X.] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 393 



by Gatschet and Dorsey it is clearly shown that " the Biloxi are 

 the remnant of an isolated Siouan tribe 1 ." It may be conjectured 

 that the whole seaboard from the Mississippi delta to the Caro- 

 linas and Virginia was at one time continuously occupied by 

 tribes of Siouan stock, of whom the Biloxi are a fragment sepa- 

 rated from their Atlantic kinsmen by the irruption of the Musk- 

 hogeans from the west into -the south-eastern States of Alabama 

 and Georgia. " The Muskhogean tribes all claim M . rations 

 to have come into the Gulf States from beyond the and Dispiace- 



, ...... . , ... . , ments. 



Mississippi, and the tradition is clearest among 

 those of them the Choktaw and Chikasaw who may be sup- 

 posed to have crossed last. As they advanced they came at last 

 into collision with the Timuquarian and Uchean tribes of Florida 

 and Georgia, and then began the long struggle which ended only 

 with the destruction of the Timukua and the incorporation by the 

 Creek, within the historic period, of the last of the Uchi, leaving 

 the Muskhogean race supreme from Florida Cape to the Com- 

 bahee River in South Carolina. This wave of invasion must 

 necessarily have had its effect on the Carolina tribes towards the 

 north 2 ," and, it may be added, on the Siouan (Biloxi) tribes of 

 the Gulf Coast. 



In some of their customs and religious ideas, though not 

 in their speech, the eastern Siouans must have 

 differed considerably from their Missouri kinsmen. 

 A Saponi chief told W. Byrd that " he believ'd there was one 

 supreme God, who had several subaltern deities under him. 

 And that this master-God made the world a long time ago. 

 That he told the sun, the moon, and stars their business in the 

 beginning, which they, with good looking after, have faithfully 

 perform'd ever since After death both good and bad people are 

 conducted by a strong guard into a great road, in which departed 

 souls travel together for some time, till at a certain distance this 

 road forks into two paths, the one extremely level, and the other 

 stony and mountainous. Here the good are parted from the bad 

 by a flash of lightning, the first being hurry'd away to the right, 

 the other to the left. The right-hand road leads to a charming 



1 Mooney, op. cit., p. 16. 

 ; Ibid., op. cit. t p. 12. 



