and Muskogee names and perhaps by linguistic affinities with Iroquois, though the last-mentoned evidence is tenuous (Swanton, 1931; see also writings of Sapir).

We will now attempt to put these data together in such a way as to make a coherent story. We may suppose that people with western affiliations, represented in later times by the Tunican groups, extended over much of the lower course of the Mississippi River. East of them were perhaps the Muskhogean tribes, one branch of whom, later represented by the Natchez and their allies, pushed in upon the river, forcing the Chitimacha and Atakapa south and west and the Tunica north. East of the Natchez were perhaps the Choctaw and beyond them the ancestors of the Alabama and Hitchiti. The former remained about where they were, but the latter spread east, some up the Tennessee and others down across the Coosa, Tallapoosa, and Apalachicola until they reached the Atlantic coast and pushed along it as far as the present Charleston, dividing as they went into the various tribes mentioned. Still north of this group on the Mississippi were the Muskogee, who followed their southern relatives toward the east, pushing down between tribes belonging to that group so that some were left on the Tennessee while others were forced on toward the south and east. To the east of the Muskogee were the Timucua, who shared a similar clan system. They were pushed onward into Florida, approaching it from the northeast, and extending up the St. Johns River. In the meantime some tribes of the Hitchiti or Apalachee groups had worked their way down into Florida to the very end, and they were subsequently cut off from their nearer relatives by the Timucua coming across from the east coast of the peninsula. The Muskogee, Tunica, and Caddo had been in contact with one another somewhere in Arkansas, but, after the Muskogee went east, the Tunica moved south and the Caddo southwest. In the meantime certain tribes along the northern or northeastern fringe of the Muskhogeans became specialized into the Siouan dialectic groups, that represented by the Catawba being intermediate probably and retaining contact with the Muskhogeans for a longer period. The Caddoan stock was probably spread farther east and the southern representatives of it farther north, where it is possible they were in contact with the Iroquoian tribes lying south of the Algonquians around the Great Lakes and north of the Siouans. It is possible that the Iroquois, Caddo proper, and Muskogee were once in intimate contact with one another along the Mississippi in the region of the Middle Mississippi area, from which contact they may all have derived their clan organizations with female descent. The Siouan people were perhaps split into eastern and western sections by the Algonquians moving south, but this process may have been begun by the Iroquoians at an earlier date. On the other hand, it is possible that the Iroquoian peoples entered the eastern part of the United States before any Siouans moved northwest and indeed the latter may have cut the Iroquois and Caddo apart.

Archeologists have now made it evident that all of these movements are relatively recent and superficial compared with the full extent of time during which mankind occupied the Gulf region. They find back of remains that may be attributed to the Choctaw, Natchez, Tunica, Caddo, and Muskogee the Coles Creek and Deasonville cultures, back of them Marksville, or "Southern Hopewell,” back of that a culture, or cultures, represented by the Tchefuncte of Louisiana, the remains of the Green River people in Kentucky, and the shell-midden people of the Tennessee River with the Bluff Dwellers of the Ozarks occupying an ancient but uncertain position. For an interesting summary of the prehistory of this region from an archeologist's point of view, consult the paper by Ford and Willey (1941).

The forces which subsequently modified the Gulf peoples and changed their culture into its later form, if external to the region, must have come from Mexico and Central America, or the West Indies. If from the last mentioned, it would appear that they antedated the Arawakan invasion, and in any case they probably made their appearance as waves of influence rather than as masses of people or masses of cultural elements. Very recently Irving Rouse has come to the conclusion that a type of West Indian pottery, belonging to a culture which he calls Meillac, originated in North America, but this would mean, not that the culture of the Southeast was modified from this direction but that it was itself a modifying force. Influences from the west are more evident, but the most striking ones signify rather recent cultural contacts than mass migrations of people as was formerly assumed.

HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEASTERN INDIANS FROM THE PERIOD OF FIRST WHITE CONTACT TO THE EXPEDITION OF HERNANDO DE SOTO

(See map 11)

Small factors often have momentous consequences, and when Columbus, on October 7, 1492, acting on the advice of his pilot Martin Alonso Pinzon and in response to indications of land toward the southwest, altered his course in that direction, he was led on through the smaller Bahama Islands to Cuba and Haiti, and his subsequent voyages took him southward. It was only on his last voyage that he touched any part of North America, and this particular section, from the Isthmus of Panama to Honduras, happens to belong to the South American ethnological province. Since the West Indies fall into the same category, the great discoverer's journals are of interest to students working with South American Indians rather than those concerned with the northern tribes. The history of these latter, aside from the voyages of the Norsemen and possible

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expeditions following theirs not as yet thoroughly authenticated, begins, then, with the voyage of John Cabot in the year 1497. Cabot followed the coast south the next year, some think as far as Florida, but this is improbable, and if he did so he left no records of the Indians of that region. The alleged expedition of Vespucci in the same year, during which he is supposed to have traced the entire shore of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic as far north as Virginia, is probably apochryphal. In the discussions by various writers this has been connected with a "mysterious" Portuguese expedition which has left exasperatingly inconclusive traces of itself in certain documents. The most important of these is a map prepared by some unknown cartographer in Lisbon, but bearing the name of Alberto Cantino, who was an envoy of the Duke of Ferrara at the Portuguese court and sent this map to his master from Rome about November 19, 1502. Attempts have been made to identify the land resembling Florida with Cuba or Yucatan, and Harrisse and Lowery both concurred in the opinion that it must be the Peninsula of Florida. The late Rudolf Schuller informed the writer that he believed the results of the expedition had been concealed because the lands visited belonged to that half of the world granted by Pope Alexander VI to Spain in his famous decision of 1493. This data, Schuller thought, was obtained surreptitiously by Cantino or his employee. However, Nunn seems to have disposed of the whole question as a series of cartographers' errors, and in any case the supposed discovery yields us no ethnological information. (See Harrisse, 1892, pp. 77-109; Lowery, 1901, pp. 125–130; Fiske, 1901, vol. 2, pp. 70-83; Nunn, 1924, pp. 91–141.)

In 1513 Ponce de Leon made what may be described as the official discovery of Florida, but the significance of the extant narratives of his expedition is in dispute. Although some commentators have held that the natives with whom he dealt were the Apalachee, this is improbable, for the Apalachee were mainly an inland tribe, and if De Leon was in their neighborhood at all, as some maps indicate, it is probable that he merely followed the coast without meeting the inhabitants and that his principal dealings were with the Calusa, a view championed by Lowery (1901, pp. 142, 446) and more recently by Davis (1935, p. 41). It seems likely, indeed, that the south Florida Indians were the only ones he met. This view is supported by the statement that the arrows used by these Indians were pointed with bones. The Apalachee Indians may well have used bone points also, but the greater part of their arrows were probably tipped with flint or made of cane. Furthermore, it is said that Ponce and his companions traded a little with the Indians for gold and skins. Now, there are few reports of the use of gold among the Indians