Part 1 - Chapter 1 

Description of the Southeast part of North America. Two methods of categorizing the native inhabitants. A general physical descriptions of the Indians of the Southeast and their habitat.

        Southeastern Geographical Area
Geography_SEsm.jpg (41745 bytes)When most people think of Indians, they think of distinct groups of people called tribes with a leader called a chief. These are European distinctions because the Europeans of the 16th century did not know of any other type of social structure. They were not able to relate to other peoples through any other framework than their own. Thus, a king ruled over a group of subjects indigenous to a certain locale. The Europeans attached to the groups of Natives whom they encountered labels of either European names or names stemming from Indian words. They also called these groups "tribes". The word "Cherokee" has no meaning in the Cherokee Language,1 and the name "Atakapa" for a group of Indians living in the gulf area is of Choctaw or Mobilian origination and means "eaters of human flesh". The Atakapa called themselves Ishak, "the people."2

Different anthropologists have defined the southeastern cultural arena differently. For this work, the area also includes those tracts of land which are considered marginally to have been the home of natives who had some of the characteristics of what is globally considered to have been Southeastern Indian culture as separate from Plains, Plateau, or Northeastern culture. This area included the present states of Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, Tennessee; contiguous areas of Texas, Arkansas, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky; and a small portion of Oklahoma in east central Oklahoma, i.e., Spiro3. Since the Indian population was not static, these marginal areas expanded and shrank. Smaller cultural groups were often joined to larger ones either through acts of war or for protection. In addition, it cannot be forgotten that lines on a map are man made. These areas are approximations of where these groups were mainly located. As can be seen from the map entitled "Early Southeastern Cultural Area," the boundaries vary depending on who delineated them. It is important to note that these boundaries represent the cultural areas or the ethnological province of the Southeast. The archaeological province is different and encompasses areas further North.4

        Map # 1 Early Southeastern Cultural Area
map_1_1650sm.jpg (40450 bytes)The land that these Indians inhabited influenced their cultural habits, modes of dress, economic life, etc. The Southeastern section of North America consisted of three natural regions: The Appalachian mountain range, the Piedmont to the east of the Appalachians, and the coastal plains between the Piedmont section and the Atlantic Ocean.5

The coastal plains comprised at least three-fourths of the Southeastern Cultural Area. It's terrain was composed of rivers full of fish, flat lands of rich soil, and forests that were rich with game, edible plants, and berries. Cane, Spanish moss, and Cypress trees surrounded the swamp areas while Oaks, Magnolias and various types of pine trees were also present. The rain was plentiful and the temperature range moderate.6    

The second important region was the Piedmont. This section consisted of a hilly area between the Appalachian mountains on the west and the "Fall Line" bordering the coastal plains to the east. The fall line was composed of the effluence of the rivers and streams as they fell from the uplands. The area was rich in fish and other natural resources. Many groups of Indians inhabited this area due to its proximity to both the Piedmont and coastal plains.7 The Piedmont area was rich in hardwoods and game.8    

The third area, composed of the Appalachian mountains, was rugged and heavily forested. The area was rich in nut bearing hardwood trees, game, birds including the eagle, and minerals such as mica, steatite, and quartz.9    

The Indians of the Southeast, as a whole, were more similar in their customs, values, and life styles at any given period of time than they were different.

These Indian groups or tribes can be categorized in two ways: as linguistically related or as cultural subdivisions. The following list is from Swanton, Bureau of American Ethnology Report 137, (face p.10). Although the major linguistic stocks are represented, the subdivisions and smaller segments contain only those better known tribes.

Major Linguistic Stocks

   

Another method of North American Indian categorization revolves around "Cultural Subdivision" or the identification of groups by their cultural similarities. The tribal locations on Map # 2 are from BAE 42 and BAE 137. Swanton in BAE Annual Report 42, "Aboriginal Culture of the Southeast," pp. 711-713 lists the groups as follows:

 Map #2 SE Indian Cultural Subdivision Circa 1550-1650
map_2sm.jpg (55416 bytes)

"(1) The Algonkian area of the tidewater region of Virginia and North Carolina; (2) The eastern Siouan area of the Piedmont section of North and South Carolina and the coast from the mouth of Cape Fear River to the Santee inclusive; (3) Florida, by which is meant particularly the territory of the Timucua; (4) the Creek area, to which the Georgia coast, the Yuchi, the Cherokee and the Chickasaws may be considered marginal; (5) the Choctaw; (6) the Natchez and their allies; (7) the Chitimacha; (8) the Tunican group proper; and (9) the Caddo."

