NO. 7 ABORIGINAL POPULATION OF AMERICA MOONEY 7 



GULF STATES . 



In this section we include Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mis- 

 sissippi, most of Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee, with some out- 

 lying territory, and the whole Cherokee country. 



In the Gulf States the Indian population seems to have decreased 

 by nearly one-half since the beginning of regular white colonization. 

 If the percentage of alien blood in the survivors could be segregated 

 a much greater decrease would be apparent, the great majority now 

 existing being mixed liloods. The chief causes of decrease have been 

 smallpox, dissipation, wars, slave raids, and removals. The destruc- 

 tion accomplished by De Soto and other Spanish adventurers is of 

 too early a date to be estimated, and the tribes had probably recovered 

 from its effects before the beginning of regular occupation by the 

 whites, about the end of the seventeenth century for most of the 

 region, excepting east Florida where it began a full century earlier. 

 For convenience of treatment, however, we have made one date for 

 the whole region. A great smallpox epidemic in 1698 is on record as 

 having destroyed the larger part of the Quapaw and about the same 

 proportion of the Tunica, lower down the river, and the Biloxi and 

 others about Biloxi Bay. It probably swept the whole lower Missis- 

 sippi River. During the same period, or about 1690- 1720, slave 

 raids organized by the English of Carolina were very destructive 

 of Indian life, the Chickasaw and Creeks, armed with guns furnished 

 for the purpose, being the principal agents in the destruction. In 

 1702 the Chickasaw admitted to Iberville that in 12 years they had 

 killed or captured for slave traders 2,300 Choctaw at a cost to them- 

 selves of over 800 men. Moore's expedition against the Apalachee 

 missions in 1703 was practically a slave raid, 200 Apalachee being 

 killed and 1,400 carried off into slavery. In one raid in 1723 the 

 Choctaw killed or brought back for sale to the French 400 Chickasaw. 

 After the final defeat of the Natchez, in 1731, 500 were sold by 

 the French into West Indian slavery. The populous tribes of Florida 

 seem to have dwindled rapidly under Spanish rule, and their de- 

 struction was completed in the eighteenth century by irruptions of 

 the Creeks, who were armed with guns by the English of Carolina, 

 while the Spanish government refused firearms to its own Indian 

 dependents. They long since became entirely extinct. Several de- 

 structive smallpox visitations are recorded for Carolina and the 

 adjacent region before the Revolution, while intoxicating beverages 

 and general dissipation were constant demoralizing forces. Over 



