14 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGT [Bull. 137 



in attempting to account for certain of the resemblances between 

 Southeastern and Antillean cultural features. 



Other centers of population in prehistoric times abandoned entirely 

 before the dawn of the historic era were about Macon, on the Ocmul- 

 gee, the Colomokee mounds on the Chattahoochee, and Etowah on 

 the river of that name, all in the State of Georgia, and the famous 

 Moundville site on the Black Warrior in Alabama. In these cases, 

 however, the principal centers of population had not removed to 

 great distances. 



RELATION OF THE ABORIGINAL POPULATION TO THE 

 NATURAL AREAS 



A single tribe, but that the largest in the entire Southeast, namely 

 the Cherokee, was planted on the southern Appalachian highlands, 

 mainly in the interval land of the Blue Ridge which here attains 

 its maximum width and in the Valley and Ridge section, but ex- 

 tending also into the Appalachian Plateau and the Piedmont Prov- 

 ince. The lands they held in these two latter physical areas 

 represented for the most part late acquirements. There is evi- 

 dence that the Cherokee advanced from the northeast down the 

 great Appalachian Valley, displacing or shouldering to one side the 

 Yuchi in eastern Tennessee, the Catawba and their allies in South 

 Carolina, and Muskhogean people in Georgia. The advantages of 

 this location consisted in a relative freedom from the thick forests 

 of the low countries and a proportionately easy agricultural exploita- 

 tion, the defensive possibilities of the mountains, and the control 

 of mica mines and quarries of stone suitable for pipes. Not much 

 profit accrued from the control of flint quarries, flint being rather 

 too widely distributed. Upon the whole, however, these mountains 

 seem to have been marginal areas, occupied rather through necessity 

 than by choice. 



At the end of the seventeenth century, the Ozark and Ouachita 

 Plateaus were not permanently occupied by Indians, but in 1541 

 De Soto found a fairly large population there, at least in the 

 Ouachita Province. One tribe was evidently Caddo ; the others may 

 have been Tunica, though of this we have no certain knowledge. 

 The extent of aboriginal workings in novaculite about Hot Springs 

 shows that the region was much resorted to, and any tribe which 

 could control the trade would be in a position of vantage similar 

 to that occupied by the Cherokee in the East. As a matter of fact, 

 we have no certain knowledge that any such monopolization had 

 taken place. We seem to have less information regarding the part 

 played by the Ozarks in prehistoric aboriginal life than for the 

 Ouachita Mountains, but the discovery of the Bluff Culture with 