 

Distinct Cultural Groups

Not Very Distinct Cultural Groups

Algonquian

Cherokee

Eastern Siouans

Chickasaw

Florida Timucua

Yuchi

Chitimacha

 

Choctaw

 

Natchez & Allies

 

Muskogee (Creek) Confederacy

 

Tunican Group (arrived after 1650)

 

Caddo

 

 As stated earlier, even though the cultural characteristics varied among subdivisions, the Southeast Indian tribes shared between them more similar characteristics and cultural patterns than different ones. The following list of similarities was abstracted from The Indians of the Southeastern United States by John R. Swanton.10 The time frame is 1550 plus or minus fifty years.

Similarities Among the S.E Indians

1) Descent was matrilineal.

2) If the tribal subdivisions (clans, moieties etc.) were exogamous, then their consanguinity was transmitted through the female line.

3) The terms of relationships and names gave evidence of a similar pattern.

4) The background of religious beliefs was similar, but tribal variations were pronounced.

5) Medical practices were similar throughout the Southeast.

6) All the tribes conducted rites of passage although great variations were found among the different tribes.

7) The clothing that the Indians wore was similar throughout the Southeast. [Authors note: The  materials used could be different.]

8) Ornamentation was worn by all the Indians although it varied in style and placement.

9) Shell beads and pearls were used as ornamentation throughout the area.

10) Copper was known to all the tribes.

11) There was a great similarity in the use of the environment in crops raised and harvested from Virginia to Louisiana.

12) Deer were stalked in the same manner.

13) Fishing was universal throughout; however, the methods varied.

14) All the tribes had dogs of similar breeds.

15) House types varied within a generally similar frame work with usually one door facing east or west.

16) Stockades with watch towers were constructed in the towns from Virginia to Mississippi.

17) The arrangement of the houses was similar in any encampment.

18) The chiefs were carried on litters except in the extreme northeast section.

19) Dugout canoes and rafts were used as a means of transportation.

20) Artistic development was similar even though certain tribes were known for a particular craft form.

21) Baskets and mats were universally employed.

The  following table shows certain salient characteristics that differentiated one cultural subdivision from another.11 The time frame is 1550 plus or minus fifty years.

Salient Attributes of Different Cultural Subdivisions  

SUBDIVISION

APPEARANCE

LINEAGE

RITES OF PASSAGE

Algonkian

Males shaved hair from head on one side & let it grow long on the other.

Absence of totemic clans.

Males & females underwent hard puberty rituals called Husquenaw.

 

Males reddened hair with Pucoon root.

Female chiefs.

Wives were purchased.

 

Use of small bead -Roanoke.

 

Divorce was a disgrace & uncommon.

 

Tattooed tribal marks on right shoulder.

 

 

 

Females used paint a little.

 

 

Eastern Siouans

Males reddened hair with root other than Pucoon.

Prominence of female chiefs.

Males & females underwent hard puberty rituals called Husquenaw.

 

Females used paint a little.

 

Wives were purchased.

 

Waxhaw tribe practiced artificial head deformation.

 

 

Florida - especially Timucua

Use of Spanish moss as clothing by women.

Totemic clans & phratries.

 

 

Males kept head hair long & used it in lieu of a quiver.

Tendency toward a caste system.

 

 

Ear ornaments made of fish bladders dyed red.

 

 

 

Leggings uncommon; leg ornaments more common.

 

 

Creek Confederacy

Males had hair roached & reddened by same root as used by East Siouans.

Totemic clans & phratries but no true moieties. Young men treated with less severity than their elders at time of first manhood ceremony.

 

 

Males wound copper wire in their ears to stretch them to immense size.

Divorce was discouraged.

 

 

Males wore nose rings.

 

 

 

Females used paint a little.

 

 

Choctaw

Hair worn long

Each canton had its own house & the chief separate houses.

 

 

Artificial head deformation.

