THE INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 



By John R. Swanton 



INTRODUCTION 



Several years ago when I was collecting materials from early writ- 

 ers regarding the Creek Indians and other Southeastern tribes, a 

 quantity of notes accumulated bearing on the material culture of these 

 people. These, augmented by a few of my own and sketches of the 

 later history of the several tribes, I have brought together in the pres- 

 ent work. Some material has also been included to augment earlier 

 publications dealing with the social and ceremonial usages of the 

 peoples in question. Although they are included in the same general 

 area, it is not claimed that the discussion of certain of these tribes is 

 complete, meaning particularly the Cherokee, Tuscarora, Quapaw, and 

 Shawnee, which have been made the subject of considerable additional 

 research and are still being studied. Indeed, no claim of a hundred- 

 percent completion of any tribe can ever be made safely, since some 

 manuscript may at any time be drawn from its place of concealment 

 and modify materially everything that has been published, or even 

 occasion a total revolution in our ideas regarding it. The present 

 effort involves in the main a collection of source materials which it 

 is hoped and believed will be of use to future students. 



GEOGRAPHY OF THE SOUTHEAST 



The Indians who are the subject of this bulletin lived between 

 the 24th and 39th parallels of N. latitude and the 75th and 96th 

 meridians of W. longitude on a territory now divided up among the 

 Southern States of the American Union. It measured about a thou- 

 sand miles from east to west and, including the Florida Peninsula, 

 about the same from north to south, but omitting Florida, the north- 

 south measurement would be little more than half as great. 



Considered as an ethnological province, the Southeast includes 

 (primarily the territory now embraced in the States of Georgia, 

 Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, all of Louisiana except the ex- 

 treme southwestern part, northeastern Texas, southern Arkansas, 

 southern and western South Carolina, the westernmost mountain 



