SOUTHEAST INDIAN

Distribution of Southeast American Indian cultures. member of any of the aboriginal North American peoples inhabiting the area of the southeastern United States. The Southeast culture area is bounded on the east and south by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico (though some scholars would place the southern portion of aboriginal Florida within the orbit of the circum-Caribbean culture area). To the west, the Southeastern area merges with the southern Plains and the extreme easternmost part of the Southwestern culture area. To the north, the Southeast blends into the northeastern woodlands area with no discernible break in cultural tradition (see also Plains Indian and Eastern Woodlands Indian). Physiographically, the Southeast is characterized first by a coastal lowland belt broadly encompassing the subtropical zone of southern Florida; the scrub forest, sandy soil, and savannah grassland of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains; and the alluvial floodplains of the Mississippi drainage. Second, there is the piedmont of the midland interior, where the landscape changes to rolling hills, crisscrossed by several major river systems and covered predominantly with oak-hickory forest. Third, there is the southern Appalachian Mountains area of eastern Tennessee and the western Carolinas, a land of high peaks and deeply etched valleys, containing hardwood forests and, at high elevations, flora and fauna typical of more northerly regions. The Southeast was one of the more densely populated areas of native North America, having an aboriginal population conservatively estimated at 120,000. The bulk of this population resided inland, where advantage could be taken of extensive game resources, wild plant foods, and an abundance of arable land. Only the non-horticultural peoples of south Florida appear to have satisfactorily adjusted to a basically maritime way of life. Population was distributed among a large number of separate groupsindependent villages, autonomous village clusters, and tribelets. Most of those tribelets disappeared soon after white contact and left only faint traces in recorded history. They perished through the lethal combination of newly introduced diseases, removal into slavery, and direct warfare with white invaders or intertribal conflicts generated by white pressure. The survivors, if any, were assimilated into such larger, more powerful tribes as the Choctaw and Cherokee and various member tribes of the Creek Confederacy. These latter tribes persist to the present as distinctive peoples possessing a rich history and viable cultural heritage. Other intermediate-sized groups, such as the Houma, Catawba, and Chickasaw, survive as marginal enclaves but have lost much of their historic Indian identity. Such groups as the Seminoles (a branch of the Creek that migrated to Florida in the 18th century) and the Lumbee (a large group of Indians in Robeson County, North Carolina, whose precise Indian ancestry is unknown) appear to be entering an active phase of retribalization in which their Indian identification is being reasserted. Muskogean-speaking peoples constituted the major linguistic family in the aboriginal Southeast. The Muskogean family included the following five main subdivisions: (1) Choctaw and Chickasaw, two different dialects of a single language, found in Mississippi and western Tennessee; (2) Apalachee, a long extinct language of northwestern Florida; (3) Alabama and Koasati, two closely related languages spoken in the central Southeast; (4) Hitchiti and Mikasuki, two related dialects, formerly spoken in Georgia; and (5) Creek and Seminole, also closely related dialects, spoken in eastern Georgia and later in Florida. Four Lower Mississippi Valley languages, namely Natchez, Tunica, Chitimacha, and Atakapa, are thought to have distant affinity to Muskogean, but they show sufficient divergence both from the main Muskogean languages and from each other to warrant semi-independent status as linguistic isolates. Timucua, the major language of aboriginal north Florida, was once thought to be related to Muskogean, but its present status is problematic. One linguist believes it may be related to a language spoken in Venezuela, while others feel it may bear ultimate relationship to Siouan. There are four definite representatives of the Siouan family in the Southeast: Tutelo, Biloxi, Ofo (Mosopelea), and Catawba. These tribes were widely scattered and, with the exception of Biloxi and Ofo, show little relationship