 

 

Natchez Group of Tribes

Women wore spiked shaped ear ornaments of shells.

Had a peculiar cast organization of society. Members of the high caste had to marry commoners.

Divorce was discouraged.

 

Women blackened their teeth.

State was a theocracy & power of chiefs very great as descendents of the solar (Sun) culture hero.

 

Chitimacha

Men roached their hair.

Totemic clans & endogamous caste system.

Divorce discouraged.

 

Practiced artificial head deformation.

 

 

Tunican

Addiction to tattooing.

 

 

 

Women blackened their teeth.

 

 

 

Practiced artificial head deformation.

 

 

Caddo

Men wore hair similar to Turks of old.

Totemic clans but not exogamous in all parts of Caddo country.

 

 

Occasional reddening of their hair with duck feathers.

 

 

 

Tattooing less pronounced than that of river tribes. 

 

 

SUBDIVISION

BURIAL

RITUALISTIC CUSTOMS & BELIEFS

CRIMES & PUNISHMENT

Algonkian

Burial of common people in ground. Burial of chiefs & leading men in special houses called ossuaries.

Chief met strangers leading a line of his warriors playing flutes.

Use of shell money to purchase redemption for crimes of murder & adultery.

 

 

Had custom of washing a visitor's feet.

Custom of poisoning people who were disliked.

Eastern Siouan

Burial of common people in ground & chiefs in ossuaries.

Ceremonial use of tobacco not as pronounced as farther west.

Use of shell money to purchase redemption for crimes of murder & adultery.

 

Widow not obliged to undergo ceremonial mourning & permitted to remarry at once.

Harvest festival relatively unimportant.

Exemption of women from crimes of adultery.

 

Enemies killed to accompany a dead person.

widespread use of wooden images at certain ceremonies.

Sodomy uncommon.

 

Hair unbound but not cut during mourning.

Mythic references to beings called "sharp buttockses.'

 

 

 

Spiral fire kept up during councils at least by Waxhaw tribes.

 

Florida - especially Timucua

Mourning strictly enjoined on widows.

 

 

 

Bodies of the dead burnt along with their houses.

 

 

 

Ossuaries in existence on west coast of peninsula.

 

 

Creek Confederacy

Mourning of widows & widowers strict & that of widows long.

Had summer ceremonial grounds.

Punishment of man & woman in cases of adultery. Chickasaw punished only the woman.

 

Dead usually buried under house.

Existence of the Calumet ceremony - marginal extension.

 

 

 

Legend of the "sharp buttockses" among the Alabama.

 

 

 

Spiral fires used during ceremonies.

 

Choctaw

Strict observances of mourning ceremonies by women.

Existence of the Calumet ceremony.

Punishment of women for adultery by abandonment to a number of other men.

 

All dead placed on scaffolds after which the bones were removed & last buried in mounds.

 

 

Natchez Group of Tribes

Spouses & associates of men & women of ruling caste killed to accompany their masters & mistresses into the spirit of the world.

Culture hero supposed to be in a stone in the temple.

 

 

Most of the dead buried in the ground but the bones of the chiefs placed in hampers in the temples or ossuaries.

Temples with sacred fires kept burning continually.

 

 

 

Existence of Calumet ceremony.

 

Chitimacha

 

Existence of Calumet ceremony.

 

 

 

Solar cult but not as pronounced as the Natchez.

 

Tunican

 

Visited temples before going to war & upon returning.

 

Caddo

 

Greeted visitors with wailing customs.

 

 

 

Absence of Calumet ceremony except for eastern most tribe.

 

 

 

Burnt down house in which war party had gone through with its ceremonies before setting out.

 

SUBDIVISION

FOOD

HOUSING

ECONOMY

Algonkian

Used certain vegetables as salt substitute.

 

Institution of hunting territories.

 

Great dependence on fish.

 

 

 

Used fish weirs for at least 2 months of the year

 

 

Eastern Siouans

 

Summer houses similar to a lounging pavilion.

baskets & mats made of bulrushes & flags instead of cane.

 

 

Use of stones in foundations of certain buildings.

 

Florida - especially Timucua

Great importance of fish.

No distinct summer house except rude lodges.

 

 

Use of alligators as food.

Had long rectangular town houses.

 

 

 

Palmetto used as thatching.

 

 

 

Stone used in store houses.

 

Creek Confederacy

Used certain grasses & plants as salt substitute.

Had substantial rectangular summer houses.

 

Choctaw

Use of certain vegetables as salt substitute.

Had square or rectangular dwellings.

 

 

Greater dependence on corn than with most other tribes.

Covered houses with bark.

 

 

 

Had two smoke holes.

 

Natchez Group of Tribes

Used salt obtained from Western tribes.

Had square houses.

Sowed certain kinds of grain on grass banks of Mississippi river.

 

 

Used grass thatch.

Traded for salt

 

 

Didn't have substantial houses.

Did porcupine quill work.

Chitimacha

Obtained salt through boiling.

 

 

 

Ate seeds of Water Lilies.

 

 

 

Dependence on fish and Alligators.

 

 

Tunican

Lived on persimmons one month a year.

 

Division of labor among the sexes more favorable to women than in most parts.

 

Greater proportional dependence on corn except Choctaws.

 

Women worked almost entirely indoors.

 

Obtained salt through boiling.

 

Traded salt.

 

 

 

Skilled in dressing skins.

 

 

 

Skilled potters.

Caddo

Obtained salt through boiling.

Didn't have summer houses. Thatched houses with grass.

Traded salt to other tribes.

 

 

 

Traded much of the wood of the Osage orange. Used raw material for bows.

 

 

 

Skilled potters

SUBDIVISION

WAR

RECREATION AND GAMES

MISCELLANEOUS

Algonkian

Used primeval club shaped like a sword.

Absence of Chunkey game.

Record keeping by means of quipu & small bits of wood.

 

Used wooden breast plates & wicker armor.

 

More Northeastern than Southeastern.

 

Exacted a fixed tribute from conquered tribes.

 

 

Eastern Siouan

War titles taken from names of animals & fish.

 

Professional prostitutes recruited from young girls.

 

 

 

Domestication of wild animals.

 

 

 

Used quipu.

 

 

 

Class of adult slaves kept from running away by foot mutilation.

Florida - especially Timucua

 

Absence of Chunkey game.

 

Creek Confederacy

Special war titles of 2 words except where diminutive suffix was employed. (Chickasaw & Cherokee ended in "Killer".

 

 

Choctaw

War titles ended in "Killer".

 

Class of prostitutes formed of adulteresses cast out by their former husbands.

 

Natchez Group of Tribes

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Chitimacha

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Tunican

 

 

 

Caddo

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There is much controversy over Aboriginal population figures for North America. However, even though the Aboriginal figures are attributed to Mooney, he was not reporting census information for that time period; the period that he referenced was 1600-1650. The time period differentiation is important because prior to European contact, the Indian population was much larger:

"In virtually every region there were significant earlier contacts between native Americans and Europeans or Americans. The first contacts typically resulted in important population losses for American Indians, and the contacts did not need to be direct to have serious demographic impacts. American Indians suffered epidemics of European disease resulting from incidental contact, or even without direct contact, as disease spread from one American Indian tribe to another."12

The population for the Southeast area from the Chesapeake to Texas and including the Caddo and Shawnee but excluding the Atakapa was 171,900. The time frame was from 1600-1650.13 This period marks the beginning of "extensive European contact."14

Ubelaker revised Mooney's figures to try to reflect more accurately the Aboriginal Southeastern Indian population, i.e., the population prior to European contact. He stated that it was approximately 467,000.15

As can be seen there is a significant difference between the population figures of 1600-1650 and those prior to European contact. In 1819 Thomas Nuttall wrote:

"Their extinction will ever remain in the utmost mystery. The agency of this destruction is, however, fairly to be attributed to the Europeans, and the present hostile Indians who possess the country. It is from these exterminating and savage conquerors, that we in vain inquire of the unhappy destiny of thie [this] great and extinguished population, and who, like so many troops of assassins, have concealed their outrages by an unlimited annihilation of their victims."16

European diseases ravaged the Americas. As early as the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century "Old World Pathogens" had been transmitted to Florida via a "canoe load of native Caribbean merchants".17 This has been labeled the "Columbian Exchange." Prior to the infestation of European diseases, Henry Dobyns states that the Native population in Florida was estimated at 925,000.18 In 1650, Mooney estimated the population of all the gulf states to be 114,400.19 However, neither Dobyns nor Mooney defined the boundaries of the Florida territory. Since Florida in the late fifteenth century encompassed an area much larger than the present state of Florida, a comparison to the gulf states is not out of order.

