TD BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 69 
earth covering. Some of the more ancient villages in the lower 
Mississippi Valley may have resembled the Pawnee village of half a 
century ago. 
It is quite evident the town houses of-the southern tribes in early 
times stood on the summit of artificial mounds which had been 
erected for the purpose. This was certainly true among the Cherokee 
and Creeks, and probably among the Chickasaw. Seldom were the 
villages of the southern tribes compactly built. The separate dwellings 
or groups of structures which constituted the unit were often widely 
scattered, surrounded by their own fields and gardens. In such 
instances the town house became the center of the community, the 
gathering place for the people, just as the courthouse serves as the 
rallying place in rural districts. The custom of erecting the town 
house on the summit of an artificial mound may have been inaugu- 
rated through a desire to elevate the structure above the level of the 
water in time of flood, as many of the towns stood on the lowlands 
along water courses. In this connection it is more than probable 
the occurrence of one or more mounds at widely separated places 
along the southern rivers indicate the site of a former village, and 
while slight traces now remain of the towns, which are undoubtedly 
quite extensive, many including a hundred or more houses, it is 
easily conceived that such a condition would have resulted from the 
freshets which have swept away practically all signs of the former 
settlement. 
A century or more ago the towns of the Creek confederacy were 
numerous throughout the country they then occupied. The con- 
federacy, formed of many small tribes and remnants and parts of 
others, as a whole, was the largest division of the Muskhogean linguis- 
tic family. The towns of the Upper Creeks were in the,valleys of 
the Coosa and Tallapoosa, streams which unite a short distance above 
the city of Montgomery, Alabama. The Lower Creeks were farther 
southeast on the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers. Of the Lower 
Creek towns Cussetah was one of the most important, and possibly 
one of the most ancient, as its name has been identified in the narra- 
tive of De Soto’s expedition in 1540. It stood on the left bank of the 
Chattahoochee, a few miles below the present city of Columbus, 
Georgia. A description of the town as it was in 1820 proves it to 
have been an important center: 
“Tt appears to consist of about 100 houses, many of them elevated 
on poles from two to six feet high, and built of unhewn logs, with 
roofs of bark, and little patches of Indian corn before the doors. 
The women were hard at work, digging the ground, pounding Indian 
corn, or carrying heavy loads of water from the river: the men were 
either setting out to the woods with their guns, or lying idle before 
the doors; and the children were amusing themselves in little groups 
