S WANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 21 



of them. The Natchez had taken under their protection two small alien 

 tribes, and the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Catawba, and Caddo 

 added foreign elements at various periods, but the incorporated peo- 

 ples were insignificant in numbers and in many cases related to the 

 dominant group. 



As has been elsewhere intimated, adjustment to the environment 

 was dependent in some measure upon the methods that had been 

 evolved for exploiting it, notably the use of corn, beans, squashes, and 

 a few other plants. 



By comparing the location of prehistoric archeological sites 

 with the location of tribes in historic times, we are able to form some 

 idea of the change in adjustment that had taken place. The greatest 

 shift of population seems to have occurred in the abandonment of the 

 greater part of the lower Mississippi Valley above the mouth of Red 

 River, though much of this occurred after the time of De Soto and 

 may have been due to epidemics of European origin. Abandonment of 

 the northwest coast of Florida appears to have taken place at a still 

 earlier date, though the experience of Pineda suggests that it may not 

 have antedated by many years the discovery of the New World. The 

 abandonment of the Georgia coast and part of the Georgia hinterland 

 was post-Columbian. If we consider marginal areas, we find that 

 another extensive displacement of peoples of high culture had taken 

 place along the Ohio River and the upper course of the Mississippi 

 and its branches. This constitutes one of the great problems of 

 eastern archeology. 



PREHISTORIC MOVEMENTS 

 (See map 10) 



Our strictly historical knowledge of these tribes is naturally con- 

 fined almost entirely to the period after they came into contact with 

 the whites, though it is hoped that a comparison of their known 

 arts and industries with the remains in process of resurrection by 

 archeologists will enable us to trace them back to a still more remote 

 epoch. In Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletins 43 (Swanton, 

 1911), 47 (Dorsey and Swanton, 1912), and 73 (Swanton, 1922), I 

 gave all of the information available to me at the time of writing 

 regarding the histories of the Indians of the Muskhogean, Tunican, 

 Timucuan, and Uchean stocks and the southern Siouans, and in 

 Bulletin 22 (1895) Mr. Mooney performed a similar service for the 

 Siouan tribes of the east. In the Nineteenth Annual Report of the 

 Bureau (Mooney, 1900), he gave the history of the Cherokee. The 

 Carolina region has recently been covered very competently by Dr. 

 Chapman J. Milling in Red Carolinians, and the entire field in an 

 elementary fashion in the articles in the Handbook of American In- 