"The major diseases of Florida natives that we can trace to the Colombian exchange are malaria, syphilis, hookworm, dengue fever, smallpox, typhus, influenza, bubonic plague, and yellow fever. [Also] Florida's mosquitoes carried malaria among the native peoples by the sixteenth century, and the disease claimed many victims until the twentieth century..."20

Except for being acutely susceptible to European diseases, the Europeans found the Indians to be "very robust and have a vigorous constitution."21 Hennepin, who was a missionary in the late seventeenth century, traveled throughout parts of the region. He was very impressed with the physical condition of the natives. He described the children as being very well formed and the women having the ability to carry "two or three hundred weight and set their children atop their burden."22 He further believed that since the children were very well formed, that their minds:

"......might easily be fashioned as comely as their outward form, if it were cultivated, and if we conversed more with them to polish their wild barbarous humour"23

A native and inhabitant of Virginia wrote in 1705 about the settling of Virginia and the customs of its native population.

"The Indians are of the middling and largest stature of the English. They are straight and well proportioned, having the cleanest and most exact limbs in the world. They are so perfect in their outward frame, that I never heard of a single Indian, that was either dwarfish, crooked, bandy legged, or otherwise misshapen.

"Their colour, when they grow up, is a chestnut brown and tawny; but much clearer in infancy. They have generally coal black hair and very black eyes......"24

His description is basically characteristic of the entire Southeastern Indian population.

Excavations of burial mounds in the southeast attest to the large stature of the Indians described by many early writers. Mound #12 found on Long Island in the Holston River in Roane County, Tennessee contained the skeletal remains of an Indian judged to have been seven and one half feet tall when living.25

Even though there are significant cultural differences among the native inhabitants of the Southeast, compared to the remainder of the North American continent, they remain a definite entity with more similar characteristics than different ones.

The cultural characteristics of the Southeast Indians presented in the next few chapters are merely examples from their rich heritage chosen to create a generalized picture of Southeastern Indian life in the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century.

As the Europeans extended their contact with the Indians, some of these customs were modified or destroyed completely. 


1. Donald Davidson, The Tennessee, vol.1, p. 42.

2. Kniffen, Gregory, & Stokes, The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana, p. 44

3. Spiro Mound marked the western most section of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex area.

4. Swanton, Indians of the Southeastern United States, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 137, p. 2.

5. Charles Hudson, The Southeastern Indians, p. 14.

6. Swanton, BAE 137, pp. 4-5 and Hudson, The Southeastern Indians, pp. 14-15.

7. Hudson, The Southeastern Indians, p. 19.

8. Ibid., pp. 19-20.

9. Ibid., p. 20.

10. Swanton, BAE 137, pp. 802-805.

11. Swanton, "Aboriginal Culture of the Southeast", Bureau of Ethnology Report no. 42, pp. 713-717. The author has taken Swanton's text and put it into columnar form. The content has not been altered.

12. Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival, p. 28.

13. Swanton, BAE 137, p. 11.

14. Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival, p. 27.

15. Ibid., p. 29.

16. Thomas Nuttall, A Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory During the year 1819, p. 227. 1980 edition.

17. Henry Dobyns, "The Invasion of Florida-Disease and the Indians of Florida", Spanish Pathways in Florida, p. 58.

18. Ibid., p. 58.

19. Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival, p. 27.

20. Dobyns, "The Invasion of Florida", p. 59.

21. Hennepin, A Continuation of the Discovery of a Vast Country in America, p. 85. This English version is a direct translation of the French version: Nouveau Voyage d'un Pais Plus Grand Que L'Europe. Both were published in 1698 although he lived in the area in the 1680's.

22. Ibid., p. 86.

23. Ibid., p. 86.

24. These quotations are attributed to Robert Beverley who is recognized as being the author of The History and Perfect State of Virginia in Four Parts. §1, pp. 1 & 2.

25. Thomas, Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology. p. 362.