254 BUBElAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



Of first importance, naturally, is the location of food supplies and 

 the supplies of materials needed in clothing and for shelter, and 

 secondly, the distribution of certain raw materials made necessary by 

 the character of their manufactures and the demands of their social 

 and religious life. But in so far as man has learned to control his 

 environment by the development of agriculture and the domestica- 

 tion of animals both the distribution of population and its seasonal 

 movements will be altered. 



In the case of our Southeastern Indians, what we may call the 

 natural condition with reference to their adjustment to the animal life 

 of the section had remained unaltered, since they had practically no 

 domestic animals, while the gathering of natural vegetable products 

 had given way in large measure before the cultivation of corn, beans, 

 squashes, and a few other vegetables, with consequent modification 

 of the original natural adjustment in that direction. 



On examining the distribution of food animals, we find that the 

 ones principally depended upon, including deer, bear, and bison, 

 were distributed quite evenly, but water mammals, mussels, aquatic 

 birds, and fresh-water fish augmented the available supplies of food 

 about rivers and lakes, and in the sea the quantities of fish and shell- 

 fish are enormously increased. To the attraction of food must also 

 be added that of shells as raw material for several useful articles, 

 but particularly ornaments and money. We should naturally not be 

 surprised, therefore, to find great concentrations of population along 

 the rivers and still more upon the seacoast. 



Turning to vegetable production, we find that those supplied spon- 

 taneously by nature herself are also distributed with a relatively even 

 hand in spite of certain local differences. The best corn lands, how- 

 ever, before fertilizer was introduced, were not on the coasts, certainly 

 not on the southernmost coasts, nor in the strip of pine lands w^hich 

 extends from North Carolina semicircularly to the Mississippi, but 

 in the interior of the country, and it is there that we encounter the 

 great corn-raising nations, though there were sections of the coast 

 where agriculture and fishing were combined and supported a dense 

 population. Land animals and natural vegetable products being 

 evenly distributed, we observe a tendency of the mass of the population 

 to gather upon the seacoast or the corn lands, and perhaps to oscillate 

 between the two. This had a certain effect on seasonal migration and 

 a more pronounced effect on trade. 



An even greater effect, particularly on trade, seems to have been 

 brought about by the unequal distribution of raw materials belonging 

 to the mineral kingdom. Flint, to be sure, was widely spread, but 

 even here there was a constant demand for the material by tribes on 

 the alluvial lands of the lower Mississippi and along the greater part 



