22 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



dians (Hodge, 1907, 1910) . For the present undertaking it will not 

 be necessary to go into details, but an outline of the general course of 

 history in the section is called for. 



The traditions of most Southeastern tribes indicate a belief that 

 they had come into the section where we find them from the west 

 or north, the region most often indicated being the northwest. This 

 is natural when one considers that the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of 

 Mexico lie east and south. Still, it would have been possible for 

 population to enter by way of the West Indies and the Florida 

 Peninsula, or from Mexico along the Gulf shore. However, tradition 

 is here borne out by the testimony of language because we find that 

 relationship even in the case of the aberrant Timucua tongue of 

 Florida is with the north and west (Swanton, 1929, pp. 450-453). 

 This is not to deny earlier movements from the West Indies and, as 

 we shall see later, there are clear traces of cultural contact in this 

 quarter, but as a whole we must regard the flow of population in 

 the Southeast as having been eastward and southward. 



The only migration legends in any manner contradicting such a 

 conclusion may readily be explained. Thus, some Hitchiti stories 

 recorded by Gatschet gave the Gulf coast as the earlier home of that 

 Creek subtribe, but the individuals from whom this came were 

 probably Sawokli, and it is known historically that they had moved 

 northward into the Creek Nation at a late period (Gatschet, 1884, 

 pp. 77-78). Similarly, James Adair informs us that the tribes about 

 Fort Toulouse, at the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers, 

 had come "from South America" (Adair, 1930, pp. 267-268). It is 

 not at all probable, however, that the Indians whom he interviewed 

 had any clear conception of the southern continent or its distance, 

 and we know that a part of the Alabama, including the Tawasa and 

 Pawokti towns, had lived for a time near Mobile before settling among 

 the Upper Creeks. We also know that they had come to Mobile un- 

 der pressure from the Creeks and that one of them was found near 

 the upper Alabama by De Soto, so that they appear to have moved 

 in a circle. Finally, Du Pratz tells us that the chief of the guardians 

 of the sacred fire, the one who related to him the Natchez origin 

 legend, indicated the southwest as the direction from which his an- 

 cestors had come and Du Pratz believed that he meant Mexico. But 

 the missionary De la Vente understood "northwest" instead of "south- 

 west" and this is more in line with Muskhogean legends generally 

 (Swanton, 1922, pp. 191-201; 1911, pp. 182-186). Evidently Du 

 Pratz was led to tie these Indians up to Mexico on account of the 

 relatively advanced state of Natchez culture. 



Migration legends indicating a western origin include all of those, 

 so far as I am aware, which have been collected from the Muskogee, 

 and all of the legends preserved from the Hitchiti and Alabama with 