to one another and probably represent different prehistoric penetrations of Siouan speakers into the Southeast. Yuchi, the language of a major tribal group once residing in eastern Tennessee and later in Georgia, also demonstrates distant affinities to Siouan but is sufficiently distinctive to be classified as an isolate. Many small piedmont tribes were probably Siouan speaking, but surviving data are insufficient to make definite identifications. The Cherokee represent the sole member of the Iroquoian family in the presently demarcated Southeast, though the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora, Nottaway, and Meherrin, residing on the margin of the area, are included in the Southeast in some culture area maps. The Caddoan speakers on the western boundary of the Southeast belong to a distinctive language family that shows distant relationships to the Siouan and Iroquoian families. The affiliations of many of the smaller coastal and piedmont tribes are unknown. Mention should also be made of Mobilian, an important trade language containing many Choctaw components, which served as a lingua franca in the Mississippi Valley. Additional reading John R. Swanton, The Indians of the Southeastern United States (1946, reprinted 1979), discusses the traditional cultures of the Southeast. Later summaries and regional studies are provided by Charles Hudson, The Southeastern Indians (1976, reissued 1992); Verner W. Crane, The Southern Frontier, 16701732 (1929, reissued 1981); Duane Champagne, Social Order and Political Change: Constitutional Governments Among the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, and the Creek (1992), a specialized study; J. Leitch Wright, Jr., The Only Land They Knew: The Tragic Story of the American Indians in the Old South (1981); Walter L. Williams (ed.), Southeastern Indians Since the Removal Era (1979); and J. Anthony Paredes (ed.), Indians of the Southeastern United States in the Late 20th Century (1992). The history of the Five Civilized Tribes before and after removal is chronicled in R.S. Cotterill, The Southern Indians: The Story of the Civilized Tribes Before Removal (1954, reissued 1983); Grant Foreman, The Five Civilized Tribes (1934, reissued 1989), and Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians, new ed. (1972, reissued 1989); and Angie Debo, And Still the Waters Run (1940, reprinted 1984). Works on specific tribes include Douglas Summers Brown, The Catawba Indians (1966); Charles M. Hudson, The Catawba Nation (1970); James H. Merrell, The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact Through the Era of Removal (1989); Karen I. Blu, The Lumbee Problem: The Making of an American Indian People (1980); Duane H. King, The Cherokee Indian Nation (1979); Russell Thornton, C. Matthew Snipp, and Nancy Breen, The Cherokees: A Population History (1990); David H. Corkran, The Cherokee Frontier: Conflict and Survival, 174062 (1962); William G. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic (1986, reissued 1992), a history of relations between Cherokees and whites, 17891833; Thurman Wilkins, Cherokee Tragedy, 2nd ed. rev. (1986); William L. Anderson (ed.), Cherokee Removal: Before and After (1991), a collection of interdisciplinary essays; William Harlen Gilbert, Jr., The Eastern Cherokees (1943, reprinted 1978); John R. Finger, The Eastern Band of Cherokees, 18191900 (1984), and Cherokee Americans: The Eastern Band of Cherokees in the Twentieth Century (1991); Frank G. Speck, The Creek Indians of Taskigi Town (1907, reprinted 1974), and Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians (1909, reprinted 1980); David H. Corkran, The Creek Frontier, 15401783 (1967); Joel W. Martin, Sacred Revolt: The Muskogees' Struggle for a New World (1991), covering the period from the 17th to the early 19th century; Alexander Spoehr, Camp, Clan, and Kin Among the Cow Creek Seminole of Florida (1941, reprinted 1976), and The Florida Seminole Camp (1944, reprinted 1976); James H. Howard and Willie Lena, Oklahoma Seminoles: Medicines, Magic, and Religion (1984), a study of the tribe after removal from Florida; Angie Debo, The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic, 2nd ed. (1961); Samuel J. Wells and Roseanna Tubby (eds.), After Removal: The Choctaw in Mississippi (1986); and Fred B. Kniffen, Hiram F. Gregory, and George A. Stokes, The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana: From 1542 to the Present (1987). Raymond D. Fogelson The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica