INDIAN TRIBES OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY AND 

 ADJACENT COAST OF THE GULF OF MEXICO 



By John K. Swaxton 



INTRODUCTIOX 



The region with which the present bulletin deals is one of unusual 

 interest both to the ethnologist and the archeologist ; to the ethnologist 

 owing to its exceptional linguistic complexity, in which in the terri- 

 tory north of Mexico it is exceeded only by the Pacific coast, and to 

 Ihe archeologist because the lower Mississippi valley is one of the 

 richest fields for exploration in the entire United States. This in- 

 terest is increased by its strategic position between the mound culture 

 of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys and the cultures of Mexico and 

 Yucatan, and by the presence within it of a tribe so highly organized 

 socially that it is often pointed to as a remnant of that culture to 

 which " the mound builders " are supposed to have belonged. 



In this treatise the Avriter has attempted to furnish as complete an 

 account of the history of each tribe and the ethnological facts con- 

 cerning it as the published material renders possible. He is aware 

 that in France and this countr}', and probably in Spain, there is much 

 manuscript material which would be necessary to an absolutely final 

 account, but the work of bringing this out and placing it in perma- 

 nent form belongs rather to the historian than to the ethnologist. 

 The literary work connected with the present effort, although it forms 

 so large a portion of the whole, has been undertaken only in con- 

 nection with direct ethnological investigation among the remnants of 

 the tribes in question. The results of this direct work have been 

 principally' linguistic, however, and since the philological material 

 is to be published separately, a comparatively small residuum is 

 left for insertion here. This is confined, in fact, to some myths 

 and ethnological notes collected from the Xatchez, Tunica, and 

 Chitimacha, the other tribes being either extinct or too far disin- 

 tegrated to furnish any valuable material. One of the most important 

 lesults of the writer's investigations, however, has been in the 

 linguistic classification of the tribes of this area contained in the 

 S3220— Bull. 43—10 1 1 



