802 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETKNOLOGT [Bull 137 



being very fragmentary. It must be pointed out at the beginning 

 that some features peculiar to certain areas may be traced directly 

 to physiographic differences. Thus, the lives of the Cherokee were 

 affected considerably by their location in the southern Appalachians 

 and those of the coastal Algonquians and Calusa, for instance, by 

 adjustment to a littoral existence. The difference in life zones also 

 reacted upon the cultures of the people, the Cherokee and some of 

 the Virginia Siouans including within their territory the only frag- 

 ments of the Boreal region and the Transitional zone of the Austral 

 region to be found in the Southeast, and the southern Florida In- 

 dians falling into the Tropical zone. The uniformity in culture 

 which the Southeast as a whole exhibits undoubtedly is connected 

 with the fact that the greater part of it is in one zone, the Lower Aus- 

 tral, and most of the remainder in the closely related Upper Aus- 

 tral. Differences observable among the Cherokee and in southern 

 Florida are undoubtedly attributable in some measure to environ- 

 ment. Those Cherokee cultural elements which show divergencies 

 from the Southeastern area as a whole and resemblances with Iro- 

 quois features may, of course, be set down as holdovers from former 

 stock association. If, as seems probable, the tribes of southern Flor- 

 ida were related to the Apalachee and Choctaw, the peculiarities of 

 their culture may fairly be attributed to the influence exerted by the 

 natural area in which they had settled. On the other hand, when we 

 find tribes scattered through the same natural area from the Atlantic 

 to Texas exhibiting variations, we know that some factor other than 

 present environment has been at work. Such general cultural varia- 

 tions are reinforced in many cases by physical or linguistic differ- 

 ences, but in other cases these are weak or absent and we have to 

 fall back on an inherent tendency of the human mind to vary inde- 

 pendently of any variation in the external world. 



To begin with, certain cultural characteidstics are found practi- 

 cally throughout the area in question. So far as we are aware the 

 natural environment was exploited in about the same manner and to 

 the same extent everywhere. Corn, beans, pumpkins and squashes, 

 and a species of tobacco were raised by all of the tribes from Vir- 

 ginia to Louisiana. The only exceptions seems to have been the tribes 

 of southern Florida and the marginal tribes of the southwest, includ- 

 ing the Atakapa and Tonkawa. These last seemed not to have ad- 

 justed themselves to horticultural life partly on account of the 

 sudden drop in rainfall in their territories and partly because of 

 the greater attractions of fishing on the coast and bison hunting in 

 the interior. We know that southern Florida was suited to corn cul- 

 ture because the Seminole who occupied it at a later period and 



