BUSHNELL] NATIVE VILLAGES AND VILLAGE SITES LT 
the Chattahoochee, where they became a part of the Creek confed- 
eracy. Their town, near the mouth of Uchee Creek, in the present 
Russell County, Alabama, became one of the most important of the 
league. Others later settled with the Shawnee among the Upper 
Creek. : 
~ One linguistic family remains to be mentioned, the Tunican, who 
when first known to history lived near the Mississippi on the lower 
reaches of the Yazoo, in the present State of Mississippi. They were 
allied with other small tribes farther south and there is reason to 
suppose they were formerly more numerous and powerful. Later 
they crossed the Mississippi and at different times occupied several 
sites in Louisiana. 
From this brief sketch it will be understood the native tribes who 
occupied the vast country extending eastward from the Mississippi to 
the Atlantic are recognized as having belonged to seven distinct lin- 
guistic families, to which number others may be added when more is 
known concerning the aborigines of southern Florida. Necessarily 
many of the lesser tribes have not been mentioned, but the attempt 
has been made to locate the principal groups and to indicate their 
positions as they were first encountered by Europeans. Of the 
seven groups the Algonquian was the most numerous, followed by 
the Muskhogean, Iroquoian, Siouan, Timucuan, Uchean, and Tunican, 
and although the last two may not have numbered more than 1,000 
each the others were far more numerous, forming, as already stated, 
a combined population east of the Mississippi approximating 280,000. 
Other Algonquian, Siouan, and Tunican tribes lived west of the 
Mississippi and are, consequently, not here considered. 
The languages of the seven groups differed to such a degree that 
one would not have been intelligible to the other, and often within 
the same linguistic family the various tribes spoke radically different 
dialects. Thus with such a diversity of languages, a great range of 
climatic conditions, with mountains and prairies, swamps and lakes 
occurring in widely separated parts of the region, the native tribes 
of this part of North America developed distinct customs influenced 
by their natural conditions and environments. And seldom were 
these variations more pronounced than in the forms of dwellings and 
other structures erected by the different tribes, as will be shown in 
the following pages. 
II. VILLAGES AND VILLAGE SITES 
- The term ‘‘village site,’’ as used in the present work, applies to 
all places, large or small, where traces of aboriginal habitations have 
been discovered. Many have been identified by name, but the great 
majority will ever remain unknown, and in this connection it will be 
108851°—19——_2 
