SWANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTEiRN UNITED STATES 33 



Archeologists have now made it evident that all of these move- 

 ments are relatively recent and superficial compared with the full 

 extent of time during which mankind occupied the Gulf region. 

 They find back of remains that may be attributed to the Choctaw. 

 Natchez, Tunica, Caddo, and Muskogee the Coles Creek and Deason- 

 ville cultures, back of them Marksville, or "Southern Hopewell," 

 back of that a culture, or cultures, represented by the Tchefuncte of 

 Louisiana, the remains of the Green Kiver people in Kentucky, and 

 the shell-midden people of the Tennessee River with the Bluff Dwell- 

 ers of the Ozarks occupying an ancient but uncertain position. For 

 an interesting summary of the prehistory of this region from an 

 archeologist's point of view, consult the paper by Ford and Willey 

 (1941). 



The forces which subsequently modified the Gulf peoples and 

 changed their culture into its later form, if external to the region, 

 must have come from Mexico and Central America, or the West In- 

 dies. If from the last mentioned, it would appear that they ante- 

 dated the Arawakan invasion, and in any case they probably made 

 their appearance as waves of influence rather than as masses of 

 people or masses of cultural elements. Very recently Irving Rouse 

 has come to the conclusion that a type of West Indian pottery, be- 

 longing to a culture which he calls Meillac, originated in North 

 America, but this would mean, not that the culture of the South- 

 east was modified from this direction but that it was itself a modi- 

 fying force. Influences from the west are more evident, but the most 

 striking ones signify rather recent cultural contacts than mass migra- 

 tions of people as was formerly assumed. 



HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEASTERN INDIANS FROM THE PERIOD OF 



FIRST WHITE CONTACT TO THE EXPEDITION OF HERNANDO 



DE SOTO 



(See map 11) 



Small factors often have momentous consequences, and when Co- 

 lumbus, on October 7, 1492, acting on the advice of his pilot Martin 

 Alonso Pinzon and in response to indications of land toward the 

 southwest, altered his course in that direction, he was led on through 

 the smaller Bahama Islands to Cuba and Haiti, and his subse- 

 quent voyages took him southward. It was only on his last voyage 

 that he touched any part of North America, and this particular 

 section, from the Isthmus of Panama to Honduras, happens to be- 

 long to the South American ethnological province. Since the West 

 Indies fall into the same category, the great discoverer's journals are 

 of interest to students working with South American Indians rath- 

 er than those concerned with the northern tribes. The history of 

 these latter, aside from the voyages of the Nprseraen and possible. 



464735—46 1 



