10 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 73 
special subject of inquiry by Dr. Frank G. Speck, 1 but so many 
new facts have presented themselves in the course of this investiga- 
tion regarding the early history of these Indians that they have been 
treated at length. Some new information is also given regarding 
the Natchez and those Shawnee who were for a long period incor- 
porated with the Creeks. The Siouan tribes of the east have been 
made the subject of a special study by Mr. James Mooney, 2 and all 
that we know regarding two other southern Siouan tribes, the Biloxi 
and Ofo, has been given by the writer in another publication. 3 The 
ramifications of the Creek Confederacy extended so far that even the 
Chickasaw are found to be involved, and they have in consequence 
been considered in this paper. The Choctaw, however, form a distinct 
problem and the principal attention paid them has been to incor- 
porate a statement regarding their population so that it may be 
compared with that of the other Muskhogean tribes. 
Sections have been included on the ethnology of the Cusabo 
Indians and the Florida tribes, for which we are dependent entirely on 
documentary sources. 
To illustrate this work several of the more significant of the older 
maps have been reproduced, and two from data compiled by the 
author. It must be understood that the main object has been to 
trace historical movements and give the relative positions of the 
various tribes and bands, so that few of the locations may be con- 
sidered final. It is hoped that eventually intensive work in the 
Southeast, and in other parts of the country as well, will take form 
in a series of large-scale maps in which the historical as well as the 
prehistoric village sites of our Indians will be recorded with a high 
degree of accuracy. So far as the Southeast is concerned, an excel- 
lent beginning has been made by the Alabama Anthropological 
Society. The handbook of this society for 1920, which comes to 
hand as the present work is going through the press, contains a 
catalogue of "Aboriginal Towns in Alabama" (pp. 42-54), which 
marks an advance over anything which has so far appeared and 
should be consulted by the student desirous of more precise informa- 
tion regarding the locations of many of the towns dealt with in this 
volume. In two points only I venture a criticism of this catalogue. 
First, I am entirely unable to embrace that interpretation of De 
Soto's route which would bring him to the headwaters of Coosa 
River below the northern boundary of Georgia; and secondly, it 
seems to me a little risky to attempt an exact identification of the 
towns at which that explorer stopped in the neighborhood of the 
upper Alabama. At the same time I grant that such identifications 
are highly desirable and have no personal theories in conflict with 
the ones attempted. 
> Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians, Anthrop. Pubs. Univ. Mus., Univ. Pa., i. No. 1, 1909. 
a Siouan Tribes of the East, Bull. 22, Bur. Amer. I'.tlui , 1894. 
s Dorsey and Swanton, Dictionary of the Biloxi and Ofo Languages, Bull. 47, Bur. Amer. Kthn., 1912. 
Introduction. 